There are many Thanksgiving Eating Tips For Weight Loss, but if we were dealing with only two days of overeating, there wouldn’t be the big weight gain of seven pounds or more that many people put on during this holiday season.
How do you lose weight on Thanksgiving?
Use fat-free chicken broth to baste the turkey and make gravy. Use sugar substitutes in place of sugar and/or fruit purees instead of oil in baked goods. Reduce oil and butter wherever you can. Try plain yogurt or fat-free sour cream in creamy dips, mashed potatoes, and casseroles.
In order to lose weight on Thanksgiving, now would be the time to watch your caloric intake and be sure you are exercising every day. This is a beautiful time of year to start walking outside and enjoying the cooler temperature and soon the leaves will be changing colors and it’s a new season to enjoy the outdoors. If you don’t think you would stick with a walking routine by yourself, ask a friend, neighbor, spouse or family member to join you to keep you going, and it will be a health benefit to them as well.
A traditional Thanksgiving dinner consists of roast turkey, turkey stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.
Source: Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner Menu
Thanksgiving recipes
It’s easy to do an internet search for Thanksgiving menu ideas. If you do this you’ll end up with millions of search results, but how do you know you can trust a recipe? There are hundreds of thousands of food blogs out there and frankly, not all the recipes are good. The way you know you can trust a recipe is it’s source. It doesn’t necessarily have to come from a “food site” but, if it’s referenced it should be from a cook book, or other trusted source, such as a well known chef, and that source should be named.
So what are some tasty and easy Thanksgiving dinner ideas? How about a new twist on stuffing? Try a stuffing with Sausage, Apple and Sage, or maybe even a homemade Chestnut Stuffing. How about adding a cranberry side dish such as Fresh Cranberry Orange Compote or making a tangy Cranberry Apple Chutney? These Thanksgiving side dish recipes are quick and easy.
Make sure that you use the turkey giblets to make a homemade turkey broth. A homemade turkey broth is the only way you can assure you’re going to get the best flavor out of your stuffing. A well seasoned turkey broth truly makes all the difference in the outcome of your dishes. I wouldn’t consider making Madeira Gravy without my homemade stock.
If you’ve never cooked a turkey, or if you simply want a reminder it’s also easy to find tips on cooking a turkey online. Year after year I make notes about my dinner. I may have cooked too much of one thing and not enough of another. My family may not have liked a new dish or may have. Making notes after cooking my Thanksgiving dinner is a way I remember from one year to the next.
One of the tricks to successful Thanksgiving dinner is not just the recipes, it’s knowing how to time the dishes. Every year I make a time-line for cooking. This way I’m assured that all my stuffing, vegetables and side-dishes come out perfectly cooked, and all at the same time. This way when we sit down to eat everything is hot and ready. Having a time-line also takes stress off of me. All I have to do is follow my list and I know that everything will be under control.
Don’t forget to ask family members to bring a dish to your dinner. Share your Thanksgiving recipes with them. Maybe you can ask a sister-in-law to make a side-dish of Pearl Onions au Gratin and ask your mother to make the Bourbon Cranberry Sauce and have your sister make the Campbell’s Green Bean Casserole. Perhaps you can assign each of them a dessert item like a Strawberry Trifle or Red Velvet Cake.
Thanksgiving Tips For Weight Loss
Thanksgiving eating tip 1
Legalize the turkey, the stuffing, the cranberry sauce and everything else that goes with thanksgiving eating. The moment you tell yourself that any part of the meal is ‘forbidden’ or ‘bad for you’ it grows psychological hooks. It’s almost as if ‘making it bad’ makes it grows fingers that insist you eat it. But when you tell yourself it is perfectly OK to eat some, you remove the ‘hooks.’
It allows you to stay relaxed instead of tense around the table. And when you eat with en-joy-ment rather than with guilt, your digestion works better because of the way your body works when you’re feeling stressed out.
Thanksgiving eating tip 2
Don’t tell yourself and everyone else you meet that thanksgiving is a eating nightmare. It’s not difficult once you know how to take it from being a mental nightmare and to change it into a fantastic eating experience for yourself.
Before reaching to take a single morsel of food, just sit and visually take in all the food. Do you like it’s colours, it’s shapes? Notice what is happening in your mouth – enjoy the sensations of saliva forming, remind yourself that this is the way your body prepares to digest your food.
Thanksgiving eating tip 3
Don’t automatically pile your plate. What looks the absolute yummiest to you? If you could choose only two items, which would they be and why? How do you anticipate they would taste?
On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being: absolutely awful; 5 being: OK and 10 being: orgasmically delicious, where would these two foods rate? Now dish up for yourself less than you think you’d really like to eat. Remind yourself you can always go back for seconds.
Thanksgiving eating tip 4
Don’t rush starting to eat, tell yourself you are relaxed around this plate of food and that you’re going to enjoy every morsel. Then do just that. Really chew your food, focus on how much you really do like the actual flavours and are they different than what you expected?
Be curious. Try different food combinations together – which do you like best?
Thanksgiving eating tip 5
Don’t automatically head for seconds. Enjoy a bit of conversation first. Take your time about heading back. Allow what you’ve eaten to reach your tummy and register how much more (if any) you really need.
If you’d really like more but you already know you’ve eaten enough for your tummy, dish up another plate, cover and refrigerate it for another time. Remember that food doesn’t taste as delicious when we’re full.
If you follow strictly above Thanksgiving eating tips for weight loss, you can get back on track in between the parties and holiday meals and give you greater control of your food, and of course, that makes you feel better about yourself.
