This time of year, the summer has left us, and winter makes its rapid approach. Leaves are beginning to turn colors. Pumpkin spice is being added to lattes. Spooky season is right around the corner. The kids are back in school, and things are starting to cool down.
For some of us, the Halloween season might as well be called Candy Season. At least, that’s how I used to look at it. Candy Season led up to Gluttony Season, otherwise known as Thanksgiving. Which then, of course, leads right to Charitable Season, or maybe, “Tons of Homemade Pies, Breads, & Cookies Season.” Our family called that Christmas Time, but families of all different traditions tend to be doing the same types of things right around the Winter Solstice.
Now I know, for me, candy snacking started before Halloween actually arrived. At first it was days before. Then half a month. Then it crept up to the point that October was official Candy Month, with a steady crescendo of candy consumption climaxing on Consume Mass Candy Day.
After Halloween there seem to be more and more backed goods showing up as we approach Thanksgiving. It’s almost like we just need pie in November. And then on the Big Day, OMG there’s SO MUCH FOOD! If you’re leaving Thanksgiving Dinner and you haven’t had to loosen your pants, you did it wrong.
I don’t know about your family, but it seems like in mine, once we got used to eating sugar, more sugar-containing foods started to hang around. Like between Halloween and Thanksgiving, if we weren’t baking pies or cookies, we were buying Oreos and Chips Ahoy.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we went through a lot of ice cream, pies, cakes, Entenmann’s-style coffee cakes and such.
And puddings! I can’t believe I almost forgot about pudding. My favorite was the stove-top kind where you had to cook it in a pot, then pour it into the “pudding glasses” then pop those into the fridge without spilling them.
I loved the chocolate flavor and that skin that would develop on top. 🤤Mmm… I might have to make some pudding now… Do you have pudding glasses? I honestly don’t know what the proper use for those glasses was. They were just perfect little single-serving size glasses that Mom always got out for pudding. 🤔Do I have pudding glasses?
After Christmas the sugar fest tended to continue through February, with Lesser Candy Day in the middle. Somehow the sugar train slowed itself down. By March, St Patrick’s Day was more about corned beef and cabbage and less about the sweets. From there sugary snacks started to wane.
But during that brief period of darkness, I would put on 10 to 15 pounds. And I know I’m not alone. That cycle, from late October through mid-March is when most of us tend to put on weight. It’s also, quite literally, the darkest part of the year.
It’s also the part of the year where nothing grows. We are biologically wired to want to put on some extra fat to get us through the darkness, so we’ll survive to see the next spring. The only problem with that is, we no longer live in a world that is season dependent.
Refrigeration is pretty new!
We can go to the supermarket and get fruit year-round. That’s a relatively new thing. Frigidaire released the first residential refrigerator in 1923! Before that, if you wanted to keep something cool, you needed ice.
Why do we have so many different traditions that all involve making fruit pies? Because our ancestors needed to do something with the harvest. Without refrigeration, fruits and vegetables don’t last very long. So, they canned what they could and cooked off the rest.
Perhaps uncoincidentally, we are also hard-wired to crave sugar. This is because in nature, sugary fruits tend to ripen in Fall, conveniently right before winter sets in. We crave the sugar because it’s a fleeting resource. We need to eat it to fatten ourselves up to prepare for the lean winter to come.
But again, we don’t live in a world where that cycle really matters any more. We have just as much access to food in winter as we do any other time of the year. Why then, do we continue to live as if we do?
More importantly, what can we do about it?
Are we destined to pack on 10-15 pounds each year just because we’re predisposed to it? No, of course not. Must we succumb to sugar’s siren call and eat it from Halloween through Valentines? No, but we absolutely will if we allow it.
Sugar is absolutely the hardest addiction to break. One reason being, it’s in everything.
Manufacturers can be sneaky!
Product makers know that people want to avoid sugar, so they often list it as other things. If you see dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose, or galactose, in the ingredients list, those are all different types of sugar.
Sometimes they try to give it the Health Halo of friendly-sounding names like: beet sugar, brown sugar, cane sugar, cane juice, (I love this next one) cane juice crystals (sugar!), coconut sugar, confectioner’s or powdered sugar, castor sugar, date sugar, grape sugar, golden sugar, demerara sugar, muscovado sugar, panela sugar, raw sugar, turbinado sugar, or yellow sugar. They might sound healthier, but they’re still sugar.
They might try to confuse you with names like: corn syrup solids, crystalline fructose, dextrin, ethyl maltol, diastatic malt, glucose syrup solids, icing sugar, Florida crystals, maltodextrin, or sucanat.
Or they might be using liquid sugars with names like: agave nectar or syrup, barley malt, blackstrap molasses, brown rice syrup, buttered sugar or buttercream, caramel, carob syrup, corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, fruit juice concentrate, golden syrup, high-fructose corn syrup or HFCS, invert sugar, malt syrup, maple syrup, molasses, rice syrup, refiner’s syrup, sorghum syrup, or treacle.
To your brain, all 54 of the things I just listed count as sugar and will make your brain prefer that product, because remember, we are hard-wired to seek sugar. As much as possible, avoid products with added sugar.
So how do you cut out sugar completely? You don’t. But, you do limit your intake of it.
For example, I love chocolate, but if I eat candy bars like I used to, I know what the result will be. I’ve seen that. I have evidence to support that. Instead then, I buy bags of little individually-wrapped dark chocolate pieces. Or, I buy a big dark chocolate bar. Not a candy bar, like a Mounds or Almond Joy Dark. I mean a solid bar of 60 – 92% cocoa. Dark and a bit bitter.
Dark chocolate is the way to go for two reasons. One, it’s actually a beneficial saturated fat is small quantities. And two, since it is a bit on the bitter side, we’re much less likely to mindlessly much away on it.
My other really big one was ice cream. I used to eat a huge bowl with at least four scoops of chocolate chip cookie dough or chocolate chip mint (sometimes two scoops of each), chocolate syrup, AND butterscotch syrup, topped with cool whip or Redi-whip spray.
Again, I know from experience what happens when I allow myself to do that regularly. I still have size 40 fat pants that I now use for yardwork with a belt cinched up so much it looks absurd. I keep them to remind me that at one point these were tight on me and I was contemplating moving up to 42’s.
So now my ice cream consumption is still daily. But I eat one or two little mini ice cream cones. Just enough to satisfy my sweet tooth. I do that so that on the rare occasion that we’re hanging out on the Bluff, I can have that Sundae at the Chocolate Café without worrying about it.
What about Thanksgiving, I know you’re wondering?
We did a whole Thanksgiving-themed blog post here: https://eclecticwell-being.com/tips-and-tricks-for-a-deliciously-healthy-thanksgiving/
The short story with Turkey Day is go ahead and indulge; but maybe don’t take a weeks’ worth of leftovers home (or give yours away if you host!) I’m still going to bake my cheese bread this year. And I’m going to really enjoy eating it. Once it’s gone though, I’m not baking anything else until Christmas rolls around.
For Christmas, we’ll probably bake some chocolate chip cookies and some kifli. Or kolaczki for the Polish side of the family. Whatever you call it, they’re those little powdered sugar covered white cookies and are typically filled with fruit preserves or nut butter. They’re good, but not something I could eat year-round.
Which works out well for our plan of only indulging a little bit around the holidays. Yes, I have been known to eat one slice of all four pies in one sitting before and I’ll happily do it again. (My stomach might not be so happy with me afterwards, and that is something else you’ll want to learn to listen to, but not in this article today.)
And that’s the key, right there.
We need to understand that as humans, we are wired to seek sugar and consume it, but we can control how much we ingest. We must be aware that we’re prone to packing on the pounds in winter and take active steps to avoid it.
One of those active steps should be getting in some exercise. We’re much more active in the bright, warmer months than we are in the cold, dark months. There’s simply more to do outside in the nice weather. Once things cool off, we don’t want to take our activity level down to: couch potato.
So there’s something you can do: Join a local gym. Go there and do something. Literally anything is better than laying on the couch in front of the tv. If you don’t know what to do, find a gym that offers instructor-led classes.
Getting healthy starts in your mind. You need to make a decision that this is something you want to do, and then start taking action on that decision. Life will never change otherwise.
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