What About Holidays? Tips for Holiday Eating

This is a great question.  Thanksgiving and Christmas meals in particular are loaded with sugar items typically in the forms of bread, desserts and drinks.

Many times the cook (especially if it’s a relative) can be offended if you don’t eat their food.  Here’s the best advice I can give:

1. Inform the cook ahead of time that you don’t do food or drinks with sugar in it.  Based upon the K.I.S.S method I talked about in another blog post, that typically means no desserts, no bread, no cranberry sauce, and no sweetened drinks life fruit cocktail (which is a code word for sugar in it!).
2. Suggest some alternatives & make them yourself (if this doesn’t offend the cook) – like fruit salad, smoothies, etc.  I have another blog post that talks about food swaps or “instead of this, eat this.”
3. Consider ordering some food from a place like Whole Foods Market.
4. For birthdays, I just don’t eat the desserts, unless of course it’s all fruit.  If I know there’s going to be a birthday celebration, I usually eat my own “dessert” (smoothies, fruit salad, yogurt, etc.) ahead of time.  Or, if it’s at my house, I’ll make myself a smoothie or have a healthy snack.

Since my body changed for the better during my Phase #1 Weight Loss, it was not the time to backslide!  I figured my health was too important. 

Let me also say that I have never had a problem with holidays, even to this day.  I just communicate what I’m doing & why I’m doing it, and people understand.

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