My Wife's take on 'Avoiding the Holiday Bulge'

Are you already worrying about the potential weight you can gain in the next 2 mos. Well, below was a response my wife wrote to a friend of hers...and I thought, I need to post this and read it myself. The following is what I thought would be helpful and to anyone an empowered perspective on Thanksgiving dinner:

"Let's not even obsess about Thanksgiving right now. Because, if food is a problem for you, than food is probably something you reach to cope with? And when you stress, you need to cope, and so you want to eat right? I've had few friends lose a weight over the last couple years and some totally had a food addiction. The more they focused on 'not eating', the more they wanted to eat.

Just stay committed to working out daily/diligently the week before Thanksgiving and the week of...and AFTER.  And when you are planning your Thanksgiving meal (if you are cooking) get online and start finding healthly alternatives to what is traditional. Do something healthy w/ the green beans instead of that casserole that contains the cream of mushroom soup, very high calorie when you add everything to it. In the past, I've done a 'Harvest Vegetable' dish where you put squash, cauliflower, carrots, etc. and bake it in the oven w/ some chicken broth for moisture. Sweet potatoes are okay, WITHOUT all the butter & marshmallow stuff. Use maybe a little honey, stevia (a non-artificial sweeterner, I use NuNaturals available online or at Lassens), and cinnamon. (If you're reading this and have a healthy menu item to share, please share it.)

Do you do all the cooking for Thanksgiving? Or do you take a dish to family's house? If you do all the cooking, make a list of what you usually cook, then across the page, make a list of healthy alternatives. Using maybe the core ingredient, but cook it a healthy way. And when it comes to sweets, pumpkin pie has the least calories...the pecan pie, the most (based on the same size of slice, look it up. I think Pumpkin is under 300/slice and Pecan over 500/slice - yikes).

If you are taking a dish to other people's house, make 2 healthier options. Then when you get there, have turkey breast (w/cranberry sauce - no gravies), and your 2 healthy dishes, and maybe a spoon of the stuffing/mash potatoes, the one side you absolutely love. Then at dessert, have the smallest piece of pie as possible. Smaller, but big enough to keep you from feeling deprived and wanting more. Then get away from the kitchen, don't hang out in the kitchen to chat next to the all the goodies. See, you don't have to do without completely...but you don't want to just go hog wild either.

The morning of Thanksgiving, make sure you wake up early enough to fit in a workout, 30-45 min. on the treadmill or your fave workout...and then plan a stroll w/ your fam that eve.

Also, if you cook a bunch of food for people coming over, pack most of it up and send it home w/ THEM. Get ALL the desserts out of the house for sure. Keep the healthy leftovers for yourself.

Does this help at all? A rule of thumb I go by (and my husband who has lost over 200 lbs.) for holiday/birthdays/events: make sure there are healthy options for you (by taking them yourself). Another one: never show up hungry.

Get up that morning, workout, eat a lean breakfast, even have lunch if you eat in the eve. and then eat a sensible dinner. Just because it is 'the holidays' we don't have eat like we're going without food for a month. I have experience w/ watching people just eat and eat and I have had to seriously restrain myself from that thinking/eating. It's easy to overeat and splurge when everyone around you is...but we have goals, right? And we have to control what we put in our mouths...and we CAN control what we put in our mouths.

Does this essay of 'how to avoid the holiday bulge' help? ;) I'm talking to myself here too ya know. Don't think for a minute I don't like to eat. I just like looking good and feeling good a whole lot more. Anytime you feel nervous re: the holidays and food, just let me know. I will keep talking you out of splurging/binging/throwing all self-control out the window. :) "