Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is often celebrated with lots of food, drinks and dessert! With that comes lots of overeating; lots of agony over why we ate as much as we did; lots of unwanted calories that you've worked so hard to burn.  It is often hard to pass up the favorite family recipes that are brought to the thanksgiving dinner table. 
You have all been working so hard so I thought I would share with you some tips to keep your thanksgiving eating in check.  Remember it is never too early to plan your eating strategy so start today!

1. Don't SKIP Breakfast - Many of you will skip breakfast and/or lunch saving your calories for dinner, do NOT SKIP BREAKFAST! This will slow down your metabolism and will have you eating more than you should when dinner is served.  Eat a well balanced protein rich breakfast that will keep you fuller longer.

2. Stick to Veggies and dip for appetizer so that you have room and calories for the main course.  Stay away from riching for breads, fatty spinach or artichoke dips, cheeses, chips, fried apps, etc.

3. Alcohol! Watch what you are drinking the more you drink wine, beer or other it will lessen your resolve to eat healthy and it will increase your appetite, recipe for disaster when trying not to overeat.

4. Take a look at everything available, think about those items that you really would like to try, take a small spoonful (table sized spoon not serving spoon!) of each of those items and load the rest of your plate with baked turkey and salad.  Remember that unwanted full feeling that comes after eating too much???????? Remember the spoonful trick and enjoy each bite.  Never go for seconds, if you are still hungry indulge on more salad! Stay away from cranberry sauce as this is packed with sugar sugar sugar and calories.

5. Drink Water! Keep drinking that water morning to night, this will help keep you full and will avoid you from grabbing unwanted foods and beverages.

6. Have a workout planned for the morning of Thanksgiving, each of you should dedicate one hour in the morning to walking, running, jumping rope, some cardio activity that will burn calories and have you at your max heart rate for one hour.  This will help to burn the calories you are about to intake! Make a plan for Friday as well to do a lite workout.

7. ONE Dessert! Yup one dessert.  Since you are going to do so well with dinner and you aren't going to overeat, for your efforts you can reward yourself with one dessert.  This means this or that, not one of each! Choose your favorite slice of pie, one cookie, one brownie, but make sure that it is only one and the trick is to eat whatever it is you choose very slowly so that you can savor every bite and no seconds!! Hopefully, there is also fruit offered as an option, this you can always have if you are looking for something sweet.

Enjoy your family and your friends as this is really what Thanksgiving is about, it shouldn't be about the food.  Think of how you felt last Thanksgiving when you ate too much and keep that as a reminder that this year the meal should be treated like any other, not as an opportunity to cheat the day away and stuff yourself to the brim.  You will only feel that much worse on Friday morning and your body will only ask you for yet more carbs, sugar and calories and you set yourself up for more of a disaster!  Remember why you chose to eat healthy, this is not a diet, if your family or friends ask you why you aren't eating too much, tell them that you are eating just enough for your body, no need to tell anyone that you are dieting, because you simply aren't!

I wish each of you a safe and happy thanksgiving!! For those of you running the turkey trots, Get Your Run On and make me proud!