With Thanksgiving on the way, it is time of year to think about strategies to avoid over eating at the holiday feast. Each of us needs a plan to avoid that "I cannot get up off the sofa" feeling. Here are some strategies that have been helpful to me the past few years that I am happy to say, were not Thanksgivings where I ate so much I felt sick.
First of all, as I am the cook on Thanksgiving, I consider all the tasting I need to do, as part of my breakfast. Our turkey dinner is an evening meal, and when I prepare the stuffing in the morning, and taste it, all those calories count as part of breakfast. Then lunch on Thanksgiving day is light, but filling enough that I will not feel starved by dinner time.
When I serve my plate at dinner time, I take just a tiny bit of each food. There are usually so many foods, that to take a regular portion of each one, would be simply too much food to eat. Or sometimes instead, I serve myself regular portions of several foods, and choose not to eat everything being served.
Once I sit down at the table, then it is time to remember to eat slowly. As the cook this is often easy for me, as I find myself jumping up from the table quite often to get something from the kitchen.
In our family, we do not have desert until a couple hours after the meal. Desert time can be the hardest time for me as thoughts play in my mind such as "oh well, I only eat pumpkin pie once a year." This year I am going to eat a small serving of desert, as I do not do well on sweets and if I overeat sweets on top of a heavy meal, I am sure to feel ill by the time I go to sleep.
When cleaning up the kitchen, dividing the left overs and putting things away, it is important to remember that the meal is OVER and this is not the time to grab one last bite of this and that. Those bites can easily add up to an additional 500 calories.
If you like to count calories as I do, you might enjoy the free website called www.sparkpeople.com. It is very easy to track your calories all day long. If you would like to visit this site, be brave enough to figure out how many calories are in a Thanksgiving dinner. Someone told me the other day, that he read an article that estimates that the average person consumes 4500 calories on Thanksgiving day. That is scary!!!
This is a great time to practice mindfulness, and pay attention to what we put onto our plates on Thanksgiving AND the day after and the day after and the day after and for the rest of our lives.
I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. It is a time to give thanks for all that we have in our lives. Even if we have troubles in life, that of course everyone has to some extent, most of us have much more than most people around the world. Let us take this day to be grateful for the bountiful lives, and think about how we can help others in our world.
CAN YOU COMMENT AND TELL US HOW YOU WILL AVOID OVEREATING ON THANKSGIVING???
Psychic Medium and Inspirational Author Carole Lynne
www.carolelynnecosmicconnection.com
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