7 Thanksgiving Tips To Keep Your Waistline Trim

Enjoy a Guilt-Free Thanksgiving this Year!

7 Thanksgiving Tips To Keep Your Waistline Trim

Thanksgiving is known as one of those holidays that you are bound to overeat! Ever hear of “turkey coma” …it is a thing 😉

You can still enjoy the Thanksgiving feast without becoming the turkey who is stuffed!

Granted one day a year will not thwart your weight loss efforts UNLESS you have many “off” days throughout the year. The problem starts when one holiday runs into the next until it turns into 3-4 months of binge eating!

7 Thanksgiving Tips To Keep Your Waistline Trim

1. Sit At The Table

This is the only time you need to be sitting! When dinner is being served.

Before your festivities get that customize Shape It Up workout done ;-). By getting in your workout, it will help curb your appetite and keep you focused on your long-term fitness goals.

After dinner, go for a walk. This is a great time to get those digestive juices flowing! The walk doesn’t have to be a marathon walk. But if you can do 10-20 minutes you will feel so much better.

2. Conserve Your Meals

Prior to going to Thanksgiving dinner, I recommend to my clients to eat mostly protein.

Why?

Because most Thanksgiving meals will have plenty of carbohydrates (mash potatoes, yams, and ALL the desserts).

Hold back a bit on the carbohydrates (because you will be eating them later at dinner).

A good option to start off your breakfast could be egg whites, smoked salmon or protein shake. This will keep you full until Thanksgiving dinner time.

The goal here is to not arrive famished so you want to eat everything in sight but to keep you fueled but not starving.

3. Swap Your Ingredients

If you are making more traditional Thanksgiving dishes …say for instance… candied yams… which I know was a personal favorite of mine when I grew up… you can actually tweak those recipes a little bit.

Cut back on some of the ingredients that are going to add a little more calories.

The three main ones are butter, salt, and sugar.

So, if you’re making candied yams you can cut back on the butter and the sugar.

A lot of time with sugar, the recipes will call for a cup of sugar and you probably could get away with a half a cup (sometimes a three-fourth of a cup).

Same thing with salt if you can of back off the salt a little bit that will help you feel less puffy and bloated

the day after thanksgiving.

Doing these little swaps will make your dishes a little healthier without changing the taste of the dish.

When you want to be careful about swapping ingredients with is when you’re baking desserts because that’s more of a more of a precise science. Now I am not a chef by any stretch imagination, but I do know that…

Some desserts it will work really well for…like pumpkin pie or dips you can cut back the sugar.

I don’t recommend sugar substitutes because there’s a lot of evidence supporting either your body doesn’t know how to metabolize it or it’s just not good for us and may cause cancer.

So if you’re making something more “traditional” like candied yams you can play with the ingredients.

4. Get Creative

When I started hosting Thanksgiving for my family, I added in different recipes that were healthy. I still kept traditional dishes but I wanted to add in dishes that I knew would help me stay on track and help out whoever was dinning with us.

When you add in completely different dished this will help eliminate the faces and comments when you “just adjust” the recipe.

If someone doesn’t know what the dish is “supposed” to taste like, then it’s up for an unbiased decision.

For instance, if I were to make scalloped potatoes and really tweaked the ingredients (like used cauliflower or yams instead of potatoes) people would be like “this doesn’t taste like scalloped potatoes”. But if I make something entirely different like my delicious roasted vegetables, they might not have a preconceived thought about how it “should” taste.

So what new dishes can you add to your menu?

If you want to know what I am serving up this Thanksgiving….click here and grab your free copy of my Thanksgiving menu!

5. Let Your Stomach Be Your Guide NOT Your Brain

Are you actually hungry?

Is your stomach growling when you are about to eat?

If it isn’t then hold off or get a small portion and then head back when you are truly experiencing hunger.

When you get around other people the peer pressure is on!

“Why aren’t you eating?” …” Are you sick?” …”You not trying to diet….again are you??”…

Do not give into whatever anyone is whispering in your ear or what you THINK people are thinking about you!

You have made a commitment to yourself to lose inches. Honor your commitment.

6. Skip the Everyday Stuff

I have always been one to do things quickly…in my younger years my quick decisions probably helped me like moving 10 times in 4 years (trust me all great reasons why…like one reason was a dead body was found in a dumpster…yup outta here!)

But as I have gotten older, I am finding that I speed through a bunch of things and am not always present. Like when I am eating food…I tend to make it, sit to eat it and before I am done my last bite I am up and on to my next thing. I am always looking to the future…what’s next. Do you find yourself always looking for what is coming next?

Today’s tip is great for Thanksgiving but you can use it for any holiday or gathering…

Holiday foods can be a mix of traditional or what I like to call “every day” foods.

Fill your plate with foods with foods you can’t get every day.

If they are serving doughnut holes that you can drive down the street at any time to buy…skip it!

Don’t waste your calories on everyday stuff.

If there is a dessert that MeMa only makes at Thanksgiving than have at it!

Savor your favorite holiday foods. Shoveling food mindlessly into your mouth (I do this with my favorites sometimes too) is a way for your brain to not even register that you ate it…and then see how quickly your brain will ask for more! … Enjoy the food. Really taste it. Use all your senses. See how long you can make that yumminess last.

Be present in each moment. Even the moments that you are trying desperately to avoid. You will learn so much about yourself while being present.

7. Skip the Sparkly

Alcohol will pack on the pounds SUPER fast!

3 reasons why alcohol needs to be avoided while losing weight:

Alcoholic drinks are typically filled with sugar. I was a bartender back in my late 20’s and cocktails (or what I like to call “fru-fru drinks”) are the worst when it comes to sugar. It’s not so much the alcohol as it is what you are mixing it with.

So if you are listening and you are an avid drinker you might be thinking “well, Nicole said no mixed drinks. That means I can have shots of vodka or straight liquor”…

You CAN have whatever you want.

But let me ask you…do you want the drink or do you want the body that you keep saying you want??

Second reason why you might consider skipping the sparkly, the body considers alcohol poison so your body’s first job is to get the alcohol out of your system (in other words no metabolizing of food is happening – there is no food getting burned off it’s just sitting there until the alcohol is out of your system).

Okay, I’ve had some people say “then I just won’t eat while I drink” …I pretty sure I don’t have to tell you how bad of an idea this is!

Lastly and I feel this IS the best reason NOT to drink alcohol while losing weight. Drinking alcohol will lower your inhibitions which may also lead you to saying, “screw my weight loss goals!” and this is when the overeating begins….and the verbal abuse arrives the next day.

You DO get to choose what you want your actions to be.

But what you do will cause a result.

Your actions are either going to take you closer to your goals or away from  your goals.

What result are you after?

We tend to take actions we think will make us feel good.

It’s human nature.

Our brain tells us to seek out pleasure.

Having a glass of chardonnay at Thanksgiving might be one of those actions we think will bring great pleasure/satisfaction …whatever you think it is doing for you.

But how much pleasure are you getting out of your clothes always being tight?

How much satisfaction do you get when you are looking at yourself in pictures your family has posted online from Thanksgiving dinner ?

Isn’t true pleasure feeling comfortable in your own skin?

Or maybe satisfaction in knowing you have complete control over how your body looks and feels?

If you want to learn how to take control over your body take the next action and schedule a consult with me today.