A Chic Paris Holiday Season – Day 18 – Christmas Day Food Rehearsal

 December 20, 2020

Yesterday, I wrote about “Conversational Decorum” – how to enjoy social conversation showing thoughtfulness to others and consideration for ourselves. We can do this by using a mental practice session and prepared stock phrases to handle probable trouble areas/people. Today’s topic is along the same lines – using a mental practice session – but focused on how we want to feel around the holiday buffet.

Fiona Ferris writes about her experiences with different approaches to food in her book, A Chic and Simple Christmas. My own holiday food experiences are very similar to hers. I love sweets and appetizers and have, in the past, thrown myself giddily into the trough of holiday foods. Of course, I feel faintly sick only an hour or so later and am not able to really enjoy the actual meal or even the rest of the evening.  I have learned (and relearned) that I am much happier when I have a small “rule set” already developed and spoken out loud to myself (yes, I actually say the shortlist of “rules” out loud to myself the morning of the event!) I wrote about trying the approach here.

I no longer use an accountability partner (but maybe I will for another upcoming event). Usually, if I give myself a mental “briefing” the morning of, I find that I am both more relaxed about food and I make much better choices. And the idea is that the holiday and getting together with loved ones is supposed to be fun. Let’s not send ourselves into a stressed-out, junk-food guzzling tizzy and then finish the day feeling nauseous, guilty, and wondering what happened to us.

This holiday season (so far), I have enjoyed a few holiday treats and also kept to my normal (pretty healthy) eating approach. That is success in my book. My mental image of holiday food success is to arrive at New Year’s day feeling vibrant, energetic, and weighing about what I started out weighing on November 15 (before Thanksgiving.)  This is a pretty lofty goal considering that I have many great cooks in my family.

My other big challenge is that I love desserts. Love, them, love them, love them. I would much rather skip the main course and just have appetizers and dessert for any meal.  Sadly, the idea of “chic elegance” (and common sense) and the image of someone diving into the cheese straws and sticky buns, crumbs a-flying, do NOT go together.

I classify the holiday food challenge as “Food Decorum.” How do I behave around food during the holiday season?  It’s an on-going challenge. Each holiday season seems to bring its own challenges and stresses. I like Fiona’s approach to “make a plan and follow it.” She accomplishes this  by getting enough sleep and by having a few ready-made meals stashed in the freezer for busy days – no need to run through the drive-in or do a “take-away” meal. Another success tactic is to keep healthy food (like salad stuff if you like salad, which I do) on hand and to keep sweets and junky food OUT. (Gretchen Rubin has some really good chapters about how to “make it easy to do good” and “difficult to do bad” in her book Better Than Before – What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits.) The final pole in this support strcture is the “holiday meal plan/rule set.” This is where we intentionally decide how we want to approach the food on the big feast day to ensure that our holiday experience is full of joy, calm and good health. Then, with our plan already decided, we follow the plan. No last minute decisions required. One hint: it will be much easier to honor our health values if we make sure to avoid areas of temptation (which, for me, is the dessert buffet.)

I wish us all good luck in enjoying the fruits of the season AND living true to our chic health values!