Showing posts with label Food Tips. Show all posts
12 Healthy Holiday Secrets
Ha! If it were only this easy! Navigating through the holidays can be challenging when you are trying to stay on track to reaching your healthy lifestyle goals but we have 12 tips for you to help you maintain throughout the holiday season:
1) Balance your meals
2) Eat a healthy breakfast every day, and especially on the day you are going to eat a lot. Don’t starve yourself. You will only eat more at the meal.
3) If you don’t love what is in front of you, don’t eat it! Save that for the really special treats.
4) Track your food every day
5) Regift your food!
6) Review your weight loss goal every day. Think how you will feel after the new year if you have not gained weight.
7) If you overindulge, don’t feel guilty. Get back on track.
8) Keep healthy snacks on hand at all times.
9) Keep moving. Add exercise whenever possible
10) Set those saboteurs straight. Make sure people know about your maintenance plan. Tell them you are doing it for health reasons
11) Gauge your weight by how your clothes are fitting.
12) Create healthier versions of the food you love.
9 Secrets To Surviving Your Next Holiday Party
By: Susanne Ware - TNT Health Educator
We've all been there during the holiday season. You've committed to a healthier way of eating and have stayed the course on the way to your goal. And then....BAM! The holiday party invitations start rolling in. But don't worry! We have 9 secrets we are going to share to help you survive those parties and stay on track. And the best part...you won't even feel like you are missing out on all the holiday cheer!
Bring Your Own Food
1. Contribute a healthy dish to a gathering to ensure there’s something you can indulge in.
2. Eat the best-for-you offerings first. For example, hot soup as a first course―especially when it's broth-based, not cream-based―can help you avoid eating too much during the main course.
3. Stand more than an arm's length away from munchies, like a bowl of nuts or chips, while you chat so you're not tempted to raise your hand to your mouth every few seconds.
4. Concentrate on your meal while you're eating it. Focus on chewing your food well and enjoying the smell, taste, and texture of each item. Research shows that mealtime multitasking (whether at home or at a party) can make you pop mindless calories into your mouth. Of course, dinner-party conversation is only natural, but try to set your food down until you're finished chatting so you are more aware of what you're taking in.
Snack Before a Party
5. Before going out, have a healthy snack to curb your appetite.
6. Eat breakfast. This has been shown to prevent overeating later in the day.
7. Limit the number of high-calorie foods on your party plate. Research has shown that when faced with a variety of foods with different tastes, textures, smells, shapes, and colors, people eat more―regardless of their true hunger level. Cutting down on your personal smorgasbord can decrease what you end up eating by 20 to 40 percent.
8. Choose foods wisely, filling your plate with low-calorie items, such as leafy green salads, vegetable dishes, and lean proteins, and taking smaller portions of the richer ones. That way, you can eat a larger amount of food for fewer calories and not feel deprived.
9. Pop a sugar-free mint in your mouth.When you’ve had enough (and don’t want to eat more), the feeling of a fresh palate can curb additional noshing.
Tag :
Food Tips,
Susanne Ware,
Weigh your Brain and Eat Right Through The Holidays (FREE printable hunger scale chart)
Well you made it! You survived Thanksgiving…even if just by the skin of your teeth. And if you’re anything like me you’re probably scrambling to get ready for Christmas. The holidays can be a mix of celebration and stress! And both of those can get healthy eating off track. So it’s important to stay mindful of our eating especially through the holidays.
With so many sweet treats around us now 24/7, mindful eating can seem almost impossible. Stack a hectic schedule and a little holiday stress on top of that and it can become the perfect food storm. I can relate because I have battled with being an emotional eater and if I am not “mindful”, I can find myself gravitating to food when I am stressed, antsy and simply burning the candle at both ends. So I wanted to share a little tip that I (and my clients) use to help keep eating in check…it’s a hunger scale. A hunger scale chart is a wonderful way to help you listen to your body instead of your head before you eat.
If you can identify as an emotional eater, you are not alone. We all eat for many reasons and being hungry isn’t always one of them. Stress, anxiety, boredom, social influences, even exhaustion are just a few emotions that can drive us straight to food. And holidays are the perfect time for these emotions to become elevated. Using a hunger scale during this eating season is one of the best ways to keep the scale steady.
So when you find yourself standing in front of the refrigerator, over that plate of cookies or in the pantry looking for something to eat, first ask yourself…”Am I really hungry?” This little graphic might help you answer that question…
If you decide it is more “emotional hunger”, find something to distract yourself or grab a bottle of water. If it is “physical hunger”, see where you are on the hunger scale. The goal with the hunger scale is to never start eating below a 3 and to stop eating when you are at a 6:
10 So full, you feel like you will bust9 Full and Uncomfortable8 Full7 Starting to feel full6 Slight feeling of fullness (good time to stop eating)5 Neutral- feel energized and comfortable4 Slight feeling of hunger (good time to eat)3 Hungry (best not to drop below this)2 Hungry and light headed1 So hungry you feel shaky and can’t think straight(will be hard to makehealthy food choices, watch portions and eat slow)
Remember, it takes the body 15-20 minutes to feel full or satisfied. Eating slowly and pausing frequently can be helpful in figuring out when you need to stop eating to reach the feeling of 6 after a meal. I like to keep a copy handy of the hunger scale in thekitchen on my fridge and a copy in my purse. Keeping it handy helps me remember to use it.
You may find that using a tool like this feels a bit foreign at first, especially during the holiday season, and that’s okay. The key is to be mindful of why you are eating as well as what and how much you are eating.
Here is a simple, easy to use HUNGER SCALE for you to print and start using today.
Let us know how it works for you!
Angela Wilkinson President & Founder BS, DTR, PLSN
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