Every Little Thing by April Jeppson

 

I’m wearing sweatpants. Not because I’m cold, or planning on working out, but they don’t dig into my tummy when I sit. My name is April, and I went on a holiday food bender.

I know I’m not alone, there are a lot of us who indulge this time of year. All the seasonal treats and foods that only come out during the holidays. Not to mention all the parties filled with appetizers that we don’t normally eat. I mean seriously. You can walk into my house any day of the week, and I don’t think I’ve ever made an appetizer for my family before dinner, or dessert afterwards. So now I’m dealing will treats in my house nonstop for the last three weeks — my metabolism can’t keep up!

Today is the day I hide it all. I can no longer walk through my kitchen 32 times and pretend that I will resist eating all the goodies. My track record shows that I can’t be left alone with Oreo truffles, I am not that strong. In fact, none of us are.

It’s been proven that willpower is a finite resource. What’s that mean? It means that everybody has a set amount of willpower each day, and as you use it to resist various temptations you deplete your storage. So come 7 p.m. (or 2 p.m.) you literally can’t resist anymore. You tell your kids, “Fine, I don’t care, just do it,” or you grab the chocolate you swore you wouldn’t eat today and you put it in your mouth.

There are things you can do that will help refill your willpower. Meditation, a power nap, perhaps even going for a walk. Anything that rejuvenates the soul will help you build up a tad more of it. The easier option though is to use less of your willpower on simple things so that when you actually need to resist something, you have mental strength left to do it.

Remove temptation from your line of sight. As someone who is home during the day, I walk through my kitchen a lot. If there is a bag of Snickers on the kitchen counter, I will pass by it every time I walk to the family room or go to the bathroom. This could mean walking past it 20 times before lunch. I don’t know what my threshold is. I’m not sure how many times I can see something I want, walk past it and resist. There’s no wonder that by 3 p.m. I’m grabbing a little something here and there off my kitchen counter every time I pass by.

So today is the day I remove temptation from my eyesight. I’m taking all the kids’ candy and bagging it up. Putting all the fun Christmas snacks and hiding them in the cupboard. I am going to make it a little easier for me to stick to my goals. I’m not saying I won’t eat a fistful of oyster crackers or unwrap a few Hershey’s kisses today, I’m just hoping to eat less than I did yesterday.

I’m typing this in my kitchen and as I look around I can hardly see our countertop because it’s filled with munchies and sweets. We still have our candy-loaded stockings scattered in the family room. I can barely shut my refrigerator door because of all the leftovers.

OK, slight change of plans. As I’m gathering, hiding and tossing all this deliciousness, I will allow myself one more day to enjoy it all. Apparently all this talk about holiday treats has depleted my willpower already. I need a nap.

Albert Lean April Jeppson is a wife, mom, coach and encourager of dreams.