As Thanksgiving drew near, I made a conscious decision to soak in all of the holidays. I promised myself that I’d leave my head and heart open to the things around me. I wouldn’t stress about all the things I “needed” to do. And one of the biggest decisions I made was to ignore my “rules” for eating. I haven’t always been the healthiest of eaters, but in the past year or two we’ve made a decent number of changes to how we eat in our house. We still eat out too often. There are still days when we eat cereal for dinner. And I still drink too much Diet Coke. But over all, we eat a lot of fresh, non-processed food that has been simply prepared. I lost a decent amount of weight since we started eating that way and I certainly love the way my body feels when I’m eating properly. But I decided that over the holidays I wouldn’t stress over what we were eating. And you know what? I gained 4.5 pounds. But, truthfully, I don’t even mind. That’s 4.5 pounds of happy memories. It’s from making snacks with my children for others and sampling as we went. It’s from enjoying goodies gifted to us from friends. It’s from (collective) hours around the tables of friends and family where we lingered a little too long…sometimes long enough for second dinner. It’s from drinks and chocolate and laughs and (good) tears. My pants may fit a little more snugly than they did before the holidays, but my heart is also full to the point of bursting wide open with the happy.

And the most interesting part to me is that now that the holidays are over? I’m not dreading a return to our regularly scheduled diet. I’m craving fruits and veggies and whole grains. Bring it, 2014. We’re ready! Starting with this: