The holiday season can make it difficult to stick to a diet. With plates of turkey topped with warm gravy, mounds of fluffy mashed potatoes, and homemade apple pies being passed around the table, it can be hard to say “no” and opt for healthier options instead. That is, if they are even offered at your meal. But you don’t have to sacrifice your diet, or the meal you’ve been looking forward to all year, with these delicious, yet diet-friendly, dishes.
Would you believe us if we told you that you can still eat stuffing on Thanksgiving without ruining your diet? Well, it’s true with this Thanksgiving Stuffing Poppers recipe! Not only are these savory bites a healthy alternative, but they are also vegan and gluten free. The poppers are made from chickpeas and veggies, and the recipe even includes a cranberry jalapeno sauce so you can get your cranberry fix this season as well!
Rosemary Garlic Mashed Cauliflower
Not a fan of cauliflower? Don’t knock this Rosemary Garlic Mashed Cauliflower recipe before you try it! This dish is a great healthy substitute to mashed potatoes and you may even end up preferring this version over the traditional side dish! It is low on calories, but high on flavor. The best part yet? It’s super easy — calling for only 5 ingredients (cauliflower, cream cheese, garlic, butter, and rosemary) and taking less than 30 minutes from start to finish.
This Healthy Green Bean Casserole may not be your grandmother’s recipe, but it will still taste delicious and save 160 calories and 12 grams of saturated fat. Typical green bean casserole recipes include a heavy cream sauce and buttered breadcrumbs or cheese, but this recipe uses low-fat milk and whole wheat breadcrumbs instead. Eat up!
Some may deem the turkey as the most important part of the Thanksgiving meal and with this healthy Rosemary Turkey Breast recipe, you don’t have to give the bird up this year! Instead of frying your turkey or marinating it in butter, use seasonings, such as paprika, garlic, and rosemary to add flavor, and roast the turkey in the oven.
Turkey Sausage-Stuffed Acorn Squash
This main dish replacement may be a little less traditional for Thanksgiving dinner, but you’ll still get your Turkey fix and leave with a pleased palate. If you or your guests are vegetarian, you can simply leave out the turkey sausage from the recipe and stuff the squash with the vegetables, seeds, and seasonings to please everyone’s dietary restrictions.
Yes, you can have your pie and eat it too. This Light and Luscious Pumpkin Pie recipe will satisfy your sweet tooth without derailing your meal plan. It is only 187 calories for a single slice of pie and nut-free, soy-free, and diabetic appropriate. This pie will be a real crowd pleaser, even to those not counting calories this holiday season.
If you prefer Apple Pie over Pumpkin Pie — or you just want both, no judgement here — try this Cranberry Apple Maple Crisp instead! This grain-free, guilt-free dessert will have you coming back for seconds, or even thirds!
With these simple, delicious, and healthy Thanksgiving meal alternatives, you don’t have to dread your holiday season. Enjoy yourself without worrying about overindulging and ruining your diet.
If you’re waiting until after the holidays to begin your weight-loss journey, there’s nothing wrong with that either. Schedule a consultation with us today and see how our Serotonin-Plus Weight Loss Program may be the right choice for you. Our program focuses on diet, lifestyle changes, and medical supplements.
We hear people talk about it all the time: “I can’t eat like I used to,” and “I could eat anything when I was younger and nothing would stick to me!” But why is this often the case? How is it that someone can maintain a steady weight throughout their teens early twenties, but at some point a switch flips and that becomes much harder? Who flips the switch? Can it be flipped back? Let’s examine this issue and talk about some potential solutions to the matter of weight loss.
What Does Age Have To Do With It?
When we get older, our hormones change. These chemicals in our body are vital to maintaining muscle mass and keeping energy up throughout the day. As these hormones change, so do our bodies. We get tired more easily and it’s harder to build and maintain muscle. Having more tone muscle is connected with a higher metabolic rate, which burns through the energy we put into our bodies in the form of food. There are other factors as well beyond the chemistry of our own bodies though.
Old Habits Hit Hard
When we’re younger, we have more time for activities and have more energy. It’s possible to spend the day running around, participate in sports, or something similar. Our bodies are not just more efficient at burning calories, but we actually make use of them. We take in high calorie foods like processed snacks and sugary drinks to power our lifestyles, and it becomes a habit.
These habits form alongside exercise and can take its place because they have similar chemical effects on the brain. Both activities release endorphins, and one is definitely easier than the other.Eventually, most people’s lives don’t require the same caloric intake, but the habits have already formed.
We’re So Busy
Even if we’re not running around for exercise, we’re definitely not sitting around doing nothing. For many people, their schedule involves getting up, running to work, getting home, trying to relax and go to bed at a reasonable time, then go to bed and start the process over. There’s not much time for meal preparation, so we grab things that are easy to eat on the go. These kinds of food are the same kind of snacks we need to try to avoid as much as possible when working to control our weight.
What Can Be Done?
Looking at weight gain as an inevitability that cannot be changed can create a lack of motivation to do something about it. The idea that a switch has flipped and it’s suddenly more difficult to maintain weight isn’t entirely accurate. Instead of a light switch, think of it as as series of sliders that can be adjusted, like a dimmer switch or DJ faderboard. No one factor makes us gain weight on its own. It’s a cumulative contribution of many things over a period of time.
Slider #1: Cooking For Yourself
One of the first things that should be done when trying to take control of your diet, is learning to cook for yourself. Knowing what you’re eating on a regular basis and controlling it from start to finish reduces the amount of hidden calories your taking in. This is because when you’re eating out, portions may be larger and loaded with salt and/or sugar to make it taste especially good. When eating at home, it’s been found that you actually consume fewer calories, eat a more balanced diet, and have a more nutritionally fulfilling meal.
Slider #2: Add Variety To Your Grab-n-Go Snacks
Grabbing food as you run out the door is an activity many people can relate to. Often, those prepackaged snacks make for the easiest takeaway foods, but it doesn’t have to be. Apples, bananas, various fruits, nuts, there are plenty of options to just snatch something on the run. The next time you’re looking to stock up on some of your rushing around snacks, try to substitute it for a healthier option.
Slider #3: Get Some Sleep
There is evidence to suggest that if you don’t get enough sleep, your body won’t process food properly, and your weight can reflect that. It can even increase your risk of Type 2 Diabetes. While you sleep, your body is recuperating from the previous day. It’s processing the foods you’ve eaten, repairing wear and tear, and storing excess energy in ways that make it easy to access later on. Putting time aside to get adequate sleep is crucial to ensuring that your body is doing everything it can to process and allocate the food and energy you put into it.
Slider #4: Schedule Some Time
Part of the difficulty associated with starting new habits and breaking old ones is finding the time to make it happen. Put time aside to put together several snacks that you can grab throughout the week. Putting some cut up apples, nuts, or other healthy snacks in a container that you can grab on your busy schedule doesn’t take much time to do, but making that short time commitment can go a long way. This goes for exercise, sleep, and general relaxation as well.
Slider #5: Talk To A Professional
Weight and why we gain it/lose it over our lives is a tricky topic to try to navigate on your own. We do have a harder time maintaining weight as we get older, but your doctor might have a recommendation for a way forward. Because the issue at hand is closely linked with hormone balances, it’s worth scheduling a consultation with a hormone specialist to see what kinds of recommendations and treatments they offer.
In order to maintain or achieve a healthy weight and lifestyle, many people go on crash diets in an attempt to get results fast. Usually the hippest fad in dieting advocates for an extreme food related behavior, such as eating only meat, or avoiding sugar all-together. It can also be related to excessive exercise. The problem with these diets is that after initial results (or sometimes no results), they can lead to increased weight gain and a redoubling of unhealthy habits, known as the Yo-Yo Effect.
Why Does This Happen?
When we quickly push our bodies to extremes they aren’t used to, it can backlash against our habits. If you’re used to eating a high number of daily calories, and cut it down to an extreme low, your body can go into shock and the diet will become unsustainable. When the structure of the diet falls away, someone who was heavily restricting calories may take in even more calories than before and regain the lost weight. Someone who has spent day after day in the gym might take weeks off between gym visits. This loss/gain cycle can cause serious problems within the body like depression and exhaustion.
It’s not always about failing at a diet or not having a sense of commitment to follow through. For some people a crash diet is a get-fit-quick plan designed to get them the body they want quick. Sometimes though, these changes are not sustainable. For example, consistently buying groceries that are way out of your budget makes it impossible to maintain the lifestyle over the long term.
How To Avoid The Yo-Yo
The key to avoiding the bounce back from a failed fad diet is to think about your plans ahead of time. Before diving in keep these tips in mind:
Do Some Critical Reading
Check up on the history of the diet. Who was involved in developing it, and does it have a vetted source to back up its claims? Is there documented proof? Who is advocating for this diet? How many other diets have they supported in the past? If a celebrity is lauding the benefits of a new diet less than 6 months after their last new diet, it might be worth waiting to see how this new one pans out.
Does It Fit Your Lifestyle?
While a new diet begins sweeping across social media and news sources, take it with a grain of salt. Critically look at what the diet is asking you to do, and consider if it’s something you can reasonably incorporate into your daily life. Adjusting your lifestyle in such a way that it’s done using smaller changes means you’re more likely to keep up with the diet.
Plan Ahead
It’s also important to look at the whole course of the diet. Does it change over time? On day 30, do you need to stop eating all grains cold turkey? A common reason people stop following diets is also because of an unforeseen challenge within the diet itself.
Talk To A Professional
As always, before you change your diet significantly, and especially before attempting any of these crash diets, seek out the advice of your doctor or a medical professional. This way, you can discuss your expectations and get a better idea about what you should be doing to achieve the kinds of effects you want from a lifestyle change. In addition, talking with a trained professional can shed some light on how to make significant changes to your diet and lifestyle stick beyond a few weeks.
In order to keep yourself on the right path, it’s important to note that no single diet has all of the answers no matter what they promise in their book or commercials. Talking with your doctor, a nutritionist, and critically looking into any new diets you’re considering is incredibly important before getting caught in a Yo-Yo situation.
