We're Way Too Old to Salivate Like Pavlov's Dogs Just Because It's the Holidays
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
If holiday season makes you salivate for sugar, let’s talk
Dear Reader, a kind reminder that there is nothing in this article that isn’t directed at myself as much as it is anyone else. I know few who can abstain completely. However, our health may well depend on learning how to abstain more often, especially around the holidays.
This morning as I was sitting at a Starbucks a short while before my first of two physical therapy sessions, I got a new article from
wherein she discusses depression. More so, since she’s a nutritional expert, the role food has on depression.
I strongly recommend it, for this and this alone: what she says about sugar. There’s more, but I want to tease just that piece out.
The “loaded oatmeal” that I had just bought came with three sugar sources: brown cane sugar, agave (sugar in a Halloween outfit) and sugary dried fruit. I canned the first two, kept the fruit, the fresh blueberries and sprinkled some stevia.
It wasn’t just to reduce the calories. I’m trying hard to protect my aging brain.
I like my brain. Okay, what’s left of it after twenty-two concussions (not making that up).
Not only that. At this point you and I are way Too Old to keep giving ourselves full permission to be gluttonous to the detriment of our health, especially if we’re using the holidays as a handy excuse.
Halloween candy starts showing up on the shelves the weekend after July 4th. Damn. Six whole months to justify really bad food, because, well, it’s there.
That’s like the alcoholic who says, “It’s five o’clock somewhere right now.”
No wonder January is so rough on so many of us. Lots of practice putting on pounds leading up to and right through the holiday season.
While I was going through a very rough year of constant pain from surgeries, I loaded up on too many Snickers bars. Not only did my body pay for it, the combination of constant pain and the sugar load caused me to feel lousy.
Not just about my body but life in general, to which it is very tempting to respond with more sugar because, well, “we deserve a treat.” When we feel sorry for ourselves, and I did, dammit, we often do what our parents did: shut down the uglies with sweets.
That is so damned childish.
Now before you accuse me of being churlish, I’m directing that at myself. I did my aging body and brain no favors by loading up on Snickers bars when the rest of my cart at Kroger’s was full of blackberries, blueberries, salad mix, veggies and salmon.
Despite the other good choices, the Snickers did plenty of damage.
I know better. Hell, I write about this stuff.
I hadn’t realized just how much pain I was going to be in for more than a year. When I’m in trouble, if not careful, I feed my face, rather than read my books. Or, in all fairness, sometimes both.
For a writer, and for someone who cares about health like I do, such a side-swipe to my overall health wasn’t just humbling. It was an education in how easy it is to skew so far sideways from your best habits that it feels daunting to get back. It was daunting.
When we feed our bad moods with bad food- especially sugar- we invite the cycle to continue to spiral downwards.
That said, I was able to pull out of the spiral last June, to the delight of my grey matter and my Jamie Lee Curtis non-Hollywood body, and get back to work feeding myself the good stuff without blasting my person with ultra-processed candy.
It took a few months, but the pounds slid off in direct proportion to the quality of food I was choosing and the increase of activity.
Now, the holidays are nearly upon us.
Do I salivate at the idea of holiday food?
Of course I do. However. I also salivate freely when I leave the gym every morning.
Dizzy Donuts has a shop at the end of the strip, and they fry hot donuts right about the time I’m done with my dumbbells. On a foggy day like today, that fragrance hangs in the pre-dawn air and sets fishhooks in my cheeks, threatening to drag me bodily towards bodily damage.
You can track my erratic process across the parking lot by the drool. I jerk west toward’s Dizzy’s and then I jerk east when I come to my better senses.
Every single morning it’s a fight to reach my car and shut the door on the donut smell and get out of range.
I like my freedom. Freedom is earned. Freedom from my sugar Jones, which took me a long time to lasso the first time around, is hard-won. I have that freedom back. There’s nothing easy about constant vigilance.
Since you and I are surrounded by temptations everywhere this time of year, that unending cornucopia of crap, the question we get to answer is whether we own our sweet tooth (or other unhealthy foods), or does it own us?
If the latter, are we willing to deal with the costs of giving in to our cravings?
Or are we strictly at the mercy of our urges, the same way social media notifications have trained us to salivate for the dopamine of that ding?
That’s expensive to our brains, too. That’s another topic but it’s the same idea. You get it.
You and I are way Too Old to be led around by a sugar Jones when I know what it does to my brain, my body and my overall fitness.
We are also way Too Old to be led around by the lure of the notification, which in most cases is a random scam intent on separating us from our savings.
I’ll be returning to this theme again and again:
We get nothing in life for free.
The healthy body, the fitness, the crisp and functioning brain, the options as we age. We pay for them with some kind of sacrifice. We give up something to get something. If we want that finely-tuned, well-functioning body, we have to give up something else.
Perhaps a lot of things, such as our laziness, our bad habits and giving in to our cravings as though we were still kids.
Only we can decide if the sacrifice is worth it.
The smells of the holidays are full of memories. For those of us past sixty, the indulgences of the holidays also need to mostly be memories. You and I can better manage our way through this season with respect for ourselves, and reach January 1st without guilt.
One bite, one small taste won’t hurt. Let’s just not eat the entire basket of home made Toll House traditional chocolate chip with pecans (I’ve done it and then some) this year.
That’s a holiday gift worth celebrating.
Yeah, so now you really want to head to Krispy Kreme. Me too. However, let’s not. If this article gave you reason to better handle the season, and it worked for you, please consider:
If you have people in your life who can use this kind of information, kindly also consider
Either way thank you for the gift of your time. I wish you the best of all health, the richness of humor and all the things to make life worth living.
What a cheap trick putting a donut shop so close to the gym though!
My struggle is mostly salty, crunchy treats. But almost always, after dinner I CRAVE one tiny sweet bite of something and its a bitch to avoid. I used to keep bags of Maynards Swedish berries in the house and pop just one after a meal. But JUST one is difficult to maintain when there's a whole bag.
I had an a-ha moment reading an interview with a bodybuilder who said she ate a Snickers before her workouts. She uses it. Am I going to use it? That idea was helpful to me.