A Season Filled with Celebration… and Dietary Temptation

Tips on Maintaining Good Eating Habits Through the Holidays

We are com­ing up on a sea­son filled with cel­e­bra­tions. There are the indul­gent hol­i­day fes­tiv­i­ties, the office par­ties, the big fam­i­ly gath­er­ings, the hap­py hours…and all seem to involve food! Not just food, but buf­fets, fam­i­ly recipes, com­fort foods, baked goods…seemingly end­less rounds of food!  So, how can you successfully–and healthfully–navigate it all?

For starters, let’s look at some of the com­mon pitfalls.

1) If you thought high school was tough, no amount of peer pres­sure from 10^th grade can stack up to your grand­moth­er’s guilt trip over skip­ping a sec­ond por­tion of her home­made mac­a­roni and cheese. Feed­ing peo­ple is how many fam­i­lies show one anoth­er love, so this is a tricky one to nav­i­gate. Estab­lish a plan ahead of time, includ­ing remind­ing your grand­moth­er how much you love and appre­ci­ate her, and then go ahead and fol­low your plan – be it a small sam­ple of every­thing, avoid­ing known intol­er­ances, or bring­ing your own item to share.

2) “It’s been a long year, so don’t you deserve this?” Try a men­tal cal­cu­la­tion of how many times you have said this one when eye­ing (and jus­ti­fy­ing) a buf­fet or oth­er indul­gent meal. To that ques­tion I would say, of course you do! You, dar­ling, deserve the sun, moon and stars, so that Mis­sis­sip­pi Mud Pie is a drop in your buck­et! But wait! Don’t you also deserve to be your hap­pi­est, health­i­est you? Don’t you deserve to be con­fi­dent, and in con­trol of your health and your life? Don’t you deserve the low­er A1C and cho­les­terol that comes with putting your health first? Ask your­self those ques­tions. I’m guess­ing they’ll end with a mike drop and a sen­si­ble, bal­anced plate, with just a sliv­er of the Mud Pie at the end of the most impor­tant celebrations.

3) Dietary restric­tions and aller­gies can seem like they force you to sit in the cor­ner and nib­ble on pieces of card­board – not so! The hol­i­days are a great time to try new recipes, explore new cook­books, and sam­ple new tastes. Pin­ter­est and Google are full of deli­cious ideas and inspi­ra­tion, no mat­ter how com­plex your list of restric­tions may seem. Most impor­tant­ly, ALWAYS show up to hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions pre­pared with some­thing you can eat and you WANT to eat (i.e. don’t show up to a cook­ie exchange with a hard-boiled egg…not that I’ve done this myself…).

4) Two words: Get. Mov­ing! Tak­ing a brisk walk, enjoy­ing a spin­ning class with friends, or find­ing some alone time at the yoga stu­dio between fam­i­ly com­mit­ments will increase your feel-good endor­phins, boost your metab­o­lism, and help keep your body and mind in tip-top shape – all help­ful for mak­ing health-pro­mot­ing choic­es and remem­ber­ing that you are so very worth it.