Maintenance has been surprisingly smooth for the last 5 months or so, but of course, the holidays present an extra challenge for foodies. Jenny offers a really nice guide to healthy holiday eating, but we didn’t exactly follow that this year.
Instead, we started Christmas morning with some raisin-blueberry-cinnamon rolls. Karen nicknamed the rolls “planet eater rolls,” because she thought they resembled the robot planet destroyer from one of our family’s favorite Star Trek episodes (before you cut them in pieces, of course). For dinner, we treated ourselves to prime rib with made from scratch horseradish sauce from Mr. F’s 1920 Epicurean cookbook, Karen’s cornbread from the same source, mashed potatoes and peas. Our dessert? Well, Mr. F had spotted a raspberry chocolate truffle cake in the Neiman Marcus catalog, and we reproduced it with a few twists of our own. The sum total was probably more calories and fat than Jenny allows in a month. And we can’t forget about the nibbling that went on around Karen’s gingerbread house, especially after I talked her into using Lindt white chocolate for the roof….
So….come Friday morning and our weekly weigh-in, we were all feeling somewhat guilty. Unlike my usual maintenance strategy, I didn’t get on our home scale all week, but I don’t like suspense much, so I checked my weight before we went to our appointment. Much to my surprise, I was only one pound up. Lucky me. What we generally find is that a single indulgence doesn’t do too much harm–it’s when you start backing them up several days in a row that you have a problem. Also, our strategy of eating our “dinner” at noon instead of in the evening seems to be helpful. As we walked off our dinner later in the afternoon, it appeared that we were in the minority–most people seemed to be just arriving for their holiday feasts.
At any rate, the party’s over, so we’re back to being good again. But I have to say that special holiday foods are much more special when you are eating rather conservatively the majority of the time. Wow.
2 Comments
Vix · December 30, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I really enjoy all the food that my family fixes for me. I want to be healthy and live forever. And I do enjoy trying out new recipes that we cook. Blueberries and fried fish are two of the healthy things I enjoy eating. Thanks for writing this, Mom.
hvitullo · April 24, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I think that people on diets get somewhat confused and your blog makes a really great point. . .one indulgence is not going to kill you and its not going to derail you . . as long as it is not one indulgence every day! If it is Christmas then have Christmas food! Just don’t make Christmas DAY food into Christmas WEEK food! Also, it is important to be careful when going on diets. When I first started dieting, i used weight watchers. You know, you count the points and you stay within 18-25 (for me) points a day. IT got to the point where i was soo obsessed with the points that I was only eating about 2 a day. . about 200 calories. Yeah i was anorexically thin and very unhealthy. It is important to go into a diet with the right frame of mind, motivated, and not looking for a quick fix because it is easy to go down the wrong path!
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