Extended Holiday Overindulging and Return to Routine in the Empty Nest – E120

Rick Denton (00:00)
This week on The Loud Quiet, extended holiday overindulging and return to routine in the empty nest. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Loud Quiet, recording this in the beginning of 2026. I'm actually getting used to saying 26 a lot earlier than I'm used to saying it. It's very comfortable for me already.

Clancy Denton (00:20)
It's not for me, I'm still writing 2025 in my journal entry every morning.

Rick Denton (00:26)
Yeah. And now as sure as I say that, I guarantee the next thing I do is I'm going to type 25 on something, something that is exciting about the beginning of 26. We've mentioned it before. Our book is coming out in early 2026. And if you'd like to get actually an early release of the introduction to that book, if you haven't already, you sign up for the book, the newsletter list, and you'll get a copy of the introduction to the book. You can find that at the loud quiet.com hit the book button.

and it'll take you to everywhere you need to sign up and all the information that you need to know about the.

Clancy Denton (01:00)
Yeah, we're really excited about that. yes, it is, you know, what the second going into the third week of 2026. And so we're not doing a resolution show. We're not doing a micro enhancement show like we did last year, but we are going to do a why did we bend so much? ⁓

Rick Denton (01:23)
Why do we treat Thanksgiving to New Year's and New Year's plus? Like a just gorge fest.

Clancy Denton (01:27)
Yeah, for us it's been New Year's plus.

Just free for all. Yeah, I mean.

Rick Denton (01:36)
Do you think that I know it's common, I mean, feel like this year, man, this year I felt like, all right, rules do not apply.

Clancy Denton (01:46)
I think this year because we were home, we had a lot of social activities and a lot of those social activities revolve around food. know, we had people over that last year we did not do. So what did I cook? Lasagna, wine, bread, desserts. I mean, I made more desserts this year than I think I have in a really long time.

Rick Denton (02:14)
Maybe that's it. Although, you know, I love desserts, but that's never my kryptonite. My kryptonite is the salty, it's the snacky. And maybe that was my plus this year, though. Plus, plus size. Maybe that's what got me this year was the good desserts, too.

Clancy Denton (02:34)
I know you always say that, that, no, salt is my kryptonite. If it's there, you're going to eat it. It's just because I don't cook ⁓ sugary stuff very often.

Rick Denton (02:46)
Those

are two different thoughts though, because yes, you're totally right. I still say that if I were told you can only choose one, I'm choosing the salty. The sweet is not where I'm going to go.

Clancy Denton (03:00)
Yeah, but you like you have a full say in what desserts we have for every holiday. No, I'm not saying that, but there is always pecan pie and there is always cherry pie.

Rick Denton (03:08)
That makes me sound like some sort of monster.

I think that's okay. Yeah, let's clarify this. I have the pies that I like to see there, but there's nothing that says, we can't do because a new dessert showed up.

Clancy Denton (03:24)
This

year we switched it up a little bit. But yes, so we thought we'd talk about Well, what we did to ourselves and then how are we going to fix it and one of us I Don't know if this was dumb or I'm not calling you dumb. Well, no, and I don't I wouldn't call a genius dumb or like a dare

Rick Denton (03:43)
Orgy.

Clancy Denton (03:52)
to go get your blood work done.

Rick Denton (03:55)
January 7th. I had my blood work done January 7th. And part of the inspiration for this episode is actually the results of that blood test. And I don't mind sharing it with you all because, heck, we're in our 50s. It's not quite the same as it used to be. My LDL and my glucose are a lot higher than they have been. ⁓ Even that scary word of pre-diabetes kind of shows up in the results. I recognize how impactful

A season of gluttony has been on those results. I like how you said it's a dare. I think actually what I'm doing here is, okay, if I eat probably the worst that I can possibly eat in my life, what does it look like? And I mean, all right, not too bad.

Clancy Denton (04:44)
I'm too bad.

Rick Denton (04:46)
The colors were yellow, not red. So I'm sure it's going to be primarily lifestyle changes or forget that, just a return to normal. I want to talk about how the heck we get to the return to normal, but I'm, I want to talk more about like, why, why do we treat some magic period in the calendar as a no holds barred, feed me Sally kind of moment.

Clancy Denton (05:13)
It's an interesting question and I feel like.

Our ⁓ culture, you and me, I'll just talk about us. We do not eat or drink like that during the rest of the year, unless we're on vacation or it's another holiday or something. But we do during the week, I cook and we eat pretty healthy and typically,

Rick Denton (05:39)
That's our caveat here, yeah.

Clancy Denton (05:49)
you might pour a glass of bourbon during the week, but it's not every night. It's infrequent. I rarely, unless I'm going out with my girlfriends or something, but we were making cocktails and meeting people for drinks and going out with our kids for drinks. it really was a lot more. And now one thing,

I cannot drink in my 50s the way I used to be able to drink. So that probably helped a little bit, I don't know. We've been almost not conditioned, but a lot of the world that I came from, fitness, was, okay, eat well, but then you have your cheat day. And so the cheat day was like, great, balls to the wall, I can eat whatever I want.

And again, in the 20s, 30s, and even into early 40s, you know, that worked. And chips would show up in the pantry Friday, because I knew, we're going to have chips this weekend. And I've talked about this before. I have that mentality of I do not have a lot of self-control when it comes to food. And that has been an issue for me from my childhood.

have changed some of those habits, but if it is not in the house, I won't eat it. But if it is in the house, I'm eating it. I do not have the willpower that some other people in our household do that if the chip bag is in the pantry, it's in there. No, if the chip bag is in the pantry, I'm eating the chip.

Rick Denton (07:41)
You know, it's interesting to hear you say that because I'm actually starting to feel almost the opposite with me. And that is that I'm starting to wonder if by focusing on cheat period, whether it's day, day, season, cause that's what- Week, like you just did. Like the holiday season is the cheat season, right? I'm starting to think that I may overindulge to such a degree

degree because it's restricted and no one's telling me what I can and can't do. I don't mean that. A self restriction that, okay, well it's Saturday, therefore I can have drinks as opposed to I had some bourbon on Tuesday and I had this on Thursday and I had, and it's almost like the kid who is restricted from certain kinds of foods and then they go to college and they go nuts. And I really like, I'm right now in the middle of

actively processing, do I want to continue to live the cheat day lifestyle or do I just want to, if I want, then I have, and therefore in the end, my total consumption might actually be less.

Clancy Denton (08:54)
And I think that's...

maybe the shift that needs to happen in us, in our culture, the social media and those kinds of things that I'm being fed because our food is crap. know, is horrible. When we go to some of these other countries and we eat

Rick Denton (09:19)
The system in the US is garbage.

Clancy Denton (09:26)
what you feel like is worse than you do here. We don't gain any weight because their food is not processed.

Rick Denton (09:33)
feels, yeah, it's cleaner. the amount of pasta that I put in my belly pouch when we were in Italy and the amount of wine that I had and all of that. And you never felt that. And so, yeah, maybe it is some of the, well, we live in the US, so we're gonna have to deal with the system that we have. ⁓ But that idea of a cleaner approach to it.

Clancy Denton (09:57)
Well, and you talking about being restricted, you know, a lot of that is probably me or is me because I do the grocery shopping. So I don't have that stuff in our house until, okay. Yeah, we're going to have to be in. Yeah, whatever. And, know, when the kids come home, they're like, there's where are the chips? And I'm like, well, that's right. You know,

Rick Denton (10:19)
Here's

an empty nest dilemma is when your kids come home, what happens to your diet?

Clancy Denton (10:22)
But they have so much better self-control and probably because I did not restrict them from anything growing up. I was never that parent that was like, no, you can't have, you know, I did not do that with them. And so they are much better at.

restricting themselves than having someone else restricting

Rick Denton (10:47)
I think it's come to mind to me more in the context of alcohol. So it's not actually the grocery shopping.

Clancy Denton (10:55)
We have plenty of that in the house.

Rick Denton (10:59)
Well, I like a lot of different cocktails and so that means that, well, let's buy this Liqueur and let's buy this. I like creativity. And I just, I found myself after a couple of the, you know, like some of the mornings where you wake up with a little bit of a thicker tongue or that kind of stuff. And I'm not talking about stupid over consumption, just in your fifties over consumption and realizing, gosh, why did I have that last X cocktail?

Clancy Denton (11:04)
car is stocked.

You

Rick Denton (11:26)
And I know that some of it, think subconsciously, but if I really start to look a little bit even consciously, it's because, today's Saturday and I can, as opposed to, I don't need to have another one, because I might, if I want one two days from now. So that whole binge restriction thing is something that I think I'm going to play with a little.

Clancy Denton (11:46)
My mouth was so dry every morning when I woke up. And I know, it's the sugar. The sugar is what kills me, whether it's in the alcohol or it's in the cookies or the cereal that we had around the house because of all the stuff we made. But did that stop me from coming home on whatever day it was this week? I'm going to make chocolate chip cookies and have those out for everyone to eat.

Rick Denton (12:14)
I was actually thinking about your cookies. Because recently, we're not getting into the politics aspect of it, but recently there's been some reshaping of the health guidance. there's elements that are very controversial, but there's some of it that's pretty obvious. The processed foods are bad. Okay, boom. And one of the things they mentioned was cookies. And I get that they're talking about the Oreos, the pre-packaged, that kind of stuff. I wonder though, if you think about what is an ingredient in a cookie that you make at home,

There's really not much that I would call processed or ultra processed beyond the actual chocolate chip itself. And even that's probably pretty clean ingredients.

Clancy Denton (12:53)
Yeah, it would be interesting to see because when I was walking with Brandy this morning, we were actually talking about Italian food. And she said that an article just came out about how we don't even do our packaged pasta the same way that they do it in other countries. It's even cut a different way. And so, yeah. And so it makes me think, OK, are we processing our

flower, but you know, again, I don't want to get off on all that kind of stuff, but it just

Rick Denton (13:27)
we

don't know. ⁓ We don't know what the heck we're about.

Clancy Denton (13:30)
just

put that thought in me of, you know. ⁓

Rick Denton (13:35)
Like even the things that-

Clancy Denton (13:36)
I'll

you this. I don't want to go to a fully unprocessed life because one, I don't want to cook that way. It takes a lot longer, which kudos to those of you who choose to do that. But I also like the crap sometimes. I mean, you know, there is something to be said that I don't want to have to give up Cheetos for the rest of my life. I like a Cheeto. ⁓ you know, and that gets to the part.

Rick Denton (14:01)
binge. Yeah.

Like if we said, right, hey, we're gonna do a instead of a dry January, I don't know what the the opposite of the word chip is. But if we did an anti chip January, I guarantee that Frito Lay stock would triple in February because of my consumption when I came off of that.

Clancy Denton (14:17)
And the problem again with me and is that It's very hard for me to just have one handful. I just keep going

Rick Denton (14:27)
At least you didn't use the laser. You can't have just one. No, no, you said one handful. So at least you're honest there.

Clancy Denton (14:32)
So, know, it's just, like I said, you can, you went and had your blood work done. I have not stepped on the scale. I did before Christmas, but I had a strategy during the holiday season. Do tell. Well, I already am a fasted eater. Like I don't eat until usually between 12 and one. I've done that for years.

Well, I've done that when you turn a certain age and the weight's not coming off like it used to. And it just made me feel better. And I've done it for years now. Well, during this season, I was like, okay, I'm going to push my fast to even later. And I did. And it worked. So my number was down before we really went into the

bulk of the Christmas season. I was like, have a little bulk. So I was like, okay, I have a little wiggle room. So yeah, but I have not gotten back on the scale and I will not because of course next week we're on a trip.

Rick Denton (15:39)
And I have a little

And you know my feelings about the number, right? The number is such a false metric, or can be a false

Clancy Denton (15:57)
But

to women, is, and I know I get it. I also know my body and where I like to be. And like we said, now that we're in our 50s, it's a lot harder to, it can creep up a few pounds and it's a lot harder to get those few pounds off.

Rick Denton (16:03)
I'm deny that part of it. am here to... No. ⁓

Well, and that's one thing that certainly we've realized here is exercise is not enough, right? Both you and I are very consistent in exercising. It's about what's going in. All right, great. How are we changing this? What does this look like going forward?

Clancy Denton (16:37)
Well, let's see, tonight we're going out with friends, meeting the Dallas children for drinks and then going out to this. And like I said,

Rick Denton (16:46)
And we're

not even walking between restaurant and bar. Like we didn't even decide to put some steps there.

Clancy Denton (16:51)
And like I said, and then next week we're going. Okay. Well, we're going to a conference which will be filled with beverages and food. feel like this year I just feel like, and I don't, I can still fit into my clothes. You know, they're not as loose as they were, but they're not like, my gosh, I can't get the button buttoned.

Today, again, when we were discussing what we were wearing tonight ⁓ with Brandy, I was talking with her and she, said, well, I bought this skirt in November. I said, but I haven't. And she said, can you get a zip? I said, I don't know, but I did try it on. Yes, I could get this.

Rick Denton (17:35)
There

we go. All right. Zipper test.

Clancy Denton (17:38)
So, you know, we know what we have to do. We have to get back into our... We don't need the alcohol every night. You know, there's so many studies, okay, a glass of wine a night is great, but then the next week you hear, well, maybe not.

Rick Denton (17:54)
I've given up on all those studies because it does seem to go back and forth, back and forth. ⁓ I think it's like a lot of things. Overconsumption of anything is bad.

Clancy Denton (18:04)
Even

over consumption of water is bad.

Rick Denton (18:06)
I

was... there was a little Bible in here. The Bible verse today was, you know, everything that is good and true is from God. Well, everything that's good and true includes some of these things. The overconsumption of good and true, it doesn't matter what that is. So, yeah. And so, I'm not going to overconcern myself with a glass of wine, or not a glass of wine, that kind of stuff, but it is just that consumption. I think for me, it's routine.

A reestablishment of routine allows me to make healthier choices. The meals that I control are breakfast and lunch. Even today, the instability of our schedule today and how this played out resulted in a less healthy lunch choice than other lunch choices. When it's routine, it just gets simple to do healthier things. They can be planned out and...

thoughtfulness applied to it as opposed to I've got 15 minutes to make the belly stop growling. What can I shove in my belly from the pantry?

Clancy Denton (19:13)
Yeah, and I I do I I plan our meals I cook Every night of the week that we're home Well, I can probably count on one hand the month in the month of December and going into January how many times I cooked at home because We had something almost every night or then we threw a quick trip into Austin and there where we stopped at Bucky's twice And eight at Bucky's twice

and went to dinner that I mean, basically, we drove, basically we drove to Austin to eat dinner and the dinner was excellent. But you know, those things are not routine. And so, yes, I mean, I literally sat down last week and I was like, ⁓ I was going to meal plan. I was like, there's we are home one night this week. And I asked Tegan what she wanted before she went back to school and she requested, you know, her

the pesto pasta dish that I make with the unhealthy pasta. Yes, I bought the what she calls the unhealthy pasta and I accidentally picked up the thick spaghetti. it was like, was so good. know, but I was like, my gosh, I can't chew this. Yes, getting back to the routine, which will happen in a couple of weeks.

Rick Denton (20:28)
⁓ god.

Clancy Denton (20:36)
And everyone craves routine as much as we all deny that we want routine and we want monotony. We do need it to some degree and crave it I think to some degree because it just resets because I'm still in the mindset of, know, we're going out tonight.

We're gonna be gone for, you know, out of sorts next week. So I'm still like, I might as well just not change anything for the next few days in between.

Rick Denton (21:12)
It is that so I mentioned routine and you're right that there's a particular point in the calendar that is going to mark really our return to the routine The reality is though, especially in the empty nest

and especially in the type of work that you and I do now in this creative space, routine isn't necessarily as fixed as it is. There will always be something that stands in the way of routine. And so while I think routine is there, I also think there's the element of just do one thing. I saw that, somebody was talking about that. Don't do a bunch of lists to help things get better. Do the one thing.

Clancy Denton (21:51)
I did find that I kind of went into this and I have changed my mindset along the way of, you know, I used to have like,

I wouldn't call it an issue, but it gave me anxiety if I knew I was going out during the week because I was like, I remember that. You know, was like, no, that will put me off of my, you know, plans and all that stuff. And I mean, I used to be a diehard calorie counter and that kind of thing. And I haven't done that.

you know, probably the past year and a half, I would say. So I've seen a shift in that and I have seen that, okay, I can maintain the type of body that I want to maintain even by shifting that mentality a little bit. But we've pushed the envelope a little bit. Six weeks.

Rick Denton (22:59)
So you're saying that the tension that you felt with getting off schedule with one evening has now been replaced with, huh, I wonder what it's like not to do something on an evening. ⁓

Clancy Denton (23:10)
And

I feel you're just getting inundated right now with all of the supplements, things you can take to lose weight. mean, that's, you know, that

Well, really, it used to just be around this time. Now it's pretty much year round. I am a supplement person. I have tried probably almost everything out there. And the girls that I am friends with at my age, we all seem to do it. And so, you know, I don't know.

How much is that hurting? How much is it really helping? You know, what I really should do is put them all into Chad GBT and say, okay, what does this do? You know, because really at this point I'm like, well, I'm taking this and this, but I don't know that has that in it. Yeah, so it's just.

Rick Denton (24:12)
And you know, my deep skepticism to all that supplement stuff because most of... That's not fair. I actually don't know. I believe that most of it is generated from a direct to consumer mindset of what can we do to sell this product, not how does this product help. ⁓ And that has been true of supplements. It's been true of cosmetics. It's been true of... I was talking to someone from the pharmaceutical industry, the pure play pharmaceutical industry.

And she was making the comment, she's like, I cannot believe what cosmetics and supplement companies get away with saying because in the pharma space, you can't say certain things unless they're proven. Right. You just say, hey, going to grow in all the right places and shrink in all the right places. This is not FDA approved.

Clancy Denton (24:52)
not FDA approved.

wording

is very it's interesting when you really start paying attention to the wording because it is it is misleading and you know and now at least at least now you can read people's comments you know

Rick Denton (25:18)
that I'm skeptical of because there's comment farms and so I understand.

Clancy Denton (25:22)
⁓ But the negative ones are in there. I've noticed Amazon has started doing this.

And I didn't notice it before, but now at the end of someone's review, it'll say, was sent this brand or something. Yes. And I'm like, okay, well I'm taking yours out of.

Rick Denton (25:44)
The ones that I immediately ignore it and the shows had dated some of these reviews are but it says this was a Vine promotion back when I I what Vine was but you'll see these this was a promotional item this was a promotional item and so no I don't even look at that I don't you know and so much of you mentioned social media earlier there's so much of this is influencer driven and I just I don't buy it I don't believe some of the things and some of the claims that are out there because

I kind of come from the school and what's interesting is you're in this school too. I know you are. That really the only way to achieve anything from a health perspective is to exercise more and eat better.

Clancy Denton (26:23)
I that, but I will say with hormonal shifts and age, that was not working for me. I was doing those things. So what else can I do? Eat a piece of lettuce and be done with it? No, I don't want to do that. But I was finding that I'm doing the same things I was doing that worked before and it's not working.

Rick Denton (26:41)
That raises a-

And so that's where, and this pure, pure bias or I guess just the, where I grew up. I grew up in a medical family. So my perspective on that would be absolutely hormonal shifts are real, they're biological, they can be addressed medically. It's the supplement world that I just have such a skepticism toward.

Clancy Denton (27:11)
You get one thing from the medical side, but then if you see a nutritionist or a whole, you know, it's, sometimes it's conflicting things or sometimes, okay, yeah, let's just put you on hormones. Well, not everybody wants to be on hormones. there's so much.

Rick Denton (27:28)
Like even

it's a little simpler for the guy world, but right, the whole low T kind of thing. And from the beginning, I guarantee every male, nobody quote me on this. I'm not a medical advisor, but you know, after 30, probably your T just bottoms out and it's below the levels that you'd want it to be or whatever. ⁓ But I've never gone on any T shots or anything like that because my understanding is once you're on, you're not getting off. So I don't want to get on that wheel until the point at which my life, my lifestyle,

and everything else requires it. But I will be looking not towards, I'm not going to name names, but the generic branded clinic that you hear on the radio, but I'll be working with my MD that I have a relationship with.

Clancy Denton (28:13)
This turned into a little bit more of, you know, and these are things that everyone is dealing with, especially in the emptiness age category. You know, it is really crazy how much your body changes after you turn a certain age. know, I,

Rick Denton (28:16)
End rant.

We'll

say that I use that actually. You know, we were talking about just one thing and something. I have gotten a lot better in the evening thinking to myself, will this next X, will this next dessert, will this next chip, will this next drink, what will it do to the way I sleep and how I feel tomorrow? That was never a thought in my 20s, but the 50s body. Now I'm actually leveraging that to perhaps do, make some better choices.

Clancy Denton (29:03)
Well, and it's good when you also surround yourself with friends and people that are in that same thinking of, know, it's not just, oh no, come on, let's keep going. You know, we're all like, okay, we're done and let's go. I was watching something the other day that had an age gap of people. You know, there was a 23 year old and then there was someone who was

probably in their late 30s edging up on 40. And they had been heavily drinking the night before and the 23 year old comes down and she's like, know, bebopping around and they're like, oh my gosh, how are you doing that? And someone goes, she's 23. Like, exactly.

Rick Denton (29:51)
Which is why we should never use Tanner as our barometer on whether we should stay out or not stay out. We should decide.

Clancy Denton (29:58)
Even some of the 23 year olds don't want to use Tanner as their barometer. He's like the Energizer bunny. just, he gets fueled by just being out in energy. No, he's, uh-uh. man. Yeah. I'd almost like to hear from, cause I know there's people out there that to them it's just a day or a, you know, I mean, Christmas is yay Christmas, but they don't.

Rick Denton (30:04)
And it's not always booze either.

Clancy Denton (30:26)
lack of self-control that some of us do. How do you all do it? Yeah, how do you do it? You're going into 2026 feeling much better than the rest of us probably are. So share with us that.

Rick Denton (30:43)
All right, so as we exit this season of overindulgence and enter a season of normalcy, just want to thank all of y'all for being with us here on this show. And thank you for listening to another episode of The Loud Quiet.