Eating out for Holiday Dinners

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elisa123gal
elisa123gal Posts: 4,287 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
As I learn how to maintain my weight, I find these two ideas would really work during the holidays.

1. Eat Thanksgiving and Christmas Dinner out at a restaurant, No leftovers..no nibbling as you cook. You eat the meal..even desert and walk away.

2. Be one of those nuts who run a 3 or 5 k on Thanksgiving. If you ate out and exercised that day.. you'd never gain.


Now if I could talk my family into this.. I'd be home free.
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Replies

  • BZAH10
    BZAH10 Posts: 5,710 Member
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    Good points. I'm going to "object" to each one simply for the sake of adding a different perspective.

    1. I strongly dislike going out to eat on major holidays because the food is generally sub-par (of course, then you eat less) and the staff most likely does not want to be there and I worry about how the food is handled. I don't blame them for not wanting to work and restaurant work is tough on any day, not just holidays.

    2. I don't think working out or being active on a holiday makes you a "nut". Personally, I NEED the activity to keep be from going stir-crazy while spending way too much time sitting around talking and waiting for everyone else to finish eating.

    Although I made some personal changes in my life recently and I now have all holidays to myself to do what I please so point #2 doesn't really apply anymore. I workout and eat normally regardless of the date on the calendar.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,986 Member
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    Neither of the ideas would work for me.

    1. Restaraunt meals are expensive in public holidays.
    And what I really enjoy about Christmas Day is relaxing with relatives while we spend most of the day eating, chatting, playing games together.
    Only works if it as at home ( someone's home, not neccesarily mine)

    2. See above. Not wasting said time working out.

    But that is just me - YMMV.
  • nooie19
    nooie19 Posts: 153 Member
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    This year for the the first time on Christmas Day we ate at a Turkish restaurant. The owners and other patrons were not celebrating Christmas and there were many healthy options. I also went for a jog for purely selfish reasons of staying sane amidst the stress of in-law’s! It was a great Christmas!
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
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    I ran 6 miles on Thanksgiving morning and 5 miles on Christmas day (even did a short lifting sesh too). It was an ordinary exercise day for me, plus 'me' time before family dinners is crucial. :smiley:

    And eating out at a restaurants on the holiday's doesn't have the same appeal, because tradition for one and the the food just isn't that good. These two holiday's are just two days in the grand scheme for me, but actually my eating doesn't end there, I finish off the Christmas goodies and do a New Years dinner too. :smile:
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,287 Member
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    since I do all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning... this new idea to do a destination holiday or go out to eat is totally selfish. I have zero problem ending the tradition of being the family slave . lol. So, yeah,,going to restaurant is very appealing, especially to the one who is doing all the work.

    For those of you who are runners and run on holidays..., you need to eat all that food to make your calories. I think I'll do. 3 or 5 k on Thanksgiving next year.. Christmas it will be too cold.

  • brenn24179
    brenn24179 Posts: 2,144 Member
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    why not be selfish at times, we have went to k&w with my 91 year old Mom for years. I say do whatever works for you.
  • collectingblues
    collectingblues Posts: 2,541 Member
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    Yes — you do need the fuel the workouts, but you don’t need to eat more than you burn. That 5k doesn’t earn that much!
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
    edited December 2018
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    Christmas is still an at home with family holiday for us, which makes the ideas hardly workable. One thing we do is try hard not to make too much stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy. I put a lot of turkey in quart freezer bags and pull one out every week or two for several weeks. A lot of people end up having Christmas dinner several times to get rid of the leftovers. Kids are old enough (young adults, more or less) to understand making sure everyone has had a chance to get a reasonable serving of everything before piling on more so that making close to the right amount works.

    ETA - I do some averaging across days also, which is fine if you can stick to it and the days you average across are reasonably close together. In other words, you can have a low net calorie day or two after Christmas that would be considered an unhealthy amount if there wasn't a recent surplus to offset it. The body doesn't reset at midnight.
  • Noreenmarie1234
    Noreenmarie1234 Posts: 7,493 Member
    edited December 2018
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    A 5k would only give me 150 calories though.
  • rheddmobile
    rheddmobile Posts: 6,840 Member
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    collectingblues wrote: »
    Yes — you do need the fuel the workouts, but you don’t need to eat more than you burn. That 5k doesn’t earn that much!

    For most people a 5k is about 300 or 400 calories, not enough for a slice of pie. Our local 5k Turkey Trot offered a cinnamon bun at the finish which was 1100 calories. I wonder how many people ate that bun, and then a turkey dinner with all the fixings, blissfully thinking they had "earned" those calories by running 5k?

    I ran 8 miles and walked two, earlier Christmas week, in order to bank calories for Christmas. Then I controlled my portions.

    Eating at home means you get to control what goes into the food and make sure at least a couple of filling and low-calorie options are available alongside your family's traditional recipes. Restaurant food is typically full of added fats, salt, and sugars.
  • BZAH10
    BZAH10 Posts: 5,710 Member
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    elisa123gal wrote: »
    since I do all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning... this new idea to do a destination holiday or go out to eat is totally selfish. I have zero problem ending the tradition of being the family slave . lol. So, yeah,,going to restaurant is very appealing, especially to the one who is doing all the work.

    For those of you who are runners and run on holidays..., you need to eat all that food to make your calories. I think I'll do. 3 or 5 k on Thanksgiving next year.. Christmas it will be too cold.

    Oh then I totally agree with you. There's no way I'd do all the work while everyone else got to relax, do nothing, then eat a meal they didn't help with.
  • shunggie
    shunggie Posts: 1,036 Member
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    I like the idea of eating out on Christmas but I know my family wouldn't go for it. Mostly for the reasons listed above. For years (weather permitting) we'd take a family walk after the meal. Kids, grandparents, everyone. We stopped doing that probably 20 years ago. I had a window on Christmas morning before everyone showed up and took my walk. It really set me up for the rest of the day. Of course since I had cooked for hours I didn't really eat anything. That's my holiday food trick - do all the cooking and you won't feel like eating. Don't worry you'll get an additional calorie burn cleaning up after everyone has gone. :)
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,088 Member
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    I live in a small town, not even the Asian places are open. Not racist, but in many places I have lived I have noticed they stay open in Christmas. As far as exercise on Christmas. I lifted the day before. Then Christmas day, my gym is closed, instill walked, and by the end of the day still managed 16k steps. I also took a letter our of Layne Nortons book and didn't eat like an @ hole! Lol
  • laurenq1991
    laurenq1991 Posts: 384 Member
    edited December 2018
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    Cooking less is also an option to prevent a ton of leftovers (and make the cooking process easier). I'm paranoid about food safety if food takes too long to cool down, so I don't cook that much food at once and our holiday leftovers are usually gone by the next day. I also make it a goal to have all the cooking done in two hours. This year my MIL cooked everything (I was going to cook but she decided to do it for some reason because she likes cooking) and I think it took her about 2 to 2.5 hours. Even though it is a holiday, I try to keep the meal on the healthier side when I do cook, and the stuff she made was on the healthier side as well. My family and I always go for a walk after holiday dinners (well on Thanksgiving we didn't because it was 16 degrees out, but on Christmas we walked three miles). It's nice to see the holiday decorations and stretch your legs after eating, and the holiday wouldn't feel the same without it. My husband is an exercise junkie and he ran eight miles on our town track on Christmas.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
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    elisa123gal wrote: »
    since I do all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning... this new idea to do a destination holiday or go out to eat is totally selfish. I have zero problem ending the tradition of being the family slave . lol. So, yeah,,going to restaurant is very appealing, especially to the one who is doing all the work.


    More fool you for being the slave in the first place!

    I cooked today, so I left the clearing away and washing up to someone else! Seems fait to me!
  • nooie19
    nooie19 Posts: 153 Member
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    I’ve given up thinking I e “earned” any extra calories just because I exercised. I exercise for my mental health, to improve muscle tone, and to regulate blood sugar levels.
  • musicfan68
    musicfan68 Posts: 1,124 Member
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    I just don't eat tons of food. It's just food and not worth making myself miserable or getting acid reflux for days afterwards. I don't eat any sweets - they are the worst for acid reflux for me. So to me it's just another family meal.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
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    We did Thanksgiving in a restaurant last year for various family reasons and it was pleasant. Not something I want to do regularly, but there are a number of restaurants here where they put on a really nice spread. Reasonably sure it did not save any calories, but I don't really go totally nuts on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

    I like to run my regular planned run whether it's a holiday or not (as the prior posted said, because it's mentally helpful, among other reasons), but typically it doesn't burn that many calories vs. what it's possible to eat. I did do a Thanksgiving half marathon one year (I think it was actually on the Saturday after Thanksgiving), and the first year I was losing weight I ran to a local race, did the race (it's an 8K) and then ran home. The run from my place to the start was about 4 miles, so that ended up being similar to a half marathon (but it was a cold day so getting chilled between the run there and when it started wasn't great). The race was early enough that I had plenty of time to have breakfast and then get into my cooking after that, but we don't do Thanksgiving dinner really early like some do, more like 5.

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