A helpful guide to Thanksgiving dining.

Happy Thanksgiving

If you already pay attention to what you eat and you workout constantly, staying as close to on track as possible won’t leave you with nearly as much damage control at the end of this time of year. You don’t need total restraint, a minor to moderate amount of restraint will still leave you in pretty good shape. Here are a few tips/ thoughts:

1. Don’t skip meals. Your body is a machine that must be fueled throughout the day. If you were driving a car and knew you were about to take it on a long haul, would you stop putting gas in it until that time? It needs to run to get you through all the minor trips along the way. So eat, throughout the day, just as you would any other day. Don’t show up to the family dinner starving because you wanted to “save” all your calories for the big meal. It doesn’t work like that.

2. Since you are going to eat throughout the day, the best things to eat are lean proteins. I think we all know that when we get to the party all we want to shove in our faces are all the sweet, delicious, scrumptious carbs. Which carbs? All of them. The alcoholic kind, the mashed kind, the baked kind. . . no one is walking to the dinner table wondering where that delicious side of lean chicken breast is, we want the dinner rolls. So focus on those wonderful protein choices earlier in the day. 

3. Drink plenty of water. In general many of us have a feeling of being hungry when in actuality it’s really us being dehydrated. It helps you feel full and helps with the hang over, so drink up.

4) It would be easy to say those cliche tips like, “keep your hands full so you won’t be able to grab food”, “stay an arm’s length away from munchies”, “eat before you get to the party”, “bring your own healthier food”. . . yada, yada, yada. But none of that is fun and the reason we work so hard to be healthy throughout the year is to allow room for fun. 

So have fun. . . but keep the fun to one meal a day. Or to one day of the week. Try to avoid the mindset of “screw it”. You work hard, don’t give up so easily. It’s only food. 

Now go forth and enjoy the holidays. Don't be "that" guy/girl…