ANN BAILEY: January means wrestling with concession stand food

• Ann Bailey

Ann Bailey

Talk about it

Ah, January, a time for a fresh start and work on that New Year’s resolutions list. With the holidays in the rear view mirror, tackling the one about eating healthier and getting more exercise should be one of the simpler ones to accomplish, right?

Not really.

While avoiding treats, fast food and sitting may have been relatively easy in the days before I had two sons participating in sports, that’s not the reality anymore. While they are burning off calories competing on the field or mat. I am putting them on along the sidelines or in the bleachers.

While, food is available at all of the sporting events my sons participate in, I find that concessions at the wrestling meets and tournaments really derail my eating-healthier, doing-more-exercise plan. That’s probably because during wrestling season I am confined to the indoors and spend most of my time sitting. At their track meets and baseball and football games, at least I can pace back and forth to burn off a few calories.

Choices

I’m not faulting the groups sponsoring the concessions at wrestling events because they do provide some nutritious choices such as bananas, apples, baby carrots, etc. I just find the pizza, taco-in-a-bag and super nachos hard to resist. After consuming one of the latter group as a main course, it seems appropriate for me to cap it off with some form of chocolate, whether it be in the form of delicious home-baked treats, such as cupcakes, bars or cookies, or candy. Then, of course, I need a soda to wash it all down.

Because there are several all-day Saturday wrestling tournaments, there’s also ample opportunity to snack on popcorn. I do walk by the salt shaker, which makes me feel a little bit virtuous.

Comfort food

I think that besides tasting good, the foods I consume at the tournaments give me comfort. I am finding that as my sons get older, it’s getting harder, not easier to watch them wrestle. On wrestling days, my stomach gets tied up in knots early in the morning and remains that way throughout the afternoon and into the evening.

While I am not a vocal wrestling mom and it may be hard to tell on the outside how I anxious I become during my sons’ matches, on the inside I am agonizing. Doing something with my hands, such as popping food into my mouth is my alternative to clenching my fists and digging my fingernails into my palms.

I know that I could avoid the healthy eating landmines if I used more will power and chose from the healthy foods that are available. I also know that I could bring my own lunch and save both cash and calories.

But I do neither and accept the fact that I may weigh a little more by the end of the wrestling season than I did when I started. That doesn’t mean that I’ve given up on my better-eating, more exercise New Year’s resolution, it just means I’ve postponed it until late February when the wrestling season is over. I should be able to stick to it — until the track season commences in a couple of months.

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