19: A Guide to Maintaining Optimal Health During the Holiday Season

Michael Kummer: You're listening to the Primal Shift Podcast. I'm your host Michael Kummer and my goal is to help you achieve optimal health by bridging the gap between ancestral living and the demands of modern society. Get ready to unlock the transformative power of nature as the ultimate biohack, revolutionizing your health and reconnecting you with your primal self.

Welcome to the holiday edition of the Primal Shift podcast. You know, here in the United States, we start fall, holiday wise, with a candy holiday in October, a pie holiday in November, a cookie holiday in December, followed by a liquor holiday at the end of the year. And then we call it the flu season, you know, and wonder if there is maybe a connection between our lifestyle choices during the time of the year and our propensity to get sick.

So in this episode, I'll share with you how the Kummers navigate the holiday season as far as food is concerned. So, we, you know, reduce our chances of getting sick, but without necessarily feeling depriving ourselves. Because, let's face it, food is more than just fuel for most people. There are social and emotional components involved, and food brings people together.

You know, my wife always says that, you know, food brings people together, and who doesn't enjoy Sharing a feast with friends and family. So specifically in this episode, I'll cover what foods I categorically avoid, or we avoid as a family. How we transform certain pleasure foods into healthier alternatives.

And notice that I said healthier, not healthy. Why your metabolic health is a crucial factor in deciding what you can get away with. and how I handle mental battles of how much food, you know, or how much of a certain food I should eat. You know, can I have one piece? Should I eat the entire thing? Should I avoid it altogether?

You know, I've really found it's easier to just avoid those mental battles because very often You lose that fight anyway, before we step through the individual holidays and I'm going to share how we approach them. Let's talk a little bit about the overall or the overarching strategy or the overarching framework that we apply to holidays really that we apply to our life, but more specifically to the upcoming holidays.

And one of the main things that I want to point out is that. If you go off the rails four times in a year, or let's say five times in a year, if you include your birthday, nothing bad is going to happen, assuming you're somewhat metabolically healthy. But if you're in bad metabolic shape, if you already have prediabetes or diabetes or heart disease or, you know, gut issues or anything in between, then maybe you cannot afford going off the rails.

Not only if it's a few times And the other thing that I want to strongly emphasize is that, you know, doing something for a few times in a year, you know, on those specific holidays is one thing, but turning all of fall into a holiday season and eating less than ideal foods for three months in a row is a completely different thing.

And I really want you to be conscious about, you know, making those decisions and not saying, Oh, you know, it's the holiday season, so I can drink and eat junk food every single day in October, November and December. If you do this, you're likely not going to recover for the rest of the year or by the time you have recovered from those poor decisions, you're going to start over again and you're never in a good metabolic state.

So there's a clear difference and you should take, you know, you should take that into account. I also want to point out that I'm not a man of moderation. You know, if you put something in front of me and I want it, I have it all. I don't do like, Oh, I can have, you know, one cookie. No, I'm going to eat that whole box.

But at the same time, and that's very important, I listen to my body. If my body tells me this is not good for you, you know, this is, I, I'm not feeling good. I don't sleep well. You know, I cut it off. You know, I'm, I'm either all or nothing very often. And so, If I know that something is not good for me and I try to avoid those mental battles of just having one or a piece of it, you know, I put myself into an environment where I don't have to make those decisions.

You know, if I don't want to drink a glass of wine, I have no wine at home. It's very, it's as simple as that. The other thing I want to point out is that We do consume homemade meals made by others, especially around the holidays, even if they are not 100 percent aligned with our dietary habits. And one great example I've given that before is when we visit Austria, you know, my grandma and my granddad, fortunately, are still alive.

They are now approaching their, their 90s. They're actually over 90 already, so they are in great, in excellent shape compared, you know, to their health and lifestyle they've had, I want to say. And if my grandma makes her traditional dishes that she's been making for the past, you know, 40 years that I remember, at least, I have those dishes, you know, even if they might include potatoes or, you know, flowers or, you know, stuff that I would normally not gravitate towards, but I know she makes them from scratch with love using a lot of butter instead of seed oils.

So I do have, we do eat those dishes, you know, again, even if they're not 100 percent aligned. The same applies to when we have friends over and they bring, you know, food that we might not be eating every day, but unless they are, you know, store bought junk food, we ate them anyway. Speaking of junk food, we have a pretty much no junk food policy in our house.

You know, I don't ever see myself going to McDonald's or eating candy or having candy at home. You know, there are certain lines in the sand that we draw and we don't cross those lines. And, you know, that makes it also very difficult then for us to really make poor decisions. We might, we might make less than ideal decisions at times, but it's typically never a poor decision.

And so that really helps on, you know, remaining relatively healthy from a metabolic perspective. So now with that overarching theme out of the way, let's talk about some of those holidays, starting with Halloween. And I realize by the time you watch this or you listen to this, Halloween has already passed likely, but because it's next week and I'm recording this just a few days before Halloween.

But maybe you can apply those principles or those ideas or think about them next year. And the thing with Halloween is, I strongly believe that if we criminalize selling raw milk to the public in certain states, like here in Georgia, we should also criminalize giving candy to kids. That's a stance I have.

It might not be the most popular opinion, but I truly believe there is absolutely no good reason to give kids candy, period. So that doesn't mean you cannot practice Halloween or you cannot enjoy dressing up and even trick or treating. You know, our kids have not gone trick or treating for the past two years, but this year they said they want to do it again with their friends.

And we don't have an issue with that. We, they go trick or treating, but they know when they come home, they do one of two things. They either dump the candy in the trash, which I think is a waste of. candy. But then again, you know, it is what it is. Or sometimes they actually use the candy, you know, to play with their toys, you know, and they're basically turned toys until they, you know, for a while.

And then we, then we toss them in the trash. But there was really, we have a zero tolerance for candy in the house. We've never had any candy in the house. We will likely never have any candy in the house. And we keep it that way because, you know, that's just, there is, it's toxic. There is nothing good in a candy other than the taste arguably.

And so we we don't even go there. Now, in the past, what we did is, when they were younger, we traded the candy that they got trick or treating for healthier treats that my wife would make from scratch at home, you know, it could be anything from a homemade, you know, maybe a sourdough kind of treat. It could be, you know, something as simple as, you know, fruit juices, you know, in, in, in ice cubes or an ice cream made out of ice cream, you know, raw milk ice cream my wife makes from scratch, you know, something that they feel like, okay, they, they, Got something special because it's a holiday, but it's obviously not the candy.

And so we don't do that anymore. They are not old enough that they know, you know, how we, why we don't eat candy. And so that's not an issue anymore, but again, either, you know, depending on how your kids are, you know, either we avoid the whole circus, you know, or. You know, do it like we do and, you know, just toss it in the trash.

We don't give it to someone else either. You know, that was one of the things where in the beginning we thought, well, we could just gift it to someone else. But I'm like, I'm not going to give something that I know is terrible to other kids. You know, that would be hypocritical, you know? So we just dump them in the trash for the most part.

So I don't have a good solution for Halloween other than maybe, you know, exchanging or trading for something else, for something better. Thanksgiving, however, is a different story. I love Thanksgiving. We all do, even though neither my wife nor I grew up with that holiday. You know, since she's from Costa Rica, I'm from Austria, we don't do Thanksgiving, but we came to appreciate it once we, you know, came to the US.

And there are a couple of things with Thanksgiving, you know, first of all is, you know, the main dish of Thanksgiving typically is a turkey. And as we have learned in one of the last episodes with Dr. Gustin, commercial poultry is just not a health food. It's very high in polyunsaturated fatty acids simply because the type of feed those animals get while being raised, even if it's a pasture raised turkey.

It's not ideal from a fatty acid composition perspective. However, again, as I said before, you know, having turkey once a year is not going to derail us because we make relatively good decisions, you know, for the rest of the year. So we have turkey and typically we buy a pasture raised turkey that was fed without soy or corn from a local farm.

You know, and again, it's still not ideal. But it's the best we can do, at least this year, because next year we're gonna be raising our own turkeys in our backyard. And so it's gonna be a completely different game. We have full control where we feed them, so it's gonna be hopefully the healthiest Turkey we've ever had.

And so, but most people cannot obviously, raise their own turkeys just because they want to get, you know. a good bird. But just buy the best you can and be okay with, you know, the turkey that you get. I would, you know, probably stay away from, you know, a turkey that you buy at, you know, a regular grocery store that was fed a crap diet and, you know, it's just not a good bird overall.

Do the, but do the best you can. For us, it's pasture raised, soy and corn free and we'll roll with it. But even if you have, you know, the least expensive turkey that was not well raised, you know, if you ever had, if you have it only once a year. No big deal at the end of the day. Other than, you know, you're probably gonna be eating turkey for a couple of days in a row, but still, I don't think it's a problem after all.

As far as the stuffing and pies and desserts and stuff are concerned, that's a whole different story, because I think you can derail much more, you know, eating everything that comes with the turkey, rather than the turkey itself. And so what we try is For a couple of years, we didn't do any, any of that, you know, we, instead of, you know, regular stuffing, we, you know, put in carrots or, you know, some veggies or whatever.

Now we don't do that anymore either, but instead, my wife actually makes double fermented sourdough bread from scratch, and we use that as a stuffing. And some of the pies that she makes, they're either, uh, with coconut flour or also with sourdough bread. Now, again, that's likely better than regular. pies, you know, made with regular flour that wasn't fermented that, that still has all of the antineutrients in there, but it's definitely better.

And so considering again, that we are in somewhat good metabolic health, that's okay. I think we can get away with having You know, sourdough pie, you know, or, you know, sourdough stuffing, you know, once, twice, or maybe three times in a year without falling apart. So we do that. One thing that we absolutely don't do is we don't go out in the store and buy those things.

You know, processed, meaning that we don't, we're not going to buy a, you know, an apple pie or whatever pie in the store, knowing that it's full of, you know, artificial flavors and stabilizers and sugars, processed sugars or artificial sweeteners and all of the things that we absolutely don't, don't want to have in our diet, we don't do that, but if it's homemade, either by us or by someone we know, you know, we are good with that because we don't do that every single day.

Another thing that we absolutely don't do, even though it's, you know, kind of seasonal, is we don't go out and buy those sugar laden drinks. Let's say, you know, the flavored coffee at Starbucks that has like 50 grams of, of sugar, you know, that's falls into the same category as candy. It's an absolute no go.

We never do this. If we want to have. a kind of sweet, you know, beverage that goes with the season. We make our own hot chocolate, you know, using raw milk, using real cocoa, using cinnamon, using raw honey from our own hives or even maple syrup, you know? So we make those things from scratch knowing what's in there and.

That's going to be significantly better, especially if you make, you know, a real, you know, a hot cocoa with, with raw milk. I mean, there is nothing in there that you shouldn't be drinking, you know. Even if it's made with raw honey or maple syrup, you know, you don't have to worry about this. But the, you know, store bought Frappuccino or whatever.

So, we try to make as much as we can ourselves from scratch, knowing what goes in there, and so we can enjoy many of the foods that we typically, or that, you know, are traditional for the holiday, like Thanksgiving, without completely going off the rail. For Christmas, it's very similar. You know, we bake cookies either using coconut flour or homemade sourdough.

You know, again, my wife You know, has mastered the sourdough making process. And so we just double ferment our wheat flour to reduce the antinutrients. And that makes it much, a little bit more compatible. I don't want to say much more, but a little bit more compatible with human physiology. So you don't, you know, get all your gut issues and some of the other side effects that you get from eating, you know, regular.

gluten and gluten containing flours. But our main dish even for Christmas is typically something meaty, either a prime rib roast or lamb or something like this. So it's very much meat focused again. And then we just have some of those sides homemade from scratch that go with it. And You know, even cookies.

I mean, we make cookies or my wife bakes cookies. Sometimes my mom, actually one time my grandma sent us cookies from Austria, you know, and we do eat them when we visited last year. You know, my both my mom and my grandmother, you know, they make cookies and not sourdough cookies, just regular cookies, but made from scratch.

Using reasonable ingredients, you know, good quality flours, you know, real butter, et cetera. And we have those, but again, we listen to our bodies. If there is something off, you know, then we stop or we reduce or whatever it takes. We just don't go, you know, on autopilot and keep eating cookies, uh, regardless of how they affect or impact our, our health and our bodies.

But the same goes with, with Halloween, you know, no candies. We don't do, you know, hang like, you know, chocolate stuff or whatever on the Christmas tree and keep eating them. Those are the things that we absolutely. not to. But still, I mean, both Thanksgiving as well as Christmas, I mean, I like to think that we enjoy a fairly traditional holiday with many of the foods that you would typically eat.

We just try to prepare them in the best way possible that doesn't make us fall off the rails completely. And in combination with listening to our bodies, you know, and, and eating mostly more of the foods that are good for us, like the meat part, you know, the, the roast, et cetera, and just less of the side dishes that might be Less ideal or less healthy for new year.

We keep it very simple. We go to bed at our regular time because we don't really see the benefit of disrupting our sleep because of a change in calendar, you know, so we don't, we don't, we don't stay up until midnight to celebrate, you know, we don't, for us, new year is nothing special. We don't, I don't make new year's resolutions.

If I want to do something, if I want to change something, if I want to improve something, I do it right away. It doesn't really matter what. You know, if I want to do something now in October, you know, I do it right away. I don't wait until, you know, new year to have like a new year's resolution. I think whenever you set yourself up for, for failure, if you postpone things that you could do right away, if you don't do them right away, you're not going to do them in the new year either.

That's the experience I've, that I had. And, and that's what I. stick to it. Now on New Year's Day, we often prepare kind of a brunch consisting of, you know, smoked salmon, boiled eggs, ham, you know, cold meats, etc. And that's very much a tradition that I grew up with. So we kind of, you know, brought that back and we do something somewhat special.

It's not really food that we not have otherwise. Back in the days when I was a kid, you know, smoked salmon and stuff that was, you know, fairly expensive. We couldn't afford to have that every day. So it was like a special treat. Fortunately, now we, we, you know, are able to have those things more regularly, but it's still just a thought of putting certain types of foods together in a brunch style type of setup is something traditional that we all enjoy.

And so we do that. But beyond that new year. You know, I don't, we don't get wasted. We don't stay up. We try to stick with our regular routine and, you know, and then be ready to roll on January 1st. Now, food is obviously not the only thing that, that we do to keep ourselves Healthy and avoid getting sick.

Very often I've seen, you know, food is obviously a one major factor, but some of the other lifestyle choices that can negatively impact your health and increases susceptibility to getting sick during that year are things that we, you know, that we very much focus on, including stress management. I think that's really one of the key things.

Everything gets tends to get more stressful and moving faster. And, you know, nobody has time and we need to get this done and this done, you know, before the end of the year or before Christmas or before, you know, whatever. And so we intentionally try to, to slow down and really enjoy, you know, the process, really enjoy, you know, the leaves falling and the days getting, you know, shorter and, you know, temperatures being colder and really enjoy all of those things.

I feel like we also reduce our stress levels and decrease our susceptibility to getting sick because stress is a major factor that can compromise your immune system and weaken it. So we also try to spend, you know, More time, maybe not more, but at least as much time outside as we do in summer, you know, by going for walks, by hiking, by just enjoying the fresh, crisp air and being more in nature, being more, you know, outside instead of stuck at home under artificial light and with It's maybe less than ideal air quality in comparison to being outside.

We also, you know, during that time of the year, we replace artificial sources of light with beeswax candles. You know, we, fortunately we have bees that produce a lot of wax. So every so often, once a year, typically we melt some of that wax and And we light them in the evening instead of using artificial sources of light to help again our circadian rhythm to help us sleep better.

Sleep is another very important factor in helping your immune system to fight whatever it needs to that you might get, you know, exposed to during the day. You know, we enjoy, you know, fall decorations, holiday music, and just the overall spirit without getting too stressed out about what's going on around us.

And we also typically during that time of the year always reflect. On the current year. On the past couple of months and be grateful about what we've accomplished and excited at the same time about what's ahead. You know, what we can do in the, in the new year, what we can do once spring comes around, be it on the homestead, be, depending on on the blogging side, on, on, on the podcasting side, whatever the case might be, you know, always that, that balance between being grateful.

And we try to enjoy as much time as we can, you know, in the company of friends and family, and by bringing that all together, by making reasonable choices as far as food is concerned, by slowing down, by being grateful, by being intentional about what we're doing. What we eat and when we eat things and thinking about how we can make certain foods that we all enjoy Maybe a little bit healthier, you know that combination has been Working out for us so far in in making sure we don't get sick During that year, you know, there is nothing worse than being out for two weeks because you have the flu or whatever the case may be is floating around by just being able to function by enjoying life by being able to do the things that you want to do without being negatively impacted by it.

By this he's a great thing. And you know, it's, it's at the end of the day, it's very simple. There is no rocket science. You know, you don't need to be perfect. You don't have a perfect diet. You don't need to deprive yourself of everything that's out there. Just make smart choices, listen to your body, take your health into consideration when you make certain choices.

You know, can you, or should you? do something even though you're already sick or super stressed out. Maybe today is not the day, you know, to dig into those cookies. Maybe, you know, it's, you're better off, you know, enjoying something else. So be mindful, be intentional. And if you do that, you're going to be in great shape and you can significantly reduce your risk of getting sick.

If you like this episode, I hope you did, you know, let me know, shoot me an email. share the episode with someone who think might need to hear this or might need some tips to get them over the line into the new year and to make proper choices. And with that we're going to wrap it up and I hope I'll see or hear you in the next episode.