If you've been struggling with food addiction, overeating, or obesity, the holidays can be a particularly difficult time. Social events at times like Christmas and Thanksgiving revolve around eating, celebratory foods are often high in the key addictive food ingredients -- fat, sugar and salt, and gifts of chocolate are common, even for chocoholics.
So how can you avoid holiday weight gain? Here are the five easist ways.
1. Stay in Control of Your Portions
Whether you are hosting a meal, or eating Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner with family or friends, keep control of your portions. Serve your own meal. Stick to a single plate of food, and make sure half of the plate contains non-starchy vegetables. Lean turkey is your friend, but skip high calorie stodge such as roasted potatoes, creamy sauces and rich gravy. Take just a single spoonful of cranberry sauce.
2. Don't Eat if You Are Full
This is a basic rule of avoiding weight gain, but more difficult during the holidays, when there seems to be treats everywhere, and you don't want to hurt people's feelings by declining their offers of food. Be especially careful not to overstuff yourself on sweet snacks and desserts, which are highly addictive. If someone offers you a treat, you can always say, "I'm full right now, but I would love to try one later."
3. Select Social Venues Wisely
If you have a say in where social events are held, think about the kind of food that is served and the way that it is served. Things to avoid include:
- Buffets, smorgasboards, and "eat as much as you like"
- Places that serve enormous portions, foods covered in fat, sugar and salt (even if concealed in a sauce), and "endless" anything (especially fries and chicken wings).
- Places that expect you to be eating the duration of your time there.
Good choices include:
- Places that serve healthy food which are still a treat, such as exotic blends of freshly pressed juices.
- Places that serve reasonable portions, and are flexible about splitting portions, and holding sauces and dressings.
- Choosing quality over quantity.
- Places where there is something to do other than eat, for example, a cafe that provides live music.
4. Don't Build Up an Appetite
Even if your employer is picking up the tab for dinner, don't skip breakfast or lunch to build up an appetite. You are more likely to overindulge if you are ravanous when you arrive.
5. Re-Gift All But the Best Chocolates
For some reason, chocolates have become a gift staple when people don't know what you want. The easist way to avoid this trap is to let people know you are quitting or cutting down on chocolate, but even then, you may receive several boxes. While you might want to keep the hand-made Belgian truffles that cost a fortune, you don't have to keep and eat every box of cheap drug stores chocolates -- re-gift them to workmates, donate them to the food bank, or give them to a homeless person.
