When I was a child, Christmas morning was the big time of celebration.
Getting up and gathering around the tree and exchanging gifts.
Then on Christmas afternoon came the big Christmas dinner.

My current husband's family had their big Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve.
First they had a big Christmas eve dinner,
after dinner the family gathered around the tree and exchanged gifts.

When the two of us became a family, each of us brought our own ideas
about the timing of the big meal and the exchange of gifts.
Our compromise turned out to be opening the gifts on Christmas eve,
and a big dinner around 1 p.m. on Christmas Day.

So for us, Christmas begins the morning of Christmas Eve,
and ends at bedtime Christmas Day.
Two days of extended eating….snacking all day Christmas eve
….and snacking and overeating all day on Christmas.
Because to me….FOOD….is celebration.

There are many esoteric arguments about WHY this shouldn't be the case,
and HOW this needn't be the case,
but on this point, raw instinct prevails,
and in FACT, it IS the case.

So….it is up to me to deal with it.

Again

Today is December 23.
Tomorrow is December 24.
The day after is December 25.

So…..it goes.

                       

Moderation means being within reasonable limits; 
avoidance of excesses or extremes.
This concept is a large part of a my dieting hobby,
and it is important for any type of dieting lifestyle.

Even if I've chosen to eliminate specific foods from my life,
many tasty foods remain to tempt me to eat more than my body needs.

For me the most important (and difficult) thing about holiday eating 
is to keep away from the "all or nothing" mindset. 
I need to make intentional food choices, and eat mindfully.

During Holiday celebrations, I work to prioritize the treats I'm going to choose,
I look everything over first and pick the things that look good to me.,
and work to eat those things in moderation. 

Mostly, I choose to leave behind foods, like chips and dips, 
that are available anytime during the year.

I find that it is important for me to be realistic.
Depriving myself of special holiday foods,
or feeling guilty when I choose to enjoy them
isn't going to help me maintain my weight-loss long-term.

I'm not going to lose weight during the holidays.
For me that is a self-defeating goal,
But I need to work to maintain my weight 
by balancing Holiday food with other meals.

It is a week before Christmas.
Even if we are frustrated with all the holiday goodies 
and scared to get on the scale,
……………..(go weigh yourself right now)……
the good news is there still is time to get things under control 
and enjoy the season in moderation.

It’s never too late.
When it comes to a dieting lifestyle, 
every day is a new day.
 
For those of you who are following my “Ask Grandma” video series

Click : “Friendly Flirting" to see my latest video,

which is located in DietHobby under RESOURCES, Videos, Ask Grandma.

This is a picture of one serving of food from my new cooking video,
Pot Roast
which is located at DietHobby, under RECIPES,  Mealtime.

 
As strange as it may seem
to those of us who suffer from easy weight-gain,
there are those people who have the opposite issue.

Below I share an edited request that I received 
from a young person who has that problem,
along with my response.

"I would like some good tips on how to gain weight. 
I'm "the skinny one" and sometimes get made fun of.
I go to fast food places and put lots of butter in my food
but it doesn't do much...also..do you know of any kind of food
that makes you have an appetite and makes you eat more?
because i lose my appetite easily for some reason"

Your genetics is probably the reason you are thin.

Your body could be extra efficient at burning calories,
which in our modern society of too much fattening food around us,
is a really good thing. 

Many people are very envious of that quality,
and wish that they had it themselves,
this is probably why they make negative comments about it. 

It is probably a bad idea to purposely try to gain weight.
First, because your body is really efficient,
it knows what it needs.

Unfortunately, the plan I suggest that you use doesn't work for fat people,
but in your personal case, if you make certain to eat around 40 grams
of proteins, or more, every day like meat, chicken, fish, eggs, and cheese,
your body will tell you how much of the other kinds of foods to eat along with it. 

The other reason it's a bad idea to TRY to gain weight,
is that you can't choose WHERE on your body that this fat will go.
Genetics also controls that, and all of those marketing claims
about exercising to put weight on or take it off only in certain spots are total lies.
So the fat could go right to your belly, or to your waist or thighs,
instead of being distributed in a way that you would find attractive. 

Finally, you are very young, and time seems to take care of extreme thinness.
..even when we wish that it would not.
There are many older overweight people
who were very thin as children, teenagers, or young adults. 

This week I posted another new cooking video, Chicken Crepes
which is located at DietHobby, under RECIPES, Mini-Meals

 My DietHobby, YouYube channel,
now has more than 2,300 subscribers.

My current video schedule is:

Every Friday, a new "Ask Grandma" video;
Every Sunday, a new "Recipe" video;
Every Tuesday and Wednesday, are new "Words of Wisdom" videos.  

I'm still a bit overwhelmed at all the work that this website's companion, 
the YouTube DietHobby channel, is taking.
I've been spending hours every single day
planning, and shooting, and editing, and uploading videos;
plus commenting and responding to comments and messages there.

This leaves me less time to write articles here,
so, if you feel you aren't getting enough of me here,
 
Click this link, DietHobby on YouTube, and go there.