Five Holiday Nutrition Tips to Learn to Maintain Your Weight

The holidays are full of amazing smells, sights, and flavors. There is no reason you cannot enjoy everything about the holidays. It just requires a plan. But, unfortunately, starting sometime around October, everyone starts wanting to eat more pumpkin and spice and indulging in more fancy drinks. Then it just goes from there and gets worse until you are really suffering on New Year’s Eve.

The following are five nutrition tips to learn to maintain your weight this holiday season:

Watch Your Liquids

Drinks can be a diet ruiner faster than almost anything else because they are sneaky. A really fabulous drink can have more calories than a whole meal. Instead of drinking your calories drink more water and find ways to enjoy holiday flavors made from filling food rather than liquid. Plus, if your drinks are laced with alcohol, and you have more than one, that will reduce your defenses and ruin your willpower.

Remember the Veggies and Fruit  

The holidays sometimes seem to be about the meat and the fat and sugar, but there are so many ways you can prepare veggies and fruit to celebrate the date and the fabulous produce you can get. So filling up on the veggies and fruit more than everything else will pay off all year long.

Don’t Skip Meals

It can be tempting to skip meals with the idea of saving up calories for a special day. While you can do this, since calories really do add up or subtract all week, you need to be very careful. Instead of thinking only of the calories, think of the nutritional makeup of the meals. Eating a very light but highly nutritious meal will help you both stay in your dietary needs and bank calories for a special meal.

Eat Before Going Out

If you will go out on the town with friends and family during the holidays, one strategy that works to help curb temptation and ensure you get the nutrition you need is to eat something highly nutritious before going out. Then when you go out, you can indulge in one high-calorie drink, a few bites of something greasy, and feel completely satisfied with it since you’re already full.

Pick Your Indulgence

The holidays involve more than one day a year. You’re probably doing something holiday-related from October through January. So, why not take the time to pick one indulgence that you’ll have each time you do something holiday-related? That way, you go in with a plan and not a free for all. So, one day you may say this night I’m having that fancy 500 calorie drink, but I’m not going to have that 800-calorie pie next time.

The entire point is, have a plan going in. Start making your plans now. You don’t want to pretend the holidays don’t exist and lie to yourself that you do not have any Halloween candy, Thanksgiving pie, or Christmas treats. It’s just not reality. But, you will enjoy them, and you can do so without guilt with planning and acceptance of reality.