It’s the Fourth of July and right about now is the time you start to see these annoying Holiday/Barbeque healthy eating tips. You know the drill; avoid chips and dip, diet soda and lite beer, don’t eat buns with your hot dogs and hamburgers, avoid pasta and potato salads especially those made with real mayonnaise. Screw that!
The holidays, any holiday, is a friggin’ terrible time to start a diet or practice the food avoidance philosophy. Don’t try to prove anything to yourself, or to anyone, by making this ill-fated and counter-productive effort to avoid the foods that you love. The holidays involve parties that feature foods that we enjoy, and should eat on during these occasions.
The Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, Pasech, birthdays and anniversaries are all times to have fun and eat the foods you love. Have a drink, eat some cake, kill some cookies, eat a double cheese burger off the grill. Whatever.
If you have been eating this stuff all year round, then depriving yourself on the days everyone else is eating them, you aren’t accomplishing anything. Use the Fourth of July, or any of these other holidays, as a way to mark the end of an era. On the fifth of July, or the Friday after Thanksgiving or the 26th of December, make the changes you feel you need to make. But not on the day when everyone else is enjoying themselves.
Stop demonizing foods.
And if you practice moderation, use the holiday barbeque as a way to let go and take a break from your routine. One day is not going to have a detrimental effect. Don’t fall prey to the so-called diet/health gurus who want to make people feel badly about eating the foods they enjoy.
Okay, I gotta go. The sausage is ready to come off the grill. Happy Fourth of July!
