Consider your Christmas Diet

CEBU, Philippines - In this season of eating, could you be sinning? Many of us think of Christmas as pure joy – especially because food abounds. No matter how severe the global economic recession may be, tradition has ways of dictating the celebration of Christmas in food. But if you still want to look good in a two-piece T-back swimsuit in summer or if you still want to be part of Valentine’s Day in 2010, consider your diet. The food you are eating could be your last.

Lechon whether these be lechon baboy, lechon manok or lechon baka can put an end to your celebration of life — it does not need an intelligent man to know why. These fat-saturated foods tend to raise cholesterol levels in the body. Excessive cholesterol forms plaques deposited on blood vessel walls and once these plaques block vessels supplying blood to your heart, your heart starts to quiver and you won’t like the next scenarios.

Although we want to celebrate Christmas, it is indulgence that makes eating sinful. Eating all you can is sinning in its very nature. It is gluttony in the guise of prosperity. Whether you own up or not, Filipinos always like to eat with a spade instead of a spoon. Over eating or indulgence and especially the eating of fatty food pummels your body to overwork when it doesn’t want to and doesn’t need to. Sins of indulgence will find you – in the hospital bed or at the clinic – either way, what you spend for medication is often multifold in comparison to that steak or lechon you gobbled.

The National Nutrition Council recommends that even in this season of eating, nutrition guidelines must be faithfully adhered to. Stay away from lechon, stay away from ice cream, stay away from chocolate cakes and most of all stay away from hard liquor. Except for liquor, lechon, ice cream and cakes may contain saturated fats that have the potential to raise cholesterol levels and form dangerous plaques that can overwork the heart or digestive functions of your body unnecessarily. Hard liquor poisons your body completely. If you think this is kill joy, let me ask, whose joy will be killed if arteries supplying blood to your heart are blocked with fat? The whole point of adhering to nutrition guidelines is to give the body the care, respect and pampering it deserves.

Moderation, Not Exaggeration.

The thing is, we tend to eat before we think instead of think before we eat. We give in to the will of our flesh by digging into a spade-full of all the food on the table apparently because we want to taste anything that our eyes can see. What many of us do not often realize is that digging through the variety will unnecessarily cause your body to malfunction. Our body – the human body – is not shell. The human body is a mean machine that needs to be fed, cared for and maintained to function efficiently. Feed it with wrong food and it will self-destruct.

Eat with moderation not with exaggeration. Definitely, indulgence and eating just anything that feasts your eyes betrays and destroys your body. Wrong food does not nourish the body, poor nutrition degenerates the body. And degeneration means aging and growing old fast.

In its guidelines, the National Nutrition Council suggests that when in a party or dining in buffet, eat or consume less of meat and more of vegetables and fruits. Think before you eat instead of eating before thinking. Just because it is a party, does not mean that you are licensed or exempted from following nutrition guidelines. It is with all the more reason that you should be selective and conscious about what food to put on your plate.

It is not just diet. The Nutrition Council further suggests that this season of eating should also be a season of exercising. Nutrition must be seen as an entire continuum of diet, exercise and age management. That means that for your body to operate efficiently in manufacturing its own nutrients, it needs to be detoxified, calories need to be burned for energy and muscles need to be elongated and educated. While the body has its own ways of flushing out its wastes, exercise induces sweating and sweating detoxifies the body.

Even if you have the proper nutrition but lead a sedentary lifestyle, the body cannot work efficiently on the food you are eating without exercise. Stop watching television and go for a walk. Stop at designated jeepney stops instead of provoking the driver to violate the “No Stopping Anytime” zones because it is nearer your destination.

Exercise and proper nutrition go together as a matter of lifestyle, and so is a nutrition-based Christmas diet. You only have to dig in to your indulgence for food, stay lazy and skip exercise for you to grow fat, old and ugly. Diet is what you do and make. The only person who can delete the “t” in diet is yourself.