When Christmas Day is Monday, and you’ve been traveling all week, Tuesday morning and the realization you need a new post to keep up with your self-imposed schedule creeps up on you awfully fast. We were putting some of the final touches on Christmas dinner (prime rib, twice baked potatoes, pop-overs, and cauliflower & broccoli salad) when it occurred to me that it was Monday evening. Holy Smokes! I hadn’t given any thought at all to a post for the next morning.
We are celebrating Christmas with Lynn and Dave (Randy’s 10-month younger sister and her husband). If you are regular readers, you already know they are not only family, but our best friends. We made an attempt to include Randy & Lynn’s youngest brother Mark who also lives here at the Lake in our Christmas activities. Lynn talked to him and he said he was coming on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, showed up on neither day. I guess someone needs to knock on his door on Tuesday and see what’s up with him.
We drove rather than flew up to the Lake of the Ozarks. We made a big deal of telling each other that our presence is our presents to each other. Since we arrived on Saturday, we’ve had a whirlwind of catching up, eating, settling in to spend 10 days together, watching Packers football (on NFL+ replay with plenty of technical problems), planning what else we’re going to do while we’re here, and just enjoying being together. And eating. Did I mention eating? We’re eating. A lot. And a lot of what we’re eating is nothing but junk. We seem to be good at restraining ourselves for Valentines Day, Easter, and Halloween, but the holiday season is the greatest junk eating mine field of our year.
When we decided to come up to Missouri for Christmas, we planned to stop to see some treasured family with kids on the way. I can count on a few fingers the number of times I made holiday candy and cookies over the last 20 years, but because kids were involved this year, I wanted to put together some goodie bags to give them. I spent three full days in the kitchen. Lordy, my back and feet ached but I probably had 20 pounds of sugary treats to give as gifts. And eat. Ugh. Because of course I made all of Randy’s and my favorites.
I am such an idiot.
Since we left on the cruise the Saturday after Thanksgiving, our entire eating routine has been upended. Randy and I planned to jump right back on the healthier eating wagon (intermittent fasting, very little sugar, and low carbs) after the cruise. But as soon as we decided to drive to Missouri for the holidays that plan completely fell apart. And I ain’t gonna lie. I feel, physically, exactly how badly that plan fell apart. In a very crappy way.
It’s amazing how much intermittent fasting, very little sugar, and low carbs makes a difference in the way our bodies feel. It’s not just our weight that’s creeping up. We feel bloated, lethargic, achy, tired, have gastrointestinal issues, are mentally foggy, and generally feel like crap. Knowing what we know now, I’m fairly certain the cause of all those things is inflammation flaring up inside us. Inflammation is the source of so many health problems that finding successful ways this past year to reduce it has been a god-send. Yet, here we are, almost right back to the beginning again, feeling lousy because of our eating choices.
The good news is we know so much more about our bodies than we did a year ago when I got that breast cancer diagnosis at the end of January. We know how, and are much more motivated, to make course corrections and get back on the road to feeling good again. When we do that, I have no doubt we’ll start feeling much better within a week or so and will lose the weight we gained these last 6 weeks within a couple of months. Why does it always take longer to lose it than it takes to gain it? That, in my opinion, is one of the great mysteries of life.
We’ve learned this last year about how our bodies really work, and how the medical profession doesn’t know or recommend everything that’s necessarily good for us. I can honestly say this may be the first time I’ve ever understood it from a broader viewpoint than just losing weight. That’s pretty revelatory since I’m going to be 70 years old in a few months, but hey…you never stop learning, right? Sometimes it just takes a while to understand the complete implication of what you think you know.
I promise to update you on how we’re doing getting back on the wagon in about 30, and then 60 days. I’ll be brutally honest about our results, because it may make a difference to some of you to know how what you eat can make such a huge physical difference even if your weight is not affected very much.
I pray you all had a Merry Christmas. And I wish you a very Happy New Year. As I wrote last year, New Year’s Day is probably my absolute favorite holiday of the year seeing as how it’s all about new beginnings.
Do new beginnings excite you? What are your plans for the new year?
P.S. Dang! It’s cold here in Missouri.
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