I am writing this entry in the middle of October: Beautiful fall weather, playoff baseball, college and pro football at full steam…a great time of year. From a weight control standpoint this should NOT be a challenging time. The Columbus Day holiday is not certainly known for being an eating and drinking fest. The summer vacations are now over. So, this is a much less challenging “weight loss time” than other times of the year.
We are about ready to head into the Halloween through New Year’s 9 or se week period. This is the very most challenging “weight loss time” of the year. We morph from the post-Halloween candy to the Thanksgiving feast and left overs to the Christmas gatherings and then New Year’s parties. LOTS of opportunities for sugars, carbs, alcohol, etc.
We will always be faced with certain seasonal challenges when it comes to shedding weight. The best way of approaching this is:
- Try to mitigate the “damages” of those challenging times. Get rid of the candy, limit yourself to tasting plates of the weight-increasing Thanksgiving foods and limit the alcohol usage
- “Make hay when the sun shines”, i.e. during the less seasonal challenging times (like for the next several weeks) be EXTRA vigilant and focused on your high protein/low carb/low sugar/low alcohol dietary approach.
- Always keep at the forefront of your mind the reasons why you want/need to lose the weight. Giving up immediate gratification (food/drinks) for long term gratification (looking younger, feeling better) is not easy so we do need to always remember the reasons why it is so important for us to shed the weight.
The impact of seasonal challenges can be quite deleterious to our long-term weight control efforts. However, these challenges are NOT insurmountable and we can overcome!
And speaking of seasons, here are the 4 Seasons (not the current one with a 90 year old Frankie Valli lip synching )
