Thanksgiving Weight Gain

Thanksgiving brings a time for family, friends, and of course, food. But with these high calorie delicious foods, another side effect comes from them. Gaining lot’s of unwanted weight. Whether you are somebody who is trying to lose weight or maintain weight, this article will give you a few healthy holiday eating tips to avoid gaining weight on Thanksgiving. The best part about about all of these holiday eating tips is that if you follow and remember every single one, in particular the last one, you might even lose weight after Thanksgiving! Now that is something to be thankful for.

Healthy Holiday Eating Tips

Adjust Your Meals

One of the easiest tricks in the book is to simply adjust the meals before you eat on Thanksgiving. If you know you can’t resist your Mother’s famous mac and cheese recipe, it would make sense to eat leaner meals leading up to that bigger meal. If you normally eat a large breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and pancakes it would be a good time to adjust it and have a smaller option like fruit and some yogurt.

Only Eat What You Want

You are probably saying “Logan of course I am going to eat what I want!” Well, this isn’t always the case. Many times, when you have a large amount of food in front of your, especially around Thanksgiving, you feel the need to try everything, just because it is there. Be honest with yourself in what you really what, and enjoy that food. If you are “sort of” in the mood for mashed potatoes, but really wanting some green bean casserole, then opting out of the mashed potatoes would be a reasonable choice. The reason this works so well is due to something we will mention later in the article.

Enjoying The Article?

If you are enjoying the article so far, I feel free to subscribe to our blog to help you navigate through eating around the holidays and life in general, regardless of your current ability and how you think, look, and move!

Remember Your Friends and Family Goals

Believe it or not, not everyone is cares about avoiding Thanksgiving weight gain. When you are eating with friends and family, there is a good chance they watch what they eat as much as you do. Because of this, you can almost feel “peer pressured” into eating something. Myself personally, I have had people joke about “watching my figure” if I only eat a small portion of pie or food vs a large portion. Knowing that they do not have the same goals can give you a frame of reference when they poke fun at you or even get offended if you aren’t eating as much.

Don’t Beat Yourself Up

Keep in mind that Thanksgiving is one day out of the 365 days in the year. If you do end up overeating and messing up, don’t beat yourself up over it. If your diet is pretty good throughout the rest of the year, this day really means nothing. If you however make this one day mess-up a one month mess up, that will be a different story. Just like one good day of eating doesn’t make you healthy, one bad day of eating doesn’t make you unhealthy.

Calories Dictate Everything

The most important thing to remember with all of this is that calories will dictate weight gain or loss. If you moderate your portions and eat enough food for yourself to maintain your weight, guess what. You will maintain your weight. It doesn’t matter if you overeat on pumpkin pie, and everything else, as long as your calories are in check then you are good to go. Although I don’t “workout” to make up for overeating, I do also recommend doing a routine before your Thanksgiving meal to give yourself a bit of a buffer. We have designed a great low impact routine linked below, that individuals of ALL abilities have used to help keep them fit.

Following these healthy holiday eating tips on Thanksgiving will allow you to enjoy the time with family, without worrying about weight gain. Otherwise you can check out this other article, showing you a few dieting tips that online nutrition coaches will charge you THOUSANDS for.

---

#weightloss #fatloss #thanksgiving #holidayweightgain #weightgain #loseweight #nutrition #dieting #thanksgivingfood #holidayeating