Another View: Jackie Macgirvin

Bearing unwanted gifts of calories, fat and guilt

December 23, 2003

http://www.indystar.com/articles/1/104783-9431-021.html

At the risk of sounding like Ebenezer Scrooge, I cringe when the holidays roll around. The 34 days between Thanksgiving and New Year's provide me with unparalleled high-carb grazing options, numerous chocolate-consuming chances and multiple gratuitous, gluttonous opportunities. These memorable moments in munching are the recipe for diet disaster and result in high levels of self-disgust and New Year's resolutions such as: "Atkins 'till I wear a size 8. Atkins 'till June. Atkins for life!"

The task of keeping my weight in check and my thighs to a minimum is complicated by friends and co-workers. What is with these "friends" who inconsiderately bake calorie-laden treats, slap them on a festively decorated holiday plate and then give them to me? They mistakenly assume that I don't mind my bent over derriere looking like two humongous hot-air balloons parked side by side.

For 11 months of the year, I hear my non-domestic friends complain about cooking. They consider a meal to be labor intensive if it involves stopping the microwave to rotate the tray.

For 11 months, my friends are sane, budget-conscious women, scouring the grocery ads and clipping coupons. But when the holidays approach, seduced by enticing, glossy magazine photos, their domestic genes froth like cappuccino foam and they spend several hundred dollars on ingredients for one cookie recipe.

These cookies frequently have hyphenated names like Double-Chocolate-Fudge-Creme-Mocha-Nougat-Filled-Nut-Dainties. Exotic kitchen utensils are often needed to create these delicacies, utensils that can only be leased from Martha Stewart and only with several months' advance notice and a large deposit.

"After roasting the chestnuts on an open fire, extract each nut whole from the shell by placing them one at a time in the teak- handled, brass-tipped nut-nippers. Raise the nut-nippers in a fluid motion over your head and while balancing on your left foot, gently squeeze the teak handles with a pulsing motion until the shell cracks. Chop each nut into sixty-fourths and combine in copper pan with three sticks unsalted butter from free-range cows, one block solid Dutch chocolate (extra dark), stir in 1 pound imported, crystallized sugar powder and one cup premium, whipped marshmallow cream flavored with pure vanilla extract. . . "

These are the kind of high-carb, high-calorie extravaganzas that my domestically impaired friends frequently whip up in triple batches just for the holidays. As the ungrateful recipient I have three options: 1) Throw them away; 2) Give them away; or 3) Eat them.

I immediately eliminate the first option. My mother has convinced me that no food may ever be thrown out for any reason. I'm not paranoid, but I know that the Starving-Children-in-Foreign-Lands Food Patrol is always watching. The nutritiously bankrupt, hollow calories of just one cookie could potentially provide Third World children with 15 minutes of overstimulation and hyperactive energy.

I have tried giving them away, but I get recipe requests I cannot fill and questions posed that make me look stupid.

"Did you use lemon zest?"

"No, I prefer Irish Spring. Does Zest come in lemon?"

This leaves me with option three, by default. I eat them. I eat all of them, frequently in one sitting, and I finish by licking the crumbs off the festively decorated plate. By comparison, a great white shark going after the chum bucket looks pretty docile. The morning after my carb feeding frenzy, I slink to my scales like a guilty dog with its tail tucked between its legs. I am sure criminals are no more terrified to walk to the electric chair.

By the end of December, my layers of cellulite get so thick and dimply that, from the knees up, my pantyhose appear to be stuffed with popcorn. When I catch a glimpse in the full-length mirror (which I hang horizontally so I can check my girth from thigh to thigh), I am disgusted with myself, disgusted with my friends and especially disgusted with those enticing carb-filled holiday recipes. Humbug!

This year I have a request to all well-wishing friends and co-workers. If I'm on your Christmas list, and you are baking those enticing holiday cookies that contain 326 carbs in each bite, please, please, give them to someone else.

If you still feel charitably inclined, you may purchase a few bags of Russell Stover's Low Carb Truffles, empty them onto a festively decorated, lick-proof holiday plate and leave them on my doorstep.

I'll be in the bathroom, cowering by my scales.

Macgirvin is a free-lance writer based in Kansas City, Mo.

LOL, I use option 4: I feel so guilty about throwing food away too (especially when someone like my mother has worked so hard to make it), so they go in the back of the fridge in a bag "for later". Several months later, after they are safely stale, it is easier for me to throw them out. It's a silly process but it works for me.

ha! i loved reading your post. it was very funny, though in a frightningly truthful way. it is the end of xmas day for me and i have consumed an ungodly amount of carbs! i;m feeling pretty sick to my stomache at the moment. my plan now is to limit carbs to 10 a day and run 3 miles for the next 5 days, then it's new years time! new years will be easier cus my family wont be around (they are not all that supportive of my desision to low carb it). anyways good luck to you, you're a wonderful writer - hee hee.

Hi there

Found your post whilst snooping around. What a fantastic piece. I especially relate to/resemble the popcorn in the pantyhose part. Fabulous.

Actually I have no support to offer you as we all suffer and indulge at this time of year. It all comes down to the extent to which we want to fall down. I, after 1 day, am presently trying to get off my knees. I liken this time of year (eatingwise) to the credit card bill. I have spent 11 months like everyone trying to lessen what feels like the national debt and in 1 week can double it if not careful. The same applies to my weight. I have spent the last 6 months moving the mountain (well budging it slightly at least) and I blindly refuse to add another peak to be conquered in January.

I hope others find your thread. It certainly raised a laugh or two for me. Well done