Special Days

What is a special day? 

By special day, I mean...a day where you "let yourself go" and give yourself the opportunity to be lax on your rules.

In my house, we don't allow soda...except on special days.  This would be birthdays, christmas, and most of the major holidays when cousins and/or friends would come over and hang with my kids.  We try not to be to strict, but knowing soda is diabetes in a can and has like 240 teaspoons of sugar per serving...or something like that...we know this is a battle worth fighting...no matter what kid in the neighborhood thinks I'm a soda nazi.

But, my kids are like anyone else...if they get an inch...they'll find a way to take foot...and then a mile.  Birthdays and major holidays turned into summer get togethers with friends...and then it wasn't just their birthdays....it was friends and friends of friends birthdays...and when miley cyrus had a birthday, well that was a special day for my 10 year old...so that should count too...right?

which brings me to labor day.  special day?  It is a holiday.  No mail delivered.  Lots of people have off of work.  No school.  So, it must be a special day.  But is it really special?  Because if you call labor day special, what about Sundays during football season...special days?  Saturdays during College football season?  How about Cinco de Mayo, St. Patty's day, April Fools day, Arbor day, Halloween, Valentines day, the week between christmas and new years, the last day of school, first day of school, and of course the entire Thanksgiving Vacation. 

So, if it's okay to eat and drink whatever we want on those days because we have assigned a "no rules" value to them...isn't it a no brainer to to start making more days "special" when we want to eat and drink what we crave?

Hmmm....maybe our kids are not the only ones that take an extra inch now and then.

The way i see it...we have two choices.  We can stay true to what we really mean by special days....

Or, we can find better ways to celebrate them...ways that in the long term will make us feel special because we did something good for ourselves, our mind, and our bodies.

I spent today's end of summer holiday at the new Yankee Stadium...I wanted the hot pretzel, the ice cream, the 2 hotdogs, all the beers of the world and the souvenir tub of popcorn.  I did want all that.  But, what i had was... One drink.  One chicken hero.  Lots of water.  Yankess won 4-1. 

Happy "Special Day" to everyone.