Advent Calendars - thoughts, mods, vanilla, & tricks?

eschano · Post by **eschano** » Wed Nov 28, 2012 10:54 am

Hi All,
As the holiday season begins and it's the 1st of December soon I was hoping you could all weigh in about advent calendars. I am a huge Christmas season fan (being Austrian I'm all into mulled wine, Christmas markets, roasted chestnuts, and advent calendars).
Many thanks in advance,
Tess

ironchef · Post by **ironchef** » Wed Nov 28, 2012 11:08 am

I've seen beautiful advent calendars with tiny tree decorations or other art behind each door instead of sweeties.
If you make your own, you could stock the doors with nuts, glace fruit, or some other treat that can form part of your week day meals, instead of chocolates or other candies?

Blithe Morning · Post by **Blithe Morning** » Wed Nov 28, 2012 4:22 pm

I second the idea that the advent calendar have goodies you can add to your meals. Nuts on a salad, a glass of wine with dinner, a nice piece of cheese.

Too solid flesh · Post by **Too solid flesh** » Wed Nov 28, 2012 4:58 pm

Online advent calendars? There are some wonderful ones, and they have no calories!

eschano · Post by **eschano** » Wed Nov 28, 2012 9:54 pm

Thanks for the advice iron chef, blithe morning, too solid flesh! Really appreciated!

Just to complete the subject line for future reference for others: Any tried & tested mods?

eschano · Post by **eschano** » Thu Nov 29, 2012 11:38 am

This is from my daily check-in:

I finally figures out my advent calendar mod. It's not a mod at all. I'll save them for the weekend.
After all, I'm alreay having this feeling that if I allow myself one per day it just leads to more overall calories or the munchies on N days. I find it much harder to stop myself once I eat sweets then to only eat it some days, which I guess is the genius of NoS.
So after considering it a lot this is my solution. That said, I'm not counting on an all-green December either

I'm still interested in any mods you could provide.

gratefuldeb67 · Post by **gratefuldeb67** » Thu Nov 29, 2012 1:45 pm

i think your idea to save them for the weekend is the best idea.
i wouldn't do any mods because the more you modify the basic structure of NoS, the harder you are making it to form those new habits of not having treats during the week.
good luck.

eschano · Post by **eschano** » Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:00 pm

You're so right gratefuldeb67! When looked at from a habit point of view it does make a big difference.

Thanks again to all of you - you all saved me from what would have very likely been a mistake.

Blithe Morning · Post by **Blithe Morning** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:18 am

Good decision!

Although (and this is not to anyway to try and dissuade you) as I have been living longer with No S, I have started thinking more about seasonality.

Back before a stable and consistent supply of food, people ate more seasonally. Without doing much serious study, I imagine there were seasons when food was more plentiful than others. When there was food, you ate more. And when there wasn't, you ate less. I wonder if this isn't behind some of our traditions.

Of course, today we have lots of food available all year round. So having extra treats in December as part of advent is not compensated for in March and April when food supplies started to run low before the new growth.

Random winter night thoughts.

ironchef · Post by **ironchef** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:16 am

Interesting thoughts Blithe Morning. Yeah, I guess in cold climates it makes sense to eat produce and animals before they spoil / get thin over winter, and to lay down some fat before the starving months in early Spring. But these days it hardly makes sense when we fly things in from all over the world.

Makes even less sense in Australia, where Christmas falls in the height of Summer. What are we doing? Laying in a buffer of mangoes before all the good stone fruit arrives?

milliem · Post by **milliem** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 10:32 am

How about just not buying one with chocolate in it?? As a child we only ever had ones with cute little pictures behind the doors and I loved them, the excitement of opening the little door and seeing what was behind it stays with me even now. You can still get them if you look past the branded chocolate ones!! In fact I have two regular advent calendars waiting upstairs for me and my OH to start opening tomorrow

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:15 pm

I like that you decided just to save up the little chocolate pieces for the weekend. That was going to be my suggestion.

If this is your first year and you are thinking you are going to feel too deprived, consider allowing yourself one or two more NWS days besides the normal two you can take (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day?). However, don't assume you will need them. If you go ahead and eat hearty meals, you may not even feel that much like having snacks or sweets until the weekends. Just keep thinking of how delicious the food will be if you have it at meals, and how much better you'll feel. If you attend a party mid-week, perhaps you could ask the host/hostess if you could take a dessert home because the food was just too good and you are too full. Most people are delighted to get rid of leftover sweets, I've noticed.

Now, you may not lose during this season, but holding steady to the habits and feeling you can keep promises to yourself about limits is more important.

eschano · Post by **eschano** » Sat Dec 01, 2012 6:57 pm

Thank you so much for all of your posts! I found them extremely helpful.

I thought more about Blithe Morning's post and think that in a Catholic country (I'm originally Austrian) it probably makes sense: 3 days of feasts for Christmas - 1 1/2 constrained months (traditionally January and February are low-key when it comes to food) - 3 days of feasts for carnival - 40 days fasting for lent - followed by 3 days of feasts (Easter).

However, I'm not necessarily following that so I probably don't have an excuse to go all out for Christmas

Oolala, I like your suggestion of taking 2 extra NWS days. It's indeed my first year so all suggestions most welcome!

Thanks to all of you. If there was a "bouquet of flowers" smiley I'd put it here.