Going full-foodie for the holidays

Welcome to Day One of The Holifats, Chubbymas, or the YuleThigh season.

For somebody like me, with little to no self-control, the next few weeks will be a wonderful yet miserable orgy of consumption. Christmas cookies, pies, chocolates, pies, stuffing, pies and more pies will call out to me with their sweet, seductive voices, and like a sailor to the sirens, I will be helpless to ignore them.

Last year, I gained almost 15 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. This year, I won’t gain that much, but only because there is one fewer week between the Scylla and Charybdis of the holiday season. (Bonus points for two mythological references in two successive paragraphs.)

I’m writing this the weekend before Thanksgiving, and the Great Holiday Weight Gain has already begun.

My wife is busy making some delightful Thanksgiving pudding desserts, mixing pumpkin, Cool Whip and Oreo crumbs into plastic cups. Because I’m utterly inept in the kitchen, my job is to wash the dishes that accrue like weeds in the sink between batches.

This is where my dilemma begins.

I’m a batter licker and raw-dough-aholic. If it’s stuck to a spoon or a spatula, it goes directly into my mouth. Do not pass Go, do not collect Salmonella — at least not yet.

So while I’m washing my way through this Mount Everest of dishes, I’m licking utensils like a dog licks its ... uh, paws, gaining more calories with each swipe of the tongue than I burn off with all that scrubbing and sanitizing.

Last year, my wife went full Betty Crocker and whipped up about 100 batches of cookies. I might be exaggerating that number, but not by much.

The initial goal was to give them all away to family and friends. But these wonderful holiday packages, sealed so nicely in Saran Wrap, seldom reached their intended targets. Instead, I gobbled them up for breakfast, devoured them as full-meal snacks after work, and made them the centerpiece of double and triple desserts after dinner.

One sweet, delicious cookie at a time, except for the times when I double-fisted. So many cookies that they made my stomach hurt and then swell from all those excess calories.

By the start of 2019, my pants no longer fit. My belt broke. My shirts were riding up on the curve of my expanding belly.

And it was all because of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. Well, it was all because of my lack of willpower and dearth of good sense.

The only good outcome was that I started exercising in earnest in January and lost all that excess weight, along with a few extra pounds I’d accumulated over the last few years. And I guess I can do it again if I have to.

But here’s a fun fact: To burn off one pound, a person has to burn about 3,500 more calories than they take in during a week. Running, my exercise of choice, burns about 550 calories an hour when the runner keeps a 6 mph pace, something I never do.

I’m closer to about 500 calories per hour, which means that if I allow free rein to my inner Gastrointestinal Grinch again this year, I will have to run the equivalent of 105 hours just to burn off my Yuletide indiscretions, provided that I’m able to return to semi-sane eating habits once the last ornament has been tucked away and the final carols sung.

Of course, all I really have to do is avoid sweets, which sounds so easy until I realize that in the 20 minutes I’ve been typing these words I have licked two chocolate-covered spatulas.

All I can say is that it’s going to be a long, hot 2020. I hope Santa leaves me a new pair of running shoes under the tree.

But he might not, because chances are good I will eat the cookies we leave for him.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com


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