just a little bit tired of the "how are you plannig to eat in the holydays" post?
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This is the prequel to the Resolutioners.0
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knitapeace wrote: »I think part of the problem is that the holidays aren't just a couple of days in 6-7 weeks, as far as parties and celebrations go. My office has a Thanksgiving lunch potluck on Tuesday before Thanksgiving, then a potluck breakfast the very next day, then of course the next day is Thanksgiving itself. Then there's the office Christmas party and all the friend and family get-togethers ("Let's do ours 2 weekends before Christmas, then you can do yours the weekend before, and then we'll be with our families on the actual holiday...") It turns into event after event after event all centered on food, because not everyone in our lives is as focused on healthy eating as we are. So it becomes a juggernaut of control and moderation which can be challenging, especially in the face of difficult family relationships and history.
Not to mention, some of us also have birthdays the day before Thanksgiving, ahem. So naturally, cake.
Yep! My "holidays" actually start when I have my Christmas party, the first Thursday in December. We have a cookie exchange, and most of the cookies just take up residence at my house. From then until NYE, it's basically one loooong party. Some people need a plan to make it work. When you're 10 or 15 pounds from goal, those 5-10 pounds you put on during the holidays won't just drop off as soon as January rolls around. And if you're netting under 1500 cals per day, a couple of yummy/delicious/decadent cookies can RUIN you.
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I plan on stuffing myself ON Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then working leftovers and treats into my calories the rest of the time (daughter and I both have Nov birthdays, too, so lots of treats). It helps that we try to make lower-cal versions of favorites (roasted green beans instead of casseroles, mashed potatoes with onion broth instead of cream, etc). But frankly I've found that if I have a healthy breakfast I can't really do that much damage in one meal without making myself sick, and when the meal is over, we pack the food away and don't take it out again till the next day (no grazing on pumpkin pie). Anyway, I love celebrations and food is a big part of that for me, so not letting myself eat whatever I want at least for one meal makes me saaaaad. I have yet to gain any noticeable weight from any one holiday
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The problem is not and never has been feasting on feast days. It's that we feast on non-feast days that is the problem.0
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I don't mind all of the holiday meal posts. It's fun to see how others plan to celebrate, whether it be healthy or not-so-healthy, and maybe get some ideas, and give some if needed. For me, planning ahead is key. Picking and choosing when and how much I want to indulge. You should have seen me the first year I was logging my food. I was a twitchy mess trying (and failing) to stay on track and log it all. Then I decided, for this one day I'm not logging my meal. Then I got up from bed and logged it all. I've chilled a lot since then. Lol. I don't think we should throw caution to the wind to the point of undoing what we've work so hard to achieve though.
Leftovers won't be an issue for me. My father and I will be going out to a restaurant (3rd year in a row). Never as good as homemade, but he and I decided we don't need to be swimming in food. Just a really nice meal out is fine for us.0 -
MyChocolateDiet wrote: »Okay karyabc, I guess you're right. I can just eat my regular amount of calories on Christmas. The only thing I feel I HAVE to have on Christmas is gingerbread cookies, so I'm pretty sure I can fit those into my cal goal. Probably just replace my daily french toast & bacon breakfast with a coffee and eggs breakfast. That should make room for me to have gingerbread men later. I'll try your way this year. Let's see what happens.
hahahaahaha i thought you were being sarcastic!! anyway, nice! hope it goes really well, i'll be trying to do the same thing.
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NoelFigart1 wrote: »The problem is not and never has been feasting on feast days. It's that we feast on non-feast days that is the problem.
yep!! you're absolutely 100% percent right , auto control and portion control has been my two strategies to accomplish my goal
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Its not phasing me at all. We dont have Thanksgiving for a start. Just have a strategy you know you can live with is about all thats required and then go for it. I did have this idea I was going to do an extra ten minutes cardio each visit, but am knackered enough as it is.
Ill be a bit more aware this year that what I consyme ill be in the gym working off, though.0 -
lets not forget that is possible to go true this time and improve our health and no gaining weight and actually also loose weight
That is possible. Everything is a choice. We can try to make the best choices possible and keep on track every single day. I feel pretty good about my holiday plan and don't feel I will overeat.
Sometimes it can be really hard to make good choicesthough. Sometimes people decide it is easiest to just acknowledge they will eat more and get back to it as soon as possible without getting emotional over it.
One holiday a few years ago, I was offered candy repeatedly by someone even though I calmly kept saying no thanks. People ended up getting scary mad that day just because I didn't want to eat something. Food was thrown (not by me). So, there might be some intense pressure from insane relatives to eat something they are offering you and you choose to do what is necessary to get out alive and worry about calories later.
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the first step of your plan would be to package the cookies from the cookie swap for giving out. keep one of the pretty wrapped packages for yourself as your gift to yourself. its more special and less guilty than grabbing at the cookies you collected at the swap. you'll enjoy them more. if you don't off the top of your head have people to give them to rack your brain and go out and find them. your hairdresser, your dentist, your kids teacher, the secretary at your husbands work, anything. it could really make their day and then you only have the one package you reserved for you.knitapeace wrote: »I think part of the problem is that the holidays aren't just a couple of days in 6-7 weeks, as far as parties and celebrations go. My office has a Thanksgiving lunch potluck on Tuesday before Thanksgiving, then a potluck breakfast the very next day, then of course the next day is Thanksgiving itself. Then there's the office Christmas party and all the friend and family get-togethers ("Let's do ours 2 weekends before Christmas, then you can do yours the weekend before, and then we'll be with our families on the actual holiday...") It turns into event after event after event all centered on food, because not everyone in our lives is as focused on healthy eating as we are. So it becomes a juggernaut of control and moderation which can be challenging, especially in the face of difficult family relationships and history.
Not to mention, some of us also have birthdays the day before Thanksgiving, ahem. So naturally, cake.
Yep! My "holidays" actually start when I have my Christmas party, the first Thursday in December. We have a cookie exchange, and most of the cookies just take up residence at my house. From then until NYE, it's basically one loooong party. Some people need a plan to make it work. When you're 10 or 15 pounds from goal, those 5-10 pounds you put on during the holidays won't just drop off as soon as January rolls around. And if you're netting under 1500 cals per day, a couple of yummy/delicious/decadent cookies can RUIN you.
as for the one LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG party, when you're planning your calendar, pick out the few events where you KNOW the food will be extra good and give yourself permission to indulge on those days. NO use spending extra cals on hardened fruit cake, or surprise potluck fare. But aunt so and so's never off always right egg nog THAT's a day you want to partake and the cals are worth it.
Think like that and plan like that and it should mitigate the damage.
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This makes me happy that Thanksgiving is healthy at my house (none of us like Thanksgiving food) and that we don't celebrate Christmas.0
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noMyChocolateDiet wrote: »Okay karyabc, I guess you're right. I can just eat my regular amount of calories on Christmas. The only thing I feel I HAVE to have on Christmas is gingerbread cookies, so I'm pretty sure I can fit those into my cal goal. Probably just replace my daily french toast & bacon breakfast with a coffee and eggs breakfast. That should make room for me to have gingerbread men later. I'll try your way this year. Let's see what happens.
hahahaahaha i thought you were being sarcastic!! anyway, nice! hope it goes really well, i'll be trying to do the same thing.
no i wasn't even though i could see why you might think that. but yeah, I'm a little over stuffing my face with everything in sight on christmas. i feel like I do this at thanksgiving and those foods are special and whatnot to that holiday but christmas is just a slew of random sweets and foods I could pretty much get anytime. with the exception of the gingerbread cookies. i plan to have those.0 -
^that's weird? how did I top post AND bottom post? does this mean I'm bisezual?0
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Think it's great that people think about it and plan for it. Some will make the choice to treat it as any other day and others will indulge. The diet isn't over because you have pie on Thanksgiving. If you gain a pound or two that week, you can re lose them the next.
It's great that people share strategies, ideas and jokes about it.0 -
And the end of the day, it's just life. When the holidays are a wrap in most of the world, in New Orleans, Mardi Gras will be well on our heels. It's not just one day, depending on how you celebrate it you can parade every day or every weekend. Especially the weekend prior to Mardi Gras. From that Thursday to that Tuesday it's filled with parades, mardi gras balls, cook outs on the route, or grabbin' some Popeyes while you're walking down St. Charles Ave catching every parade for that day. Not to mention, the Super Bowl is right before that, so somebody somewhere will have a party with some not so healthy food items. After that, crawfish fest, french quarter fest, jazz fest, and a festival nearly every weekend; not to mention birthday parties, weddings, office parties, or gatherings filled with food and laughter just because. During the holidays or throughout the rest of the year, we simply have to learn balance. Make a decision if you're gonna log, eat at a deficit, not go to the event, or just to or say to hayul with it, I'm not counting a dayum thing and I'm going completely in! You have to be focused on your goals and be mindful about what you're doing and determine whether or not this will hurt you and knock you off course. There's never going to be a stretch of time when nothing fun is going on so just have a level of self control to know what you should or should'nt do and you'll be good.0
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I do have to agree that it is maybe a little obsessive-seeming, all the posts on how to get through the holidays, but I feel somewhat the same way as for me it's not just one/two days, as others are saying. I think worrying about it too much is not great. But I am worrying about it somewhat because we have:
My family's Thanksgiving
My fiance's family's Thanksgiving (Saturday)
His family's Thanksgiving leftover dinner (Sunday/Monday)
Leftovers brought home from my family's. . . .
Then December gatherings
Then his family's Christmas
My family's Christmas
And my fiance's birthday!
Eeek! For some of these things it is easy to control food quantity. For the actual holiday meals, not so easy (especially at my fiance's family's house, because his mother serves everyone for some reason and she overfeeds us all; I am going to try to prevent this this year!).
I am hoping for early snow so I can do some xc skiing. Or not-too-cold weather so I can do an hour run on the Thanksgivings!
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I don't want to come off as rude, but I think it is best not to assume you know what people are thinking. I know I have come up with guidelines on how I am going to hopefully successfully stay on my weight loss course during the weeks surrounding the holidays that are full of pitch ins, large meals, extra goodies, etc. I am not looking for justification for overeating, I don't plan to overeat, and I don't think it is a bad thing for people to share their ideas. That being said, everyone is allowed their opinions.0
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Not everyone has the same amount of control. For some, having just the one day of overeating is fine. For others (like me), it just starts a downward spiral throughout the season.0
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malavika413 wrote: »This makes me happy that Thanksgiving is healthy at my house (none of us like Thanksgiving food) and that we don't celebrate Christmas.
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