Temptation of the Week: Balancing holiday temptation with reality

Did your Thanksgiving go well?

Perhaps you did really well: enjoyed your food, had a lot but not too much and spread it around several food groups. Or maybe you had a little too much a little too often. Or you could have been surrounded by enough family guilt that you overstuffed and then went into the bathroom to sneak more food.

Even if you did well over the long holiday weekend, you might still be wary of the holiday period to come, regardless of which holiday. After all, Thanksgiving lasts 4-5 days. Right now, you are looking at another 25 days.

Yikes!

The proposal presented two weeks ago in the Temptation of the Week was a bit radical and some could interpret in an anti-family, almost Scroogesque take on the holidays. If you took it literally and it worked for you so far, congratulations. The proposal was meant literally but also could be seen as metaphorical. You would still be surrounded by family, friends, and co-workers in candy cane sweaters, but you would be more in control of making good holiday eating decisions.

Or you could still eat what you want to eat, how much you want to eat, and still add 10% to your consumption just to spite the Balance of Food.

Holidays are a tricky time for a lot of reasons. Maybe you've been good for most of the fall in hopes of eating more in December. Maybe you don't get to see Grandma but this time of year and her homemade pecan pie is the best ever. Maybe you and your spouse are going through a rough patch, or maybe you are more alone than normal. Maybe an extra piece of or slice of will make a difference.

As much as we hope to have a sterile environment around this time of year to steer us away from holiday temptation, holidays involve real people doing real things with real holiday pressures. Sometimes as strong as we would like to think we are, we're only human. We strive to have well-behaved children, inferring that they may not be as well-rewarded if they don't behave. Sometimes children are children and we receive unprecedented joy from the experience. People being human.

This isn't to contradict what I wrote before Thanksgiving: I stand by every word. This week, we are presenting the other side: reality. Sometimes, success in the holiday season is a matter of doing the best you can while having some fun. Redefining what fun is can help you not go too far in the holiday season, but the holiday time is meant for fun, family, friends, and co-workers, though not always candy cane sweaters.