Holiday Eating

Everyone struggles to stay in healthy eating mode during the holidays. It is easy to keep eating healthy at home where you have all your own choices, but the parties, shopping, and travel make it really challenging. I tried looking up statistics on holiday weight gain and came up with anywhere from 1 pound to 6 pounds in a six week period. The point is that obesity is a huge issue in our culture and weight loss strategies get abandoned at stressful and food focused times.

Exercise
It seems obvious that exercise is important at all time of the year. At the darkest time of the year, our instinct is to hibernate and be less active. To some extent, this is okay, but it's really important to get outside and walk whenever time allows. Even for 10 minutes. We need the sunlight and air. If nothing else, walk on the weekends or shop at outdoor malls. Bundle up and get out there.

I also encourage incorporating activity in your family tradition. Thanksgiving morning after getting that bird or whatever in the oven, go out for a long walk somewhere interesting. It will totally change the day.

Last Christmas Eve, we went for a 7 mile walk on the Coventry bike path with another couple. It was great to spend time with our good friends prior to going to family dinners.

Pick and Choose
Holidays are about being thankful for family and blessings. We love to acknowledge this through giant meals. Be conscious. Take a moment to be truly thankful and then make choices about your eating from that place. Try to focus on a 3/4 plate full of vegetables. Thanksgiving tends to be very starchy. If you're the cook, try adding a giant salad to the list to balance the potatoes, sweet potatoes (no marshmallows please), and stuffing. Turkey and carbs creates a lot of bloating, obviously. I have always felt like this meal would be better digested if eaten in courses instead of all on one plate, but no one likes this idea. Personally, I've come to like turkey but I know I can't digest it with all those carbs so I either just have turkey and veggies or just veggies and carbs. I do love mashed potatoes. Pick and choose your calories. I know it's hard to have self control, but really, knowing and living in your body is just more important than overeating.

Be the Healthy Cook
Leaving the marshmallows off of the sweet potatoes seems an obvious way to reduce ridiculously useless caloric intake, so why do these little nightmares still appear on so many tables in culture where more than half of us are very overweight? Where did this tradition come from anyway?

Regardless of what you think people expect from your holiday dinners, you have some choice about what you cook and how you cook it. It's not just the holiday desserts that get us into trouble. Here are some common fat and calorie filled holiday choices that can and should be avoided:

Green Bean Casserole: The one with the Cream 'O Mushroom soup is around 250 calories per serving.

Cranberry Sauce (Canned): About 200 calories per serving because most have high fructose corn syrup.

Mashed Potatoes: About 200 calories in a half a cup.

Gravy: 100-300 calories per serving depending on how it is made.

A nice white fluffy roll: 150-300 calories depending on how buttery it is.

Apple Pie: Usually around 500 calories per slice.

Roasted Turkey: 8 oz is about 450 calories. I'm not going into deep fat fried turkeys because why bother?

That's just a sampling and keep in mind that these are the calories when you have just one reasonably sized serving. It's an easy 2000-3000 calorie meal when eating just one serving of each, and most eat double that. That's a lot. A whole lot. And you may think, "But it's just one day!" But is it? You eat the leftovers for a few days. And the Thanksgiving just rolls into the whole eating fest of December.

Make Healthy Choices for Cooking and Save Yourself Thousands of Calories

1. No white bread or rolls. Are extra simple carbs really necessary here?
2. Make mashed potatoes with olive oil, garlic, fresh dill, and salt. Are they as creamy? No. And that will be okay. Deep breaths.
3. Sweet potatoes are great all by themselves. Marshmallows are for Boy/Girl Scout Camping Retreats and no where else.
4. Green beans are great lightly sauteed in olive oil and garlic.
5. Stuffing can be made with mostly fruit and vegetables. See below.
6. Salad. Sweet, wonderful, simple salad. And it is one of the few typical Thanksgiving foods that you can make a few hours ahead without using the stove top.
7. Homemade Cranberry Sauce. Berries with a little OJ or apple cider and water. So much better, there's no going back. And this a fruit worth splurging for organic - the pesticide count on these is very high.
8. Make desserts homemade with less butter and sugar. There are great recipes out there.

Stuffing:

I'm not sure how stuffing came to be this all bread event. The store-bought stuffings are about 150 calories prepared per serving (1/2 cup). Making your own with multi-grain or wheat-free bread is not hard. And I prefer one that is more veggies and less bread. Saute leeks (or onions), garlic, celery, carrots, apples, in some olive oil. Season with salt, pepper, sage, etc. Put in bowl with a little fat free broth. Add cubes of toasted bread. I make it about 75% vegetables. The bread just adds texture. Works great inside a turkey or just as a side dish. If you are going to cook it inside a turkey, I would add a bunch of fresh leafed herbs like parsley, sage, and basil.

The Bottom Line

Things have to change in our culture. We are overweight and in total denial of our own responsibility in this fact. I think family and friend gatherings are a great time to work together toward healthy eating. We have to change together.