Three Reasons To Not Wait Until 2018 To Call Me

Part 2 of 3

Last week, my book “Why Can’t I Stick To My Diet” was launched and on the Red Carpet I was asked a question I often get this time of year “Should I even bother trying to get healthy during the Holidays or wait until after New Years?”.

Let’s take a closer look at one of the three reasons why this isn’t as simple as it might appear from the outside.

The War of the Cranberry Sauces

I want you to think back to cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving in your home growing up. How did it look? Smell? Taste? Was it in a can? Or was it prepared from scratch? Somewhere in between?

To give you some background, my Grandmother would buy the bag of Ocean Spray fresh cranberries from the produce section of my local Albertson’s and boil them Thanksgiving morning. Then about a cup of sugar was added, lemon zest and cinnamon.

My husband’s family got out the can opener.

The reason I picked cranberry sauce is because it can be a lightning rod in many relationships for what is wrong with the in-laws. The turkey preparation is pretty routine and that most of them end up dry as dirt. Cranberry sauce gets a lot of people very worked up.

The emotional attachment we have to our Food is strong in general but particularly for Thanksgiving dinner. The food must be right. At our house, after 15 years of marriage, the solution I came up with is rather simple: we have two types of cranberry sauce.

What if you had to eat a dry chicken breast and braised kale on Thanksgiving in front of your family? During this time they would be eating the meal you wanted to eat. This would probably bring up a lot of resentment, resistance, and even anger. It could be directed at your family, the male patriarchy, society, Me… This is why I do not ask or recommend such a course of action to my clients. I want you to be a part of your family celebration, no matter how many cranberry sauces you have on your table.

Keeping in mind the pursuit of health doesn’t take holidays, I do recommend being ok with a sum neutral meal. 93% of the time you do not have pecan pie at dinner, but on Thanksgiving, you might, that is ok. Someone else might choose to have a cornbread stuffing, that is also ok. It is all ok if we have a strategy going into the day. I will walk you through how to make your own plan of attack starting on Saturday.