Thanksgiving is upon us! A day to give thanks for the many blessings that we have, to enjoy time spent with friends and family and to stuff our pie holes with lots of… well, pie. And turkey, stuffing, potatoes, green bean casserole, jello and many more of our traditional foods.
Before I decided to write this post on how you can walk away from this food battle unscathed, I thought about why this holiday has become synonymous with stuffing yourself silly?!?
We are very fortunate in America. Just By being born in America, we are automatically richer than, I believe it is 96% of the world ( I could be slightly off on the percentage).
Whatever the exact percentage is, we are blessed to not have as many worries about shelter, lack of medical attention or starvation.
So, my guess would be that we pig out to celebrate that we do not have to worry about these things. Even years ago some one stuffing their face on Thanksgiving could be lead to many calories consumed.
In our modern culture, as the foods that we eat become more and more processed and filled with fat and sugar, all of our eating on Turkey Day has become even worse. I have read that the average American eats somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 calories on Thanksgiving Day. That is a lot of food!
So, I still want you to eat drink and thank God for all of blessings in your life. Here are some tips to do that and minimize the damage.
- Eat normally through out the day. Do not starve yourself to make up for the feast.
- Drink lots of water through out the day. When your body is thirsty it makes you feel hungry, so you end up eating when you just needed some liquids.
- Drink a pre-meal protein shake 30 minutes before dinner. Research shows that you eat less calories over all if you do this.
- Make the turkey and healthy salads the main part of the meal. Add on small amounts of the other things that you want to try. This will let you sample the different offerings. You can always go back for more of what you really want to spend your calories on. Which reminds me that in our house we have a saying if we eat junk food that was not extremely good. That saying is “What a waste of a cheat meal!”
- Avoid or only have small samples of anything with lots of sugar (sugar is very bad for you!) and any mashed potatoes that are loaded with butter or sour cream. Many people put 1000 calories or more of just mashed potatoes down in one sitting!
- Set Boundaries. If you want alcohol, or pie or something in particular, go ahead. Just make sure to give yourself boundaries ahead of time. 1-2 drinks, 1/2 a slice or 1 slice of pie. Otherwise a few drinks turns into 10-12 or a little bit of pie turns into 14 trips for a sliver and you wind up eating 6 pieces!
- No matter how good or bad you do, make sure to enjoy the delicious foods and don’t feel guilty about this once a year meal. The worst thing you can do is feel guilty and say “since I already messed up I might as well eat what I want, it’s too late any way (sound familiar to anyone).”
I am just trying to save you from hours of misery after the meal and from gaining some extra lbs. I hope this helps.
I would love to hear any suggestions that you have used in the past! Please make sure to post them below.
