Five Tips for a Healthy Thanksgiving Feast

Are you eagerly anticipating, or reluctantly dreading Thursday’s big meal?

So much of eating behaviors and outcome are driven by our feelings. Anxiety, loss of control and regret are common emotions to experience around food and no day of the year is more fraught with these potential pitfalls than Thanksgiving. But even though all the planning, preparation and ceremony of the big meal can disrupt your normal, relatively disciplined eating behavior patterns, there are simple practices that can help minimize that effect. Perhaps more importantly, they can take the emotional charge out of an event that should be about sharing and celebrating family and friends.

Here are a few:

• Eat with the feeling you want at the end of the day in mind. Of course you know the excitement of taking that first bite of piping hot turkey, stuffing, or the sweet taste of cranberry sauce or candied yams. But how about that sensation that the meal you just ate is pushing your waistband to the breaking point or that reluctance to take a full breath for fear of popping the button across the room into little Billy’s eye? There are about 15-30 minutes between those initial and then final images. Use them to take bites small enough to create no cheek bulging, put your fork down between bites and either take a deep breath or speak to someone after each mouthful is down. It’s also a good idea to drink water or tea right before the meal, and nothing during the meal to allow your body (thorough chewing, adequate saliva production, swallowing thoroughly, those sorts of things) to catch up with your urgent excitement. As you progress towards the end of the meal, notice the turning point where it’s more momentum than actual appetite. Stop there. You can always go back for more if you’re still hungry 10 minutes later.

• Bring or make a super healthy option (or two). My go-to dishes at every get together are veggies with hummus, and dip made with veggie soup/dip mix and Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream), adding frozen chopped spinach and sun dried tomatoes and served with pita chips. I could eat just these two items and have a complete, healthy meal. Taking the hunger edge off with the veggies and then starting with the turkey and then whatever veggies are served with the meal also helps keep calorie and volume intake much more moderated too.

• Remember variety = volume. Research reveals that a significant increase in the number of choices you have at a given meal can increase your intake dramatically. How much? Nearly one third. Here’s a good rule of thumb when you’re in a multi-dish environment: If you’re having five items when you usually eat three at a meal, cut your volume of each by about a third (or more). Undershot? Go back for more. Overshot? See the second sentence in item #1 above.

• Take your time and enjoy every bite. If you’re following the advice from item #1 above, all I’m suggesting you add to that is a committed moment of presence and dedicated enjoyment of each of those bites. If you do that, you’ll not only find the experience more rewarding and longer lasting, but you’re much more prone to noticing both when the appeal of each item starts to wane (a little bit each bite) and when you’ve hit that appetite/momentum tipping point.

• Notice how you feel and eat the next day accordingly. So now the meal is done, and, presumably, you’ve had some measure of success employing the tactics listed above. If so, Friday may be a normal day, so eat as always. If not so much, don’t give yourself a guilt trip. Do notice you’re not so hungry when you wake up and ease into the day slowly with water or tea, then maybe a piece of fruit and a hard boiled egg or a latte rather than a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast out of sheer habit. I promise, either way, it all be okay by Saturday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dan Taylor, ACE, NASM-CPT, is owner and head trainer at Pleasanton-based Tri Valley Trainer. They offer personal training and small group fitness solutions and an innovative, medically endorsed web-based group healthy eating coaching program.