Have Your Cake and Eat it Two or Three.

The holidays are just around the corner and soon it will be time to feast our fannies off and enjoy the bounty of the harvest. Along with that come the extra calories that all the holiday eating can bring. Now unless you're 10 years old or a super model you probably could do without the extra 5 pounds or so that one typically puts on during this time.

It’s pretty hard though to pass up the tray of Swedish meatballs being passed around at the office party or go for the celery sticks instead of dipping taco chips into the spinach and artichoke dip! Yummy stuff and looks great on the buffet table but not necessarily attractive when it all ends up on your derriere!

So how does one forgo fruitcake for carrot sticks, eggnog for seltzer?

In an attempt to know exactly what I am doing battle with, I looked up the calorie content of some fattening fare of the holidays in hopes that it would motivate me to watch what I eat. My favorite, sausage stuffing with apples is 345 calories a serving while the delectable candied yams; a staple at our house on Thanksgiving, is a whopping 400 calories a serving. Just forget about putting cranberry sauce on your turkey because that will send your blood sugar sky high with 105 grams of sugar per serving and Aunt Charloettes’ fruitcake that has been circling the globe for the last 30 years, well that has 707 calories a slice!

The thought of me hovering in a corner at a holiday party, drinking a non-alcoholic beverage sweetened with Stevia, while munching in misery on raw cauliflower is frightening.

Perhaps if I eat what I usually consume during the holidays then vow on New Year’s Eve to exercise my tail off, it will negate all the goodies! Yeah but then we know how New Year’s resolutions end up. We all have good intentions that seem to wane around mid-January! Maybe I can rig my scale and set it back five pounds or cover all the mirrors. Though your jeans never lie, try getting into your snuggest pair right after Christmas. You practically need to call 911 to send over the SWAT team to help you get the zipper up.

Guess I will just eat with my usual holiday gusto and hope for the best. The startling fact is if I gain 5 pounds after the holidays every year and if I am lucky enough to have 30 more years of holidays to go that’s 150 pounds! I suppose I will be the hit of the Senior Center, playing a very full figured Mrs. Claus by then! “..and it shook when she laughed like a bowl full of jelly at 80 calories per teaspoon!” Oh my!