A battle of the mind

CarolinaSweetheart93
CarolinaSweetheart93 Posts: 7 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm having a hard time with Christmas coming up. I have the 20th through 25th off work and my kids will be on winter break. Every year we bake and decorate cookies for Santa Clause and I want to be able to enjoy that with them. Idk what to do. I want to enjoy my time with them but I also don't want to feel guilty if I eat one or two cookies.

Replies

  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,324 Member
    do what you must. If you binge eat cookies.. then don't decorate them this year.. decorate a gingerbread house. one of the those awful hard as a rock pre fab kits you buy at a store. That way you have the fun and tradition of decorating something ..without eating or binging.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    If you literally mean "one or two cookies" then your issue might be that you are very rigid about dieting and would benefit from relaxing a bit.

    If your "one or two cookies" is a slippery slope, I can relate! Please advise and we can strategize for that. I find it helpful to have had plenty of protein and fiber before I start on high carb & fat foods like cookies. Otherwise, and especially if I am hungry, I can eat and eat and eat and never feel satisfied.
  • mookybargirl
    mookybargirl Posts: 165 Member
    If I have challenges like this, I pre log my meals. Add the cookies, add your meals for the days and make it fit. See what you’ve got to work with. Those cookies taste so much better knowing you’ve enjoyed them and stayed within the goal you set.
    If it leads to uncontrolled cookie binge and I’ve been there, try not to let it throw your whole 5 days out the window of eating everything. You can be in control and eat the cookies. Even a whole batch of cookies won’t matter in the long term as long as you find your way back to your deficit goals. But 5 full days of eating anything and everything gives you a little damage to deal with :)
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    edited December 2021
    If you really do mean a couple of cookies, then I don't see the issue. If it's too hard for you to see cookies as normal food, deconstruct them in your head. They're basically flour (the stuff in bread, including diet bread and diet cereals), sugar (the stuff in many foods like fruits, beets, milk, BBQ sauce...etc), eggs (well, they're eggs), and butter (the stuff you add to salmon and many other dishes you see as "healthy").

    Some foods have a "villain" aura because the diet culture deemed them scary, but in reality, they're just food. Some are less nutritious, but that doesn't mean they will somehow remove all the other nutrients in your overall diet. Some are more calorie-dense, but that simply means you need to be careful with the amount (FWIW, nuts are more calorie-dense than cookies).

    A couple of cookies is a drop in the bucket. You don't gain weight by eating a couple of cookies. You gain weight by consistently eating more than your body burns, whether that includes cookies or not, and you lose weight by consistently eating fewer calories than you burn, whether that includes cookies or not. The keyword here is consistently.

    Even if you do overeat those cookies, the occasional overeating or undereating means nothing in the grand scheme of things if you're not overeating/undereating consistently. Gained a pound during the holidays (ate over your maintenance by a total of about 3500 or so calories)? Big deal, it will be gone in a couple of weeks or less when you're back to dieting. This isn't consistent enough of a change in calorie balance unless the overeating drags on for weeks/months/years.
  • metaphysicalstudio
    metaphysicalstudio Posts: 293 Member
    You are not alone! I also feel some stress around the food of the holidays. Some good advice here. I just wanted to offer some support!
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    A couple of cookies is pretty immaterial to your diet on the whole. I think you need to figure out a way to put aside this notion of good food/bad food. Frankly, I don't try to lose weight over the holiday season. I don't go off the rails or anything, but I do take a month from Thanksgiving through the New Year to just relax and enjoy spending time with my family and making holiday memories.

    It's no big deal and generally I come out of the holiday season ready to hit the ground running and in a better mental position for tackling my training and my nutrition. My cycling season starts in April/May so that means I pretty much have to commence training starting January 2. I also get my nutrition in order and also do dry January. I typically will lop off whatever weight I put on over the last few months of the year by the time April rolls around...May at the latest.

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