By Dona Suri
HOLIDAY season. Family gatherings. Parties. Tables laden with every variety of culinary enticement. Noshes. Booze. Chocolates. Serious risk of winding up with a Santa Claus waistline.
Here are some quick tips to help you get through weeks of merry-making without torpedoing fitness goals that you’ve worked hard to realize.
1. Snack before partying
Before heading out for a party, have a snack — something high protein or high fiber. Anything to ensure that you don’t make foolish food choices because you are really hungry.
As for alcohol, if you have one too many you are going to get drunk, no matter what food you consume before, during or after. At best, you can slow down alcohol absorption. All alcohol has calories; sometimes quite a heavy load of calories.
See this chart: https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000886.htm .
An easy way to avoid drinking excess calories is to keep topping up your glass with water. WATER ! Not liquid calories in the form of sugary juices or soft drinks.
2. Just say NO
Many people feel that they are failing in their “hosting” duty if they do not urge you to eat, eat, eat and drink, drink, drink. You’ve worked hard to lose weight and it’s not worth torpedoing weeks or months of commitment for the sake of being agreeable at a party.
Refuse. Return a clear, polite, firm “No thank you.” And stick to it. Don’t give in. If you would like to soften the refusal, you can follow up with some kind remarks about how everything looks/smells delicious, is so beautifully served up, etc. Repeat “Sorry, but I simply must pass this time.” Then change the topic: compliment the host’s attire, ask about their health, children, grandchildren, vacations … anything but food.
It helps if you and your spouse/date are on the same page with regard to your commitment to weight loss/healthy food/drink choices. They can back you up if a host is really persistent.
3. Take a smaller plate
Eating from a smaller plate makes you think that you are eating a lot while, in fact, it limits your portions. This trick works best when you are not intensely hungry. See Tip 1.
4. Supply yourself
Turn up at the party with a contribution: a low-calorie appetizer or dish, or a healthy dessert. You spare yourself the high calorie foods and – who knows – there maybe another dieter who benefits from your smart planning. If you are travelling, take your own healthy snacks along.
5. Get philosophical
Be rational. Or, if you like, be philosophical. Holiday food ties in to holiday memories and holiday memories are childhood memories. If the grand finale of Christmas dinner was always Grandma’s special, made-from-scratch Black Forest cake with coconut-pecan icing, you will never be able to look at a Black Forest cake without happy child emotions flooding your amygdala. Feed your emotional hunger all you like — but not with food.
If you desperately long for Black Forest cake, have it. But not at a party. Savor it at home in a moment of calm reflection. Just you and cake. A little piece. Enjoy it and then say … enough. If you are at a party and crack under emotional influence, you will probably lose the will power to resist other high calorie goodies.
At a party, ask yourself “Do I really, really like XYZ, or am I putting it on my plate just because it’s there?” Eat mindfully.
6. Prioritize
Family gatherings are pretty much inescapable. You shouldn’t even try to bow out. But you could easily RSVP your regrets for missing the Historical Society Christmas Tea, the Friends of Retired Greyhounds Yule brunch and the Library Patrons Ball. Anticipation of too much food is a good reason to decline multiple invitations and another good reason is the wish to avoid a jam-packed schedule and rushing around to the point of exhaustion. “Holiday” should mean rest as well as celebration. In fact, people trying to reach health and fitness goals need to be doubly careful about getting sufficient sleep. A sleep deprived body doesn’t produce enough leptin (the appetite suppressing hormone) but instead it churns out too much ghrelin (the appetite inducing hormone). Don’t allow yourself to get stressed. Pace yourself!
7. Move it
Exercise is important any day and it is doubly important during the holiday party season. Jog around park, wave those dumbbells, bend, squat, lunge, Zumba till you’re red in the face. Do anything so long as it gets your butt off the sofa. And when you are actually at a party … get up and dance. Stick to your diet AND stick to your daily exercise routine; both together will keep you energized and motivated.
8. Remove temptation
Friends and family are going to be dropping by your house. You have to have a reasonable selection of goodies to set out. Even Santa Claus expects his glass of milk and plate of cookies.
If you are hosting a holiday dinner that means a long shopping list of foods that rarely figure in a diet plan. Solution: Don’t buy no-no foods too early. They will just be lying around the house where they are within easy reach. Goodies have a way of whispering your name at all hours.
Likewise, after the party or the dinner or the all-day Christmas festivities, get rid of the leftovers. When the party breaks up, you can pack leftovers in disposable food boxes and send stuff home with your guests. (This works only when your guests are old friends.) Candies can be left at hospitals. Some homeless shelters will accept neat packets of food.
If all else fails, dump the remainders in the trash can. (This really goes against the grain for those of us who were asked to imagine starving children in Africa when we were food-finicky kids. But, it is better to throw unwanted food in the trash can than having it sit on top of our liver in the form of fat.)
9. Forgive yourself
If you were overpowered by temptation and broke down the moment you were within arm’s reach of a buffet table, don’t beat yourself up over it. If you have built up a record of moderation and wise food choices, then a once-in-a-blue moon indulgence is not terribly serious. What you don’t want is a pattern of binge/abstain/binge/abstain.
How you bounce back from a diet lapse is more important than the lapse itself. When you fall off the wagon, get right back on again.
Continue to track your total calorie intake. This is the best way to maintain diet discipline.
In order to stick to your diet plan, it helps to work out weekly calorie intake averages. If you’ve overdone it on some occasion, don’t starve yourself the next day. Just get back to your daily goals. Perfection is rarely sustainable; but you can be consistent.
If just getting in shape is your goal, you can probably manage it with a few weeks of serious effort.
If you make up your mind that you are going to STAY in shape, then you’re on track to adopt a whole, healthy, trim way of of life.
IT’S WORTH DOING AND YOU CAN DO IT.