Holiday Treats

The power rush of self control. By Teresa Pesce.

If you ate everything you wanted on Thanksgiving and Christmas, that would be two big blow-out meals a year. Unless your life is a perpetual whirlwind of elaborately catered affairs, you don’t have that many occasions where everyone contributes their irresistible, calorie-laden special recipes. So my outrageous idea is to eat moderately 363 days a year and enjoy the holidays!

Some of us become obsessed with healthy eating on the exact days when the dining table will be packed with the best food you’ll be offered all year. On THAT day, we decide to exercise self-control. There is a strange blend of martyrdom and guilt that becomes the brew we sip before state occasions, and we decide we must ‘Suffer for the Cause.’

Must we? I say – your regular eating habits being sensible and your health being good - enjoy the rare special occasions where eating is the main family event. In other words, instead of caving into pie-cravings all year, only cave in on those days when Aunt Marion makes her killer double-chocolate pecan pie! Happy holidays!

Pause for a large HOWEVER: For some of us, one day of indulgence can trigger a set-back that lasts for months or years. It’s just like they say in AA, substituting “cookie” for “drink”: One cookie is too much and a thousand aren’t enough. So what do we do when confronted with irresistible sweets at holiday events? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, we resist. “How?!?” you ask, as you resist the urge to smack me over the head with this magazine.

Fortunately, I have two suggestions. Have you ever experienced the dizzying high of not eating dessert, and then watching everyone else loosening their belts afterward, fading from drowsiness and voicing their regrets in advance for the after-effects of weight gain and follow-up sugar cravings? If not, you haven’t lived! It’s great! Not that I’m judgmental, you understand, it is just so cool to be the one who isn’t suffering and dreading stepping on the scale next time!

If you want to try it, prepare to feel the wonderful power-rush of self-control. It feels fabulous to be strong! You will like it. Helpful hint: Have a flavored coffee with half-and-half while dessert is being served, and sip it while everyone else is shoveling future regrets into their mouths. It’s sweet without sugar and gives you something indulgent to do. It worked for me many times.

But if sensual coffee followed by shameless (and thoroughly deserved) ego-preening still leave the dessert-skipping bar too high, then bake and bring some croissant rolls filled with fruit, butter, cinnamon and nutmeg. I baked my own apple pies and made yam pies to enjoy while others had pumpkin pie (yams are sweeter!). Where there’s a “will” there’s a way, and where there’s a “won’t” (eat sweets), there’s also a way. Find yours and be happy! It’s only two days a year. Find your way to enjoy them!

#health