After my last post on living on 1,500 calories a day, a lot of people asked, “But how do you do that during the holidays?”
The truth is, you don’t. At least, not if you like food and don’t want to ruin your holiday altogether. The trick to enjoying the festive food while dieting is to shift your focus: Try to maintain rather than lose.
Generally, we try to lose weight because we’re unhappy with something, whether it be our appearance, our health or our energy level. We diet so that we can get more out of life.
The irony is that most of us who diet also love food. Dieting is an attempt to maintain a balance between that love of food and a love of (quality) life. We decided to give up that bag of Cheetos so that we can spend more time running around with children or friends.
But the holidays mix together family and food in an inextricable way. How can you enjoy Christmas dinner if you can’t enjoy Aunt Mary’s famous candied yams? The holidays are a time when we look to reconnect with the people we care about and big part of that is bonding over food.
To not only survive but enjoy the holidays, try a few of these tactics:
• Plan your indulgences: You don’t need a glass of eggnog every night before bed, but feel free to have some at the company party. And when you know you have an event coming up, plan out your meals so that you’re not starving yourself, but are saving some calories for the party. (And that advice to have a snack before you go so that you don’t gorge yourself at the event — I find it never works. Even if I have a healthy bowl of chicken soup before the party, I still want to eat the cheese bread and cookies and I end up even more out of whack. Don’t go starving, but don’t fool yourself into thinking you won’t eat anything).
• Give cookies as gifts: I love to bake. Christmas, to me, is about Christmas cookies. But I certainly don’t need dozens of temptations around. My solution is to bake constantly throughout December, but to freeze most of what I make and put together plates of cookies to give as gifts.
• Take small portions: If you’re still hungry after your first platefull, take seconds of the lower calories dishes rather than stocking up on potatos and dressing.
• Be aware of your alcohol intake: Inhibitions diminish as you imbibe. A cream puff you would normally never touch seems like a good idea after a couple of glasses of wine. Also, remember that alcohol is high in calories and consider skipping a piece of pie if you want another drink.
• Don’t beat yourself up: It’s only a few weeks; chances are you won’t undo all your hard work in that short time. If you do gain a couple of pounds, remember that you know how to get it off again. It’s not the end of the world. And think of how much fun you had gaining it.