It's that time of the Year.

No... not the holidays. The time of the year when every begins to obsess about their diet and losing weight. Note this also occurs immediately before the beginning of swimsuit season. And if you are from down under, these times actually coincide.

I saw a post on Facebook the other day that really resonated with me. It said, "It's not what you eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas that counts, it's what you eat between Christmas and Thanksgiving."

I ate all my favorites on Thanksgiving. I plan on eating all of my favorites at Christmas, too. What I'm not doing is the mindless grazing at parties. There were no late-night leftovers from Thanksgiving. (We ate at my mother's and didn't take anything home with us.)

Healthy eating isn't about deprivation, it is about substitution. Make better choices, eat smaller portions of those can't-live-without-them favorites. I'm substituting royal icing for buttercream on my cookies this year. That is about 100 calorie per cookie savings. What are you doing this year to have your cake and eat it too?