You attend a friend’s wedding, and they have presented a wonderful buffet of food.  It’s so beautiful and there are so many choices.  How exciting. 

You go to your family Sunday dinner night and grandma has cooked up the usual amazing savory dishes, along with a mouthwatering trio of desserts.  And that’s just what grandma cooked.  You still have to peek at that other table full of family favorites prepared by your aunts and uncles, who some cook even better than grandma. So much to choose from!!

It’s dinner out with the boss and colleagues, and there will be food-a-plenty, along with cocktails and endless bottles of wine.  The menu is your oyster.

Food choices.  There are some situations presented to you and so many food choices to be made within each scenario.  The situations I’ve mentioned above will undoubtedly occur in your lives, and you will no doubt indulge in the fare presented to you.  How could you not!!  I MEAN come on!!  But what you can also do is, on a regular basis, make good and healthy food choices.  On a daily basis, if your normal daily meals are filled with fresh, healthy choices, then you will be in a position that you can and will indulge in food-a-thon situations with no worry and no guilt.  You all are smart women, and I am here to give you guidance, tips, and motivation.  My motivational quote on this is: If you make good choices 90% of the time, then 10% of you deserves to get crazy when she wants to. My  health tip on this is:  Make healthy food choices 90% of the time, then you are already prepared for the 10% that may not be as healthy.  My guidance on this is: choose fresh fruit and vegetables over packaged foods,  choose lean meats, high fat fish, light flaky fish, choose fats from vegetable sources, choose to saute rather than fry, choose to make your own salad dressing, choose no added sugar, choose to include fiber in every meal,  choose to have 1 glass of wine in 2 glasses, choose to have only 1 cocktail  choose to have 1 full glass of water after an alcoholic beverage.  Choose to make better food choices.  Choose your health and wellness.  The choice is yours.  

A friend commented to me that she was very inspired by my ability to have a great time over a weekend we spent together, without having any alcohol.  There was an engagement being toasted to, and I partook in the toast, and left it at that.  There was tons of food and drinks floating around, which I indulged in items from the charcuterie board, sweets from the 6 pound cookie tray, meats from the hot grill, and servings from the salad bowls.  Knowing what that Saturday would culminate into, I chose to make great food choices for the week leading up to the Labor Day weekend so that on that Saturday, I would guiltlessly indulge in all of the eye dropping meats and fish, tangy salads, cloying sweets, and 2 little sips of bubbling Champaign. My current lack of alcohol for me is due to perimenopause reasons that will get its own post soon enough. But for the past 4 years or so, I have drank less and less, by choice. I just don’t like feeling any what hung over, so I have turned into the designated driver. Well, i don’t drive in New York with all of these insane drivers, but I use designated driver as a metaphor. But, you get the point right?  Make good food choices.  Sometimes it’s an easy choice, but make the easy choice mostly, so you can afford to make the bad choice seldomly (its a word now!!)

I can sit here and type out a list of healthy fruit and veggies, and a column of lean meats and fish, but you already know these things. You should already know what high fiber fruits and vegetables are, what healthy fats are. If you’re hear on this website, it means that you have probably been engaging in some kind of healthy eating attempts. The missing piece of the puzzle isn’t knowing what healthy foods are, the missing nugget is making good choices. I cannot hammer home enough how important those choices are, and how detrimental the wrong choices can be to your fitness and health attempts. But I’ll say it and i’ll say it again and again and aaaagain, The choices you make should be healthy 90% of the time. If you’re feeling really healthy, you can be like Daniela, and make good choices 99.9% of time. She is always my inspiration!

Choices, choices, food choices.  They present themselves to us at least 3 times each day.  Make at least 21 good ones this week.

Choicy choicy,

Tonya T