First off, Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! I am looking forward to a nice holiday with the family–uneventful would be best. 🙂

Thanksgiving seems to be known as the day for “fat pants”. You know, the day when everyone tends to overeat to the point of meat sweats and afternoon naps. What is the key to surviving the seemingly never-ending hoard of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and more? I’ll summarize my thoughts into two bullet points so you don’t have to read the rest of the post:

  • Portion Control
  • Log What You Eat

Follow those two points, and look at your intake/exercise over the course of the week, and you should not have any disappointments when you step on that scale next week.

Portion Control

Hey… stick to 1/2 cup of mashed potatoes and a sliver of pie and you get to try a little bit of everything without breaking the calorie bank. Seems easy right? Let’s be honest, there is a good chance that you’ll go over your caloric intake/tracking points for a normal day. Sometimes, that is difficult to avoid–especially if you’re not making the menu. Ease the burden by limiting portion size of each item you have. To make this easier, before even sitting at the dais of delights, have a glass or two of cool water to start that “full” feeling earlier.

Log What You Eat

Are you a Weight Watchers participant–great, no problem. Their app makes logging very simple. If not, you can still write down what you eat in a notebook. While you’re at it, log your exercise and water intake too. When you see things written down you are less likely to want to have to stare at the embarrassing “half a pecan pie” for the next few days.

Regardless of what you eat at Thanksgiving, give yourself a break and just try to make the week as a whole a winner. Limit your calories/points for the week, get plenty of exercise (a post dinner walk with the family is great!) and no matter what you have on Turkey day you should be alright. Also, don’t forget your water intake to help flush your system!

I hope everyone has a blessed Thanksgiving and a joyful start to the holiday season!

 

Photo: Tim Sackton