My holiday season resolution - so easy a cave man can do it.

Holiday season is the worst time of the year for me. No, I am not a cynic, scrooge like person who hates holidays and the merriment that goes around in the society. But it is that part of year where I indulge myself in freeloading myself with junk. The fact that these junkies are right there in front of you and that they are free only makes it that much easier. If they are not in the work kitchen, they appear in the form of the multiple holiday lunch/dinner invitations you get to attend as part of work and social invitations. I don't mind an occasional indulgence, but these multiple indulgence opportunities are packed so close to one another within a short period of time of about six to seven weeks, that I end up causing increased burden on my scale. This burden on my scale causes guilt that takes the next six, seven months or even longer life style changes to lose those pounds off. I managed to lose those pounds off so far but they have long term repercussions, like increase in cholesterol etc and slowing metabolism with age only increases the difficulty of losing them.

This holiday season I decided to stay away from junk food. But junk food is a very generic term. I have become a fan of checklists recently. The checklist bug bit me via Atul Gawande's article in New Yorker titled well - The Checklist. So I made a checklist of items to make my resolution concrete and this list is as follows.
1. Cookies
2. Brownies
3. Fudges
4. Donuts
5. Muffins
6. Chocolates
7. Cakes
8. Candies
9. Dressings on Salads
10.Pop Corn

For a sweet toothed weak willed human like me, the list appeared like I was David going against Goliath. Having made up my mind I carried the list safely in my pocket where ever I went lest I forget what was on the list that I was to not eat. Mind you that this list was only meant for work and social gatherings, and not for food at home though I gave strict instructions to my wife to not bake any cakes or pies during this period. While I had defined the list so clearly, the other parameter that needed definition was the duration itself. The period was to start from 11/23/2009 to 1/10/2010. The begin date is a Monday on the week of the Thanksgiving holiday and the end date is my own arbitrary date as when the holidays goodies will stop showing up at work by the fairy from the sugar land. That's a total of 49 days and I was confident I could hold my resolve.

I prepared myself for the battle that was to come with Goliath(s).
Week One: Goliath did not show up. I win this round.
Week Two: Looks like Goliath is hiding. He is coming anytime soon. May be next week. Two down and Five to go.
Week Three: Time of reckoning. The event was a department lunch. There were many of the items on the list that I made up earlier, but in far fewer forms compared to last year. I stayed away from all the distractions that appeared on the lunch table. A colleague of mine came over to talk to me and said that she made the lemon seven-up cake that I liked. During a previous team lunch, I had really liked the cake. If I like something I go overboard with the compliments. So she said she thought about making some cookies, but remembered how much I and others had liked the Lemon Seven-Up cake and decided to bake the cake instead. Now I could say no. I took a piece of the delicious cake, partly due to my weakness for this cake and partly due to my desire to be nice.
Week Four: After my broken resolve during Week Four, I decided to change the rules a little bit. I took the baseball analogy 'Three strikes and you are out' - I allowed myself three infringements during this period. I had already committed an infringement during Week four and I have two more left. But surprisingly nothing else showed up during this week. There were no more lunch events at work and no goodies from vendors either. Last year I had about four lunch invitations that I attended by the end of the holiday season. This year so far just one.
Week Five: Nothing this week. Just two more to go now.
Week Six: After five weeks long unnecessary wait, there appeared in the kitchen a tiny green tin box with even tinier butter cookies. Since I had given myself three infringements and knowing by now that there are only two weeks to go, I treated myself to two cookies. I later found out that those were home made cookies by another colleague of mine. They were tasty and were loaded with butter. This led to a bet during a conversation with another colleague who was also trying to stay from junk to lose weight. I said that two of them together will not be more than 80 calories, and my colleague argued that they were would be about 180 calories as they were butter cookies. We went scientific over it. We found that the paper plate weighed 0.15 ounce and the plate with 4 cookies weighed 1.14 oz, so the net weight of cookies came to around 0.96 oz. My Fitness Pal tells me that 1 oz of butter cookies is 132 calories. So that's 132 calories for 4 cookies and simple math tells that's 66 calories for 2 cookies. Now I am clearly delusional over holiday season sugar deprivation.
Week Seven: Week seven has just begun and I am sure it will be another downer with no fight in sight. With one more infringement allowed, I am quite confident that I can sail through this week with having to use my third life line.

It is clear that the economy has a direct relation on reduced holiday spending by companies and individuals. Though the stock market has been showing signs of improvement for some time, companies more so than individuals are holding on their purse strings tight. It is about time I revisit my recession indicator. Hopefully 2010 will be better off and will give me a better fight that 2009. So far my scale has not moved far to the right and I am happy about it. If things go well, I might carry this resolution into the next holiday season.

Happy New Year to you all.