Olivia’s Family’s Unusual Thanksgiving Tradition

Every other day of the year, I'm fairly conscious about what kind of food I'm putting into my body, portion control (except when it comes to buffalo wings) etc...

For one day, that all goes out the window - Thanksgiving.

And, as it should, right? It after all only comes around once a year. One day out of 365 where I can eat all the green bean casserole and other homemade goodness I want.

'But Olivia, everyone does this on Thanksgiving.' You're thinking to yourself. But you're oh, so wrong...

You see, this year marks the 14th Anniversary of the Cronin Fat Turkey Award. It's a traveling turkey trophy that is passed along from one family member to the next based on their Thanksgiving Day meal performance. What I mean by that is, every Thanksgiving, we dust off my mom's scale she keeps in her bedroom closet, bring it down stairs, and let the games begin.

Everyone in my family weighs themselves before our Thanksgiving meal and after. Whoever gains the most weight in the sit-down gets their name on the trophy and bragging rights for the next year.

There are rules that go along with this also:

1. You must be wearing the exact same clothing when you weigh each time
2. There must be a witness to your weight that writes it down on the "official" weigh-in sheet
3. Your weigh-in must occur before we sit down as a family to the dinner table, and concludes when you have finishing with that sitting. (i.e. you can sit and eat for as long as you want, but once you eat dessert, you're done).

And probably a couple others I'm missing also, but that's pretty much the gist of our Fat Turkey Award. It is actually CRAZY how many lbs. you put on during one sitting at Thanksgiving. If you and your family are brave enough, try it this year!