This is a repost from when I Google'd "Holiday Overeating'.... Everyone is blogging about overeating and how you feel out of control at times. Figured it was worth sharing. It refers to Thanksgiving thru New Years.
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If you know where to sit at the table and what to eat the day before the big feast, you won’t gain weight this weekend. Susan Roberts on four holiday diet tricks.
For many dieters, the holidays are a time for giving up. Faced with a six-week neverending onslaught of fattening foods, you know you can’t win, so you resign yourself in advance and then let yourself go.
The typical adult gains between five and eight pounds in the short interval between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, the equivalent of eating about 20,000 excess calories, or 550 calories a day beyond what you need to maintain weight. Will you be able to avoid putting on pounds over the next six weeks if you resolve to watch each and every bite? It’s possible, but not likely—unless you know good ways to limit the damage.
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We can't get away from our instinctive eating behaviors, but we can learn to control them. Here are four simple ways to help yourself based on my incredibly effective "I" diet weight-control program:
1. Start Before Thursday Even if you’re not the one cooking, you’re not at the mercy of your holiday host, especially if you pre-game starting a day or two ahead. One foolproof way to prepare for a particular impending feeding frenzy is to add to your regular meals two or three half-cup servings of a high-fiber cereal like Fiber One Original or All Bran Extra Fiber beginning one or even two days before the big meal. Don’t make the mistake of eating light before Thanksgiving to bank calories—that’s exactly what will cause overeating. Instead, give yourself this satiety-boost to gain fullness and control. When dinner is served, you’ll automatically want to eat far less.
2. Micromanage the Table Surreptitiously controlling your food microenvironment when you do sit down to eat makes a huge difference as to how much goes in your mouth. So as you take your seat, bear in mind that short, skinny neighbors will serve themselves smaller portions and tempt you to eat less than tall, overweight, or athletic ones. If you can't sit next to a featherweight, at least keep the high-calorie foods and alcohol moving down the table away from you, making sure it doesn’t end up within reach. Multiple research studies have shown that the proximity of food determines how much you load onto your plate, so even simple steps like this can be a big help.
3. Skip the Boring Stuff Every holiday meal has some high-calorie things you don't particularly care for. By not looking at, smelling, and especially tasting even a single bite of the mundane items, you avoid revving up metabolic hunger signals unnecessarily and can save hundreds of calories. As for work parties and other events where the food is simply all-around poor, eat something satisfying before you go and keep a glass of seltzer in your hand for a zero-calorie event.
4. Recover Control the Very Next Day Yes we have the metabolic effects of feasts like Thanksgiving that make us hungry for another good meal, and then another, but that doesn't mean you’re helpless. The key to nipping negative cycles in the bud is doing recovery activities in the right order. Although cutting out high-calorie treats starting the next day might seem like the right place to start, in fact this superficially easy route frequently leads to failure because you get hungry and then overeat when you get hungry again. The key here, in my clinical experience, is to recover satiety first. Put yourself on a high-fiber regimen the very next morning—high-fiber cereals, legume dishes, and low-carb, high-fiber breads are best—and see how quickly you lose the urge to overeat. With some good satiety under your belt, you are ready to start eating healthy stuff again and will be better able to keep those pounds from sticking around your middle.
