Goodbye holidays and festive meals

Goodbye holidays

Hoping everyone had a fun, fantastic, exciting and relaxing mix of holiday events or lack thereof. Whatever you have done, whatever suits your moods and needs the most. Since the holidays were shortened into a compact week, Saturday and Sunday of the following week, there was no time to languish. You had to turn sixteen in that vacation time with your hands and feet to make the most of it.

Holidays for me means visiting family, since they live in another country (Canada), this is only a biannual event and therefore more significant. I have to inhale everyone to their essence and then painfully release them. As it is a large family, concentration and a lot of energy are needed, especially since there is an increasing number of children and I certainly do not want to miss any details of their development. I also want them to remember me in a meaningful way until the next time I see them in six months. Christmas shopping helps.

Since the family is the central focus of the holidays, all other concerns melt away. I thought at the end after we got to New York and I got on my scale and realized something very important. I’m sure you remember my first “diet” experiment which was ‘Atkins’ and its terrible results. Since then, I’ve brought carbs back into my daily regimen, once again focusing on healthy whole grains, plenty of vegetables, and lean protein. I’m also trying to eat more meals with smaller portions to regulate my blood sugar, which means there are no blood sugar spikes that trigger insulin, which triggers cortisol that causes fat storage around the abdomen . I can usually make time for four meals a day. So this year’s holiday meal results were amazing because my weight hadn’t changed at all. Whereas last year when I stopped taking Atkins, I gained four pounds over the holidays. This is why I had such different results. It wasn’t because this time he was more disciplined and controlled. It wasn’t because she was avoiding food, either. It was because my body was used to carbohydrates, which are a necessary component of daily nutrients, so I didn’t have this overreaction with water retention to the additional carbohydrates.

I have to tell you here that my brother’s wife, Bonnie, is an amazing cook. I strongly advised him to share her gifts and harness her talents professionally. She had to try whatever she did because she knew how amazing she would be. Although I admit that she uses sugar and some kind of white flour and butters, I allow everything she makes to enter my stomach because it is glorious and therefore has to be good for me. I know it’s not rational, but the scale doesn’t lie and I didn’t gain a pound. I also only had a few days of eating these foods, but enough to have done damage in the past year.

Another part of the mysterious weight patterns is that once my body got used to carbohydrates again with a healthy and balanced diet, my metabolism found its homeostasis, a set point where the body wants to stay. Yes, it’s a couple of pounds up from where it was when I was on Atkins, but now it’s healthy and balanced and surprisingly easy to maintain…as my Christmas experience showed. Training? Well, okay, I put a couple in, I wasn’t sedentary, and I walked outside with my mom in eight inches of snow and howling winds for an hour one day. Which I couldn’t have done while on Atkins due to lack of energy.

Now, I’m not telling you to go out with reckless abandon and eat anything that tastes good. In your daily routine, discipline and control tempered with regular exercise are your cornerstones for health, fitness, and staying young. The good thing about eating carbohydrates is that during the holidays you can relax, enjoy, relax and make the most of what life has to offer.