Good grief, I’ve been eating in the Wide Eyed way for almost 13 years.
So, you’d think that when it comes to eating over the Christmas period I would have it sussed.
But that’s not the case.
As I tell my clients, just because you have the tools and information doesn’t mean you’ll always follow it.
In fact, it will remain an ongoing experiment for the rest of your life.
And you get to choose if and when you use the information or ignore it entirely every now and then!
For one thing our bodies are constantly changing. Plus our circumstances are evolving too.
Stress levels go up and down. Social situations come and go and sticking rigidly to times and food types is an impossibility, not to mention making for a boring life.
You need leeway to live life your way.
And you won’t have the freedom to choose if you don’t know the options exist in the first place.
2024 was my 12th Christmas since discovering that food determines whether you feel good or not.
And despite having the knowledge of what is best to eat at Christmas, I’d ignored it on 11 previous occasions to my detriment.
Two consecutive Christmases’ (2019 and 2020) gave me severe perimenopause symptoms and I still didn’t learn from them!
But I set out to rectify my mistakes pre Christmas 2024 once and for all.
I chose to have a little too much to drink. I chose to consume sugary desserts. And I wanted to eat gluten at some point so that I’d get to enjoy panettone bread and butter pudding (my daughter’s annual speciality).
But the thing I planned and stuck to was that I would not eat anything else that was processed.
The desserts were all homemade and gluten free (apart from one).
Not one of the nibbles was processed party food.
And I only had one day of gluten containing foods for the afore mentioned panettone bread and butter pudding and a couple of slices of sourdough toast.
This was a massive milestone for me as I would usually have gone all-in on eating the junk that the rest of my family stock the cupboards with around this time of year.
And I was rewarded with being able to swerve any aftereffects (headaches and cravings) and slip straight back into my regular routine of varied fasting and eating full fat whole foods.
You see, it’s not about sticking to a set of rules, it’s about enjoying life by choosing foods that won’t impact the feel-good factor come January.
Eating in the Wide Eyed way is not about never eating certain foods ever again.
It’s about choosing if and when you’ll eat them.
If we all stuck to overindulging at Easter and Christmas plus whilst on holiday our collective health wouldn’t be in the state it currently is.
Overindulgence every day of the year is actively encouraged by the supermarkets.
We get to choose a different path.
