The Backside

Strategies

1) Compensation

As we slide down the backside of the holidays and into a new year, let’s examine the impact of too much holiday food on our backsides. I know mine has felt threatened for weeks by extra cookies, ham, and a proliferation of salted nuts. If I don't have a strategy for partaking without unwanted consequences my thighs will swell up like Elvis in a jumpsuit. At a time like this there is only one thing to do: compensate.

Compensation sounds totalitarian, but it is really less punishment and more balancing the scales between the excess of food I did not need with an increase of the food I do. For instance, at yesterday’s family New Year’s Day Chinese dinner, I left the fried dishes alone and went for a Vietnamese brothy soup known as Pho (pronounced fuh). It features rice vermicelli noodles in a flavorful stock of beef, onion, and star anise. Then it is garnished with a handful of super-fresh bean sprouts, herbs, and wedges of fresh lime. It was a cold night and a hot bowl of soup containing mostly vegetables and noodles not only filled my belly with warmth, but it didn’t weigh me down. This choice was compensation for the many big meals I had been blessed with for the previous two weeks.

The trick to compensation is to allow enough light meals in between heavy meals to negate any weight gain from the latter. Compounding extraordinarily heavy meals day after day makes me fat. In my case, since Christmas I have enjoyed tiny bowls of granola in the morning, a piece of fruit with my small sandwich at lunch, and key choices for dinner. This kind of compensation provides forgiveness for the Haagen Dasz Bananas Foster ice cream I refused to pass up at a party yesterday. I know this is breathtakingly simple, yet many of us get on a roll and end up with…an extra roll. Beware the twelve days of Christmas with each day more rich than the last. If last night was meatballs, this morning avoid the French toast and bacon. Say yes to truffles, cinnamon pastry, and egg nog, but go back to the foundation of the food pyramid (vegetables and whole grain), immediately after the splurge—and your backside won’t suffer.