With the start of 2023, I am hoping to commit myself to some better eating and exercise habits. I am pretty sure I won’t be the only person in the country doing this.
This holiday season, well actually it started Halloween, more candy, cookies and baked treats have gone into my tummy than anytime in recent memory. Halloween can be like kryptonite for me.
I steer clear of candy for most of the time which isn’t easy. For instance, I love strawberry Twizzlers. I love them too much. With no effort at all, I can crush a big bag in one sitting.
Chocolate, makes me feel a little full so I don’t tend to chow down as much. That is my theory anyway.
When Halloween comes, my ban on Twizzlers is lifted and a package always seems to make its way into my cupboard when I am getting candy for trick-or-treaters.
This year, because I was not at home during the evening of kids being out and about, I ended up with a bit more candy than normal. I gave a lot of it away, but plenty made it to my stomach.
Reese’s Cups are another favorite sweet, my body doesn’t seem to know when enough is enough.
With Thanksgiving on the horizon, I started getting some baked goodies from family and neighbors before the holiday even started.
I went down to visit my sister in Colorado where she had a bourbon chocolate pecan pie created just for me.
The friends we visited on Turkey Day must think that because I am a bachelor, I need to take home tons of food. Well, I didn’t resist very much. Half a cherry pie went home with me as one of my takeaways.
I swim laps about four times a week, so I was hoping some of these delicious sweets I was eating were not really putting on weight. Again, good theory.
The Christmas holidays started almost immediately after Thanksgiving for me as I started to attend the events celebrating the holiday.
I guess I found it my civic duty to buy cookies and cakes from the vendors at shows I attended. Again, I gave away quite a lot, but plenty was around for me to munch on.
Then there was the assignment of the perfect eggnog recipe. I came up with the right one, but there was a little trial and error. I don’t know how many different versions of eggnog I tried in order to get the perfect taste, but I do know eggnog is not dietetic. I think each little mug ran about a 1,000 calories.
To my credit, once I wrote the story, no more eggnog went down my throat. Sadly, it was replaced by hot chocolate and what I call holiday coffees. Hot chocolate is another ridiculously high calorie drink. My years as a bartender made me quite adept at making this libation, especially if a little Irish cream makes it into the batch.
Swiss Miss brand is okay for the layman wanting to make it quick, but when you make it from scratch, with real cream, its in a whole other league.
The alcoholic warm beverages that I create sadly are not low cal.
Coffee drinks are a specialty of mine I got good at when I worked the bars of Washington D.C. I stock up on different liqueurs meant specifically for coffee when the holiday season arrives. They are wonderful treats on a Sunday when the cold is keeping you inside. I don’t drink more than two, but I know every time I am drinking one of my creations, I am consuming something that is going straight to the waist-line.
During the warm months, I am able to curb myself from drinking any of these beverages.
Hopefully in a week or so, I will be on a serious diet to get off the holiday fat.
My sister down in Colorado has been trying to come up for a visit the past couple weeks, but weather is not cooperating. When she arrives, we usually eat well, so until she makes her visit, it would be foolish to think I will go on any strict diet I am envisioning. It just makes no sense to start a diet and then go off of it.
I find once you start, you have to stick to it. In the past, I could drop weight pretty easily and without a lot of effort.
I have to admit, as I have racked up a few more years, those days are gone. It is now a serious struggle to drop holiday weight. As I said earlier, I know I am not the only person contemplating a resolution to get the body in better shape through diet and exercise.
The proof will be in the pudding for all of us who have these good intentions about getting control of our diet come March and April. By that time, some impact should be evident. That is of course, unless we eat the pudding before the diet is over. Especially if it is bread pudding.
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