Tis the season to overindulge

As I write this, I am eating a dried cranberry and white chocolate chip cookie my daughter baked last night.  (It does have rolled oats, but I don’t think I get any points for that given the sugar/ butter/ white flour trifecta.)  Yesterday, in between mindfully healthy meals that included an admirable array of yummy superfoods , I found myself (unmindfully) eating hunks of Panettone , a traditional Italian Christmas sweet bread/ cake.

‘Tis the season…right.  I get that.  But I don’t understand why “enjoying the holidays” is synonymous (for me, apparently, as well as for millions of others) with sugar, butter and white flour. Last month I wrote about the amazing anti-aging qualities of the traditional Thanksgiving meal.  It’s harder to make the case for the Christmas season, with its emphasis on cookies, cakes and sweets.

If it were only as easy as sticking to the “everything in moderation” mantra.  But moderation and home-made brownies drizzled with melted dark chocolate don’t really go together. Or am I missing something here?  Is there someone out there who really can just eat just one almond/ raspberry thumb-print cookie (also baked by my daughter last night) or “take a few bites” of the aforementioned brownie?  If there is, don’t write in with a comment because I will not post it.  I will probably be too busy eating a lemon bar.  Also: I hate you.

If it were only this end-of-year Sugar Fest, I think we — and by “we” I mean overfat, undernourished North Americans — could handle it (and not be overfat and undernourished). Our amazing, forgiving bodies would forgive us. Especially if we lived active, counterclockwise lifestyles and, except for holiday overindulgences, ate to fuel our amazing bodies.  But many of us don’t.  Too many of us don’t.

Yes, we are wired to love and crave fat and sugar, our biochemistry not having caught up with the fact that we don’t have to hunt and gather anymore.  And we are surrounded by cues to consume.  Not just at holiday times, but every day.  Suppose we instead surround ourselves with cues to live well and live healthy?  That’s going against the tide.  But the vigorous swim is worth it, don’t you think?