pick yourself up, dust yourself off ...

Despite the excellent example of strength shown us by Karen and Gwen (etc) i'm sure a lot of people get sloppy about dietary compliance this time of year.  I know I have!  But if we each know our limitations it doesn't have to be catastrophic failure time.

With the backyard project being so expensive, J and I have been gift-giving in a retro kind of way this year.  I have some KILLER seasonal treat recipes that family and friends love, and as most of them are NOT low-carbers I have been baking, confecting, and mailing my little heart out this year.  J learned how to use my 20-year-old electric cookie-press very well, and it's not the easiest trick to make them come out right.  :-)  I still have more toffee, cookies and other favorites to make for local consumption, but the out-of-towners are accounted for....

OF COURSE we had to taste each item -- quality control, you know!  And though i'm not prone to triggering very badly, I know that the more carbs I eat the more I want.  To quote Barney Fife, "you have to nip it in the bud!"  ;-)  I knew I dared tasting, but I also know the temptation pattern, and I was ready for it.  What could have been a slippery slope isn't going to be allowed to progress that way.

 We each have to know our own psychology as well as physiology.  People who are prone to feeling left out or deprived, when they forgo the pleasures of the people around them, HAVE to know the best path to take so as not to hate themselves later.  The world hates on overweight middle-aged people enough, without us doing the job for them!  Some of us just need legal treats, and others do best remaining adamant against any disruption of a diet they KNOW suits them well.

Whichever you are, good luck and enjoy!  But if you slip ANYWAY (or if you "sin" with your eyes open as I did at the "Holiday on the Hill" last week) it's not the end of the world.  I've even found that ONE small cheat can shake up my system in a good way -- it seems to make my body "have to think instead of running on autopilot."  Bodies love homeostasis, and when I surprise mine with a radically different input, it seems to scramble to adapt.  I've even tricked it into breaking a weight-loss plateau this way.

Where some dieters make their mistake, though, is in shrugging and saying to themselves, "well, I blew it!  I might as well keep indulging till New Year's" ... or worse still "hey, I ate THAT and didn't have any bad effect -- I might as well do it all the time!" 

Big, BIG mistake.

Stop and remember how fabulous you felt when you were on a ketotic roll!  Stop and experience in memory how horrible it was when you were eating the SAD -- the dragginess, the body-aches, the bloat and inflammation, the stuffy sinuses....  YES, those all come (for me) from eating excess carbohydrates -- even the "paleo-approved" kind!

Today is a cleansing day for me -- and I don't mean some stupid new-age protocol featuring juices, herbs or antioxidants!  Our bodies are designed to cleanse themselves, through autophagy and the types of food that make our livers happy -- high-nutrient, low-fructose, low-alcohol, low-polyunsaturate. 

If you fall off a horse, the best thing is to get up and climb back on.  Same thing applies when it comes to falling off wagons.