The holiday season is a tough one for many of our patients. After managing their sugar cravings, decreasing their alcohol consumption and eating more green things, they’ve finally got a handle on a huge part of the health equation.
Enter Christmas. Yikes. Holiday drop-ins. Staff parties. Family traditions centered around egg nog and baking. It’s a time when nutrition tends to go off the rails, and for some, it’s replaced with stress about how their nutrition has gone off the rails.
This year, no doubt, the stress will about whether or not the holidays were “paleo” or “low carb” enough. But is it really all about the carbs?
Chris Kresser put together a great article to speak to this question. The short version is something you’ll be familiar with if you’ve been to our clinic: what really matters is the quality of your carbohydrates, not the quantity. Or as we say here at StoneTree: Eat foods that nature makes.
There are cultures that eat very high-carb diets that don’t have issues with obesity and chronic disease. In those cultures, however, their carbs are real food. It is the cultures that eat highly processed carbohydrates–foods that are nothing like how nature intended them–that have an issue.
If you’re going to be obsessive about food over the holidays, at least obsess about quality, not quantity. And remember to be present–you can miss a lot of beautiful holiday moments fretting about counting carbs…