Healthy New Holiday Traditions

• Christmas caroling combined with 10K run

• Egg-substitute nog

• Banana Claus!

• Kale cut into Christmas cookie shapes

• Jingle kettlebells

• Fruitcake that doesn’t have any cake in it

• Mistletoe salad

• Raw nutcracker

• Eight maids a’lifting

• Nativity scene includes Wise Men on treadmills

• Kickboxing Day

• Gingerbread house made from melba toast, hummus and kalamata olives


• Insert your own "Hide the Pickle" joke here

• Leave plate of celery sticks and carrots for Santa

• Three sets of Poinsettia-Ups

• Gather the family in the living room for It’s A Wonderful Workout

There Is No Such Thing As a Free Honeybun

So there we were, my teenage daughter Pisa and I, on the road somewhere in Alabama, on the way to a holiday gathering of relatives.

“I’m gettin’ kind of sleepy,” I said. “Do you want to drive for a while?”

“I’m not sure they let 13-year-olds drive, dad…”

“Even in Alabama?”

“Fraid not,” she said. “Suck it up, buttercup.”

“I gotta coffee up then,” I told her, pulling off to the next truck stop we approached.

As I went to pay for my gas station crappuccino, the cashier pushed a packaged honeybun in my direction.

“No thanks,” I told her, sliding it back to her.

“No, you don’t understand, sugah,” she smiled, pushing it back towards me. “It’s free with a large coffee.”

“I’m not interested,” I grinned back at her, picking it up and slapping it back down on the counter.

“I ain’t kiddin’,” she repeated. “They’re havin’ one of them promotions where you get a free honeybun when you buy a large coffee.”

“I’m allergic,” I told her.

“You’re allergic to honeybuns?” she laughed. “Why, I ain’t never heard of anybody that was allergic to honeybuns!”

“It’s true,” I told her, taking my coffee and backing away from the counter. “Every time I eat one, I break out in fat.”

Holiday Bad, Badder, Worstest...

BAD: You sample one of the Christmas cookies you’re baking.
BADDER: You wolf down all the cookies that don’t come out perfect.
WORSTEST: You sit in the kitchen floor and eat an entire bowl of batter.
 
BAD: You’ve succumbed to a peppermint bark addiction.
BADDER: While in line at Starbucks to get Peppermint Mocha Latte, you’re plotting route on your phone to the next closest Starbucks to get another Peppermint Mocha Latte.
WORSTEST: Doc informs you that your blood type is “O positively peppermint”.
 
BAD: You’ve drunk your weight in eggnog.
BADDER: You’ve thrown out all other food in your fridge so that you can keep more eggnog on hand.
Worstest: CNN does story about worldwide eggnog shortage and your name comes up repeatedly.
 
BAD: You had to poke a new hole in your belt.
BADDER: You wear sweatpants to Christmas Mass.
WORSTEST: You had to let out your Santa Claus costume.
 
BAD: You’ve got Advent calendar with Hershey kiss for each day in December.
BADDER: You’ve got Advent calendar with chocolate chip cookie for each day in December.
WORSTEST: You’ve got Advent calendar with cheeseball for each day in December.

BAD: You can’t stand up to watch entire holiday parade.
BADDER: Other carolers point out that your mouth is full of taffy.
WORSTEST: You go for sleigh ride and two horses keel over dead.

BAD: You popped a button.
BADDER: You ripped your pants.
WORSTEST: You broke Santa’s lap.

BAD:  You ate half a fruitcake.
BADDER: You chugged a quart of boiled custard.
WORSTEST: You ate the cookies your children left out for Santa… while they watched.

BAD: Pants are entirely too tight.
BADDER: You’ve had to cut the necks out of all your turtleneck sweaters.
WORSTEST: You can’t find a shawl that fits.

BAD: You’ve decided to put off your healthy living quest until the new year.
BADDER: Gym is so busy in January that you’ve decided to wait until it clears out some.
WORSTEST: Decided that 2013 can just go to hell. 

Weight Loss Christmas Carols

• I’m Dreaming of a Lite Christmas

• I Saw Mommy Eating Hershey Bars

• Rudolph, the Calorie-Tracking Reindeer

• The Not-So-Little Drummer Boy

• Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (for his Weight Watchers Meeting)

• I’m Eatin’ Nuttin’ for Christmas

Feliz Not-a-Carb

• It's So Close to Christmas (And I'm So Far From Goal Weight)

• Do You Eat What I Eat?

• Walkin’ in a Thinner Wonderland

• A Weigh in a Manger

• The Twelve Meals of Christmas

The 5 “W’s” (and 1 “H”) of Weight Loss

Who?

 Jack Franklin Sh*t

What?

Lost a little something-something over the past couple of weeks.

Where?

Here, there, everywhere.

When?

 I told you, dumbass. Over the past couple of weeks!

 

 

Why?

Because this post would have been especially difficult to write had I gained 10 pounds.

How?

Well, that’s always the question, isn’t it? I ate a little better, ate a little less, exercised a little more, sacrificed the health of my heart (I read that drinking red wine is good for your heart, and I am very, very, very committed to good heart health). I tried to stay accountable, tried to keep my head in the game.

This is a tough time of year to make any headway on weight-loss goals, BUT IT’S NOT IMPOSSIBLE!

 

THE WEEKLY PHYSIQUELY

Last weigh-in: 237.2 lbs.

Loss: -.6

A Few More Holiday Health Tips

• Replacing a cup of eggnog with a cup of cold skim milk saves 433 calories (the 343 calories of the eggnog plus the 90 calories of the cold skim milk after you spit it out in disgust and pour the rest down the drain).

• Technically, you don’t HAVE to eat the cookies your kids leave out for Santa.

• If you’re at a holiday party, stand inside one of those “Bubble Boy” bubbles to keep yourself from overdoing it at the appetizer table.

• You can make a healthy version of fruitcake by simply leaving out the “cake”.

• Ice skating burns over 400 calories per hour, so consider ice skating to work.

• When out celebrating, alternate alternate each drink with a glass of water; so if you have 75 cocktails, you should balance that out with 75 glasses of water.

• If you’re at a party, opt for the raw veggies instead of… HEY! YOU’RE NOT EVEN LISTENING TO ME, ARE YOU? COME ON!

• Christmas carol-thon.

• Trust the voice of experience: you can burn a LOT of calories running around trying to do all your Christmas shopping at Walgreen’s on Christmas Eve.








Premature Jack-ulation

If you are reading this right now, that means that I’m already dead.



How did I die, you may ask.



Perhaps it was a whitewater rafting accident where I drowned trying to save a newborn baby who had fallen overboard as we shot over the rapids.



Perhaps I was crushed in a slow moving wave of molasses such as the one that struck during The Great Boston Molasses Tragedy of 1919 when an enormous molasses storage tank burst and molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph, killing 21 and injuring 150.



Perhaps I met my fate one afternoon when I threw myself through a window trying to illustrate that the glass is unbreakable (but to my credit, the glass didn’t break; it simply popped out of the window frame!).



How I died isn’t really all that important, is it?

What matters… what is of utmost concern… is that I had the foresight to plan a post to run from beyond the grave. I planned it this way in order to remind you of the lessons I’ve learned along the way, here at the end of my blogging journey...



1. Find a lifestyle you can live with and... well... start living with it.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sloughed off, telling myself I’ll get back on the wagon tomorrow, next week, next month. Now is the time for action! Do it today because tomorrow is always a day away.



2. A body in motion stays in motion. It’s true in physics and it’s true it fitness-ics. Exercise today and tomorrow and, chances are, you’ll do it again the next day. Take the whole week off and, chances are, you’ll take the next one off as well. Get in a move groove!



3. There’s no excuse for making excuses. This isn’t a good time for you… I get that. News break: there’s never a good time. There’s always going to be stress and uncertainty, always going to be turmoil and tough times. Suck it up, buttercup! It could be worse. You could be dead like some people I could name…



4. Fall down seven times, get up eight. No, wait. I just double-checked the math and that’s definitely getting up one more time than is absolutely necessary. Disregard this pointer entirely.



5. You really can do this. I mean that; you really can do it. Though I’m not gonna be around anymore to prop you up and egg you on, I’m positive that you’ve got it in you to get this done. It will take time, effort and determination, but the rewards are oh-so worth it. I would say do it for me… for my dying wish… but really you just oughta go ahead and do it for yourself.

Well, that’s it for Jack Sh*t. I hope you’ll remember me fondly as you sail past milestones on your way to the success you so richly deserve. I wish I could be around to high-five you at the finish line, but it simply wasn’t meant to be.

Goodbye, my friends. Stay on track, but most of all, stay true to yourself.

Now, I just need to remember to set this up in the blogging on-deck circle and give my wife Anita instructions on how to push this out as I’m being laid out to rest, but mostly I need to be absolutely certain that I don’t hit “Publish” on this one prematurely, because that would be kind of embarrassing…