7 Tips For Enjoying Holiday Food Without Quitting Your Goals

Hey everyone, I know it's the day before Thanksgiving, so if you're traveling you may have some trouble implementing these tips.  But they really work any time you are headed someplace and you aren't in control of the food!

First things first, I want to say that I LOVE Thanksgiving.  It is my favorite holiday, by far.  The only expectation is cooking tasty food, and eating it - there's no stress about shopping or finding "the perfect gift."  Just getting together and telling stories and making memories!

But for many of us who've struggled with food addiction, we have a hard time with a food-centric holiday.  If you're on a weight loss journey, you may feel like food holds you captive.  And that can make you dread food-related holidays and gatherings.  Or, even worse, give up on your goals completely during those times.

You don't have to be a slave to food!  A lot of these tips are about food, and what to eat, but the idea is to set you free from the mindset of "well, I can't have anything on the table, so I guess the food plan starts over January 2!"  No!  One meal does not have to derail you for an entire holiday season!  Try some of these ideas, let me know if they help you!

1.  If you're invited to someone's home, offer to bring a side dish that you cannot resist - then remake it to fit your plan.  Pinterest is your friend!  Try searching "21 Day Fix friendly" or "Whole 30" recipes - these terms will help you makeover almost anything.  Personally, I'm making mashed potatoes in my Crock-Pot (love this method- no draining!!!), and mixing them up with coconut oil and coconut milk to keep them dairy free.

2.  Snack!  Especially if you're travelling to your meal, pack on-plan snacks (I would do raw veggies and some hummus, or apple slices and almond butter).  Just watch portions, and time it so you're still ready to eat at meal time.

3.  Get your veggies in.  So many holiday meals are carb-heavy; try to fit in veggies in other ways.  The fiber will help keep you full so you don't overindulge at the main table, and on most plans you can eat as many veggies as you want without ruining your progress.  Watch out for veggies-that-are-actually-starches (corn, green beans, etc.) and extra sauces!

4.  Portion control is your friend.  So you're sitting at a beautiful table filled with all kinds of amazing goodness, and you really just want mashed potatoes and gravy (or maybe that's me).  You can have some!  Here are the guidelines:

• Get the veggies first - green salad, raw veg platter, easy on anything with a sauce
• Lean protein - white meat turkey is actually really good for you (just take the skin off - sorry).  A serving size is about the size of the palm of your hand.  Keep that in mind when counting how many servings of protein you had.
• Fruit - if there's uncandied or not-sugared fruit, grab some.
• Starches - mashed potatoes, stuffing/dressing, yams and sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls - use the palm of your hand as a measure again.  Not literally, because that would be weird.  But as a general idea of appropriate serving size - try to stick to one potato-type and one bread-type.  Your plate should already be pretty full anyway!
• Fats - gravy, dressings, etc. - For this, I suggest measuring with a teaspoon.  The idea is to get the flavor of the gravy without going overboard on fat.  Fats and salad dressings are the number one culprit for hidden calories - if you control it here, you will feel so much better about yourself when the meal is over!
• Dessert - you have permission.  Enjoy one piece!

5.  Get out for a walk before or after dinner.  Collect some leaves or pine cones for a craft, see some new sights, make some new memories.

6.  Refuse leftovers.  This is more difficult if you're hosting.  I'm having visions of my children doing a Jack Sparrow impression: "But why is the gravy gone???"  But here's the deal - if you can't resist it or control portions in the days following the holiday, it's not worth keeping around.

7.  Remember that it's one meal on one day.  One meal does not have to throw you off for the entire day, weekend, trip, season....  You are more than the food you eat.  You get together with family and friends to make memories - so make some!  Let go of the guilt - it overshadows the time and takes away from your enjoyment of the actual day.

And whatever happens, you will get another chance to make healthy choices.  Even if you overindulge at Thanksgiving or Christmas, you can start over at the next opportunity.

I hope you have a safe and blessed holiday season. Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours!

Gratitude Day 5

Are you doing this?  Last year, I made a point to post on Facebook every day in November something I was thankful for (I may have combined a couple of days, but I actually did pretty well!), and I'm doing it again this year.  Last year it was about using gratitude to stop focusing on pain and start looking for the good things in my life.  And as I look back over the past year, November was when I finally started moving forward and taking control.

So this year, I'm looking for little things, and expressing them as close to "in the moment" as I can - it's not always possible, but I hold onto that thought as long as I can until I can get to my phone or a computer.  Today's moment of gratitude is brought to you by my 8 year old daughter - when I woke her up for school this morning, I found her hugging her "pink baby".  (No picture of that, bleary-eyed mama was not exactly looking for blog-worthy gratitude moments right then.).  Here's the story behind "pink baby" and why she inspired gratitude this morning:

5 years ago, I had a 3 year old and an almost 6 year old.  We had just moved to Idaho, and we were maintaining 2 households because my ex (we were married at the time) was still working in Washington.  So money was tight, my sanity was tighter, and Christmas was coming.  Katie didn't really have a dolly to play with - she had a bear and a penguin, but no baby doll to cuddle like a 3 year old should.  So I decided to try to make one.  This is what she looked like almost finished:

I thought I had a "finish" picture, but it looks like some of my pictures have disappeared from Google.  She does have a face (brown eyes! why do all dolls have blue eyes???), and a skirt, and an attached blanket, and maybe a hat.  I know I didn't make hair.

Anyway, the sweetness of this comes in when I tell you that I had already started making the doll when I asked Katie what she wanted for Christmas.  I may have been about as far as this picture.  And she looked at me and said, "I want a pink baby."  Melted my heart.

So today's gratitude thought:  Today I'm thankful for craft.  Because even in tough times, even when I didn't have enough money to buy things for my children, I was able to make them things they needed and things they wanted.  And because last night sometime my now 8 year old decided to grab her pink baby and sleep with her.

Gratitude and Stitching

Maybe you all have seen posts like these, but I just discovered a Blog Hop by Stitching the Night Away - and prompt #12 is "When it comes to the stitching part of your life, what are you most thankful for?"

For me, I'm most thankful that I have the ability to create a gift with love that doesn't cost a lot of money.  It takes a little more time and planning to complete them, for sure, but the satisfaction of knowing "I made that" goes a long way.  My children have actually asked for handstitched gifts from me (a dog picture, a biscornu, legwarmers...)  It feels so good to be able to provide for my family in this way, and knowing that it's something they'll love and appreciate much more than something I bought already made in a store.

I've been thinking about gratitude a lot lately - at least I was for most of this month.  Yes, I was one of those annoying people on Facebook posting about things I'm thankful for.  I wasn't going to participate; you guys know how I've been with other month-long challenges, right?  But with everything negative and stressful going on in my personal life I decided to focus on one positive thing every day in my life, in the hope of changing my attitude and making this month much happier than September or October were.  And for the most part it worked - I was able to enjoy the holiday and celebrate the positive things that happen every day.  I found myself looking for good things.  I managed to post every day (without doing catch-up posts) until this week - Monday and Tuesday I didn't post any gratitude.  And the reason kind of demonstrates why I was doing this experiment to begin with - I didn't get some news I was hoping for, I was disappointed, I allowed myself to get into a funk, and couldn't muster anything positive to share!  I'm happy to say I'm out of that now and back to looking for positive things in every day.

Visit all the blogs in this round of the Stitching the Night Away Stitching Blogger Blog Hop:
Find the instructions on how to participate in this round by clicking here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

FYI, this is not what my table looks like.  I have a 7 year old, tablecloths just become shrapnel-slingers.

For me this holiday has always been more about the people I get to see then about the food on the table.  I've heard friends say they have to have such-and-such dish or it "just isn't Thanksgiving."  Aside from a turkey and gravy and stuffing, that just isn't how I feel. ;)

Like I said, it's always been about family.  This will be our fifth Thanksgiving in Idaho, but this year I'm really going to miss my family in Washington.  I know that traditions change and my cousin has hosted the dinner for the last several years.  But for me this will always be potluck, around my grandparents' table - telling the same stories and looking forward to an epic game of Shanghai (a 3-deck version of Rummy, similar to Phase 10) after dinner. There was no football, as grandpa really only cheers for one team, and the Seahawks rarely play on Thanksgiving.

I think what's bringing these feelings up is the knowledge that for my girls this year's dinner will be different.  Their father almost always worked on Thanksgiving, so they're used to him not being here.  However this will be the first holiday since he moved out, and it's always going to be "the first Thanksgiving without Daddy."  I hate that this is a part of their life now, but it's much better for them than pretending that things are fine, and making the best of things.

So my plans to make this day special center around desserts.  Yesterday we planned to make hand-turkey cookies.  Remember in kindergarten when you drew an outline of your hand and made a turkey?  I saw this cute idea from The Pioneer Woman, which Hallie immediately said could be turned into turkeys.  (We're also making the hand cookies for her birthday instead of a cake.)  However, the homemade sugar cookie dough was really soft even after chilling, and when I went to cut around the girls' hands the dough warmed even more.  So they made "snowballs" which is our way of using up leftover dough when they're done cutting shapes.  We'd already made the Thanksgiving colored eggwash (intended for coloring the "feathers"), so they painted them anyway.  They flatten when they bake, so with the colors on them they ended up looking like fallen leaves!

And I got some Granny Smith apples - the girls have been begging for caramel apples, and I'm doing this - an inside-out caramel apple - link takes you to a pin on my Pinterest recipes board, because the original blog it came from has been removed.  I'm also going to use my Pampered Chef apple-corer-slicer (that I had to have and hardly ever use) to make apple rings, that I'll cook with butter and cinnamon and sugar.  No pies at my house because I hate making pie crust.  But plenty of snacky dessert goodness.

And a very happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours.  I hope all are "safely gathered in" at your house and you're able to find at least one thing to celebrate!