Calorie Fretting

As the holiday season comes rolling around, we start to see a lot of blog articles about how to not ruin our diet during the holiday dinners or parties that are filled with decadent, calorie-laden dishes. Most of these articles tell us to eat an alternative to the usual holiday dish. For example, instead of eating mashed potatoes, we could eat a baked potato. Or, they tell us to plan a morning workout after the splurge to make ourselves feel less guilty. Now, all of this advice helps us become healthier and be more aware of what we put in our bodies during the times when we might “let ourselves go.” But do you ever think that we spend a lot of time thinking about these things? In other words, we are always thinking about calories.

Where should be the limit to our thoughts about our calorie and fat intake? It wouldn’t be very smart to not think about our bodies if we want to be healthy, but our lives might be less stressful if we did not think so much about the amount of calories in our food or what it might do to our waistline. When I am picking out bread, (yes, it’s not even dessert we are talking about here. And I only look at whole wheat or multigrain), I actually compare the same types of bread from different brands to choose the one with fewer calories. And the calorie difference is only about twenty. Even when all of my options are healthy, I still obsess over the amount of calories that they have. I do this all the time, and as I am writing this blog entry, I am starting to feel a bit pathetic. But I know that I will do the same thing again the next time I go grocery shopping.

This is starting to sound like a mental disorder. The media is full of articles about how to reduce as much fat or calories from our diet for not just a healthy body, but also for that wonderfully thin one. Whereas such articles are informative and helpful when we choose food that will nourish our bodies in a healthy way, they pressure us to be always thinking about calories and fat. Having these thoughts in our head is another type of stress, another type of worry about making the right decisions. Eating becomes less of a joy and more of an act to shape our body in a certain way, an act that requires us to fret over our upcoming holiday dinner or last night’s sugary midnight snack.

How about we retrieve the time we spend on thinking about our calories and put it to another use? Perhaps, some creative thoughts, some thoughts of generosity and good will, or some thoughts of optimism that will make us get a stronger grip on the tenuous ground on which we walk. Our lives are already full of apprehensions, anxiety, and difficult decisions and plans to make. It would be wonderful to not fret about calories so much, but instead, spend more time on making our lives as enjoyable and productive as possible.