Gluttony, step to one side please

I like turkey. I don't like turkey. I like turkey when it is cooked whole and eaten with all the usual trimmings of fluffy buttery mashed potatoes, silky gravy, sweet cranberry sauce, stuffing and candied sweet potatoes. Turkey breast? Then I don't like turkey. Because turkey breast is served with baked potatoes, dry and boring. It's served with steamed broccoli. There's no crispy skin or wing bones to gnaw on. So I really only like turkey during the holidays when I would never consider restricting my intake or cooking just a low fat healthy turkey breast.
This year was wonderful. We brined the turkey in a new way that resulted in moist but firm white meat. We (the "we" is my daughter and I) rubbed the turkey with Kosher salt and left it in a plastic bag in the frig overnight. I'm sure a longer brining would be better but we only had about 36 hours.
We laughed as we cooked: Each dish used at least one stick of butter, sometimes two. Butter here. Butter there. And lots of brown sugar.
The meal was amazing. Every dish was perfectly cooked. And I ate very little. Why???? I wish I could have a redo right now. But I wasn't hungry. Or at least not hungry enough to stuff myself. I may have a history of eating past "fullness" but I have to be hungry at the start or I cannot do it. I just wasn't hungry. Perhaps it was the bag of potato chips I ate while cooking? Or the real sugar Pepsi I drank to wash down the chips. Or the delicious breakfast my husband and I had at a wonderful place in Venice, CA. I don't know. I just know that I only ate one small piece of turkey and a tiny spoonful of all the accompaniments. Now I lament that I didn't have more. Another lamentation to add to my tally for my life. Usually it's that I ate too much and I'm sorry. This time I'm sorry I didn't eat more!
So back home, Thanksgiving over. A decision by my husband and me that we have to stop. Eating isn't as much fun as it used to be when we were younger. It's getting harder to stuff ourselves. It doesn't feel as good. It's down right painful. It used to be a joke to come home with the top button my pants opened. Now I wear pants with elastic waists but still, the expansion is not funny.
So, dear gluttony, please step to one side. We're not proposing diets but we are proposing reduction. We're going to continue to enjoy the gastronomic wonders of the restaurants we love but we're going to do so in smaller portions. Sharing perhaps. In fact, last night we shared dinner and it was lovely. Also, it cost way less! We shared an appetizer and we shared an entree. It was enough food. And it was good.
Getting older sucks. We can't eat as much as we used to. Forget the aches and pains upon awakening, the loss of hearing, the failing eyesight, the sagging skin. We can't eat as much as we did when we were young. That's the lament for the day.