Thanksgiving the LL Way Part 2 of 2
Thanksgiving the LL Way - part 2 of 2
As far as portions go? There is no reason to get completely bloated. Full? Sure. Otherwise, again, the pity-party switch may be thrown. Eat until YOU are satisfied, not until your relatives are satisfied you’ve eaten as much as they have.
This is a time of year when many magazines and Internet sites are offering “clean-eating tips” for Thanksgiving. I’m not against eating clean as long as it’s how you are REALLY hard-wired and it won’t cause a pity-party switch to be thrown. The overwhelming majority of us are hard-wired to indulge at least some on Thanksgiving and to a lessor extent the next day too. For these reasons I don’t spend much time writing about holiday eating. Remember, the 10-12 meals are one-half of one percent of all your meals for the year and if I really stretch it I said those meals might have a full one percent impact on your weight for the year. It’s inconsequential–if you STOP.
Here are my guidelines for Lifestyle Thanksgiving eating.
I would suggest you increase exercise a total of 90 to 180 minutes this week (that means through Sunday). 30 minutes extra every day from Wednesday through Sunday should do it.
Don’t invert the splurge rule. I hereby grant every member to have 2 moderate splurge meals on Thanksgiving AND the day after. That’s a total of four splurges. Don’t gorge. Eat till you’re satisfied. That will take care of your splurges for the next seven days. Even if you eat 4 times a day that leaves you with 24 more meals to eat clean over a 7-day period.
What I meant by don’t invert the splurge rule is don’t have 24 splurges and 4 clean meals in 7 days if you’re a 4-meal a day eater. If you’re a 6-meal a day eater that would be like eating 38 splurges and 4 clean meals since 6-meal a day eaters eat 42 meals a week. Don’t invert the splurge rule. Have your four and stop it!
Next, weigh every day. Yes, the weight is going to go up. So what? It’s 90% water and probably even higher. You need to know what you are doing while you are doing it. Do NOT wait to weigh yourself until after you have had too many splurges. That is a recipe for failure. Stay awake. Stay in the present. Don’t drift off into a Thanksgiving coma and wake up 5-7 days later beating yourself senseless with verbal abuse as you stand on the scale for the first time in a week. Weigh every single day. Stay in the present. Stay awake!
Drink more water or maintain good water habits. Flush, flush, flush. You might think it’s dumb to drink a lot of water since you will be holding more of it. Wrong. Water is the medium that your body uses to perform every chemical reaction that occurs. It can speed up metabolism if consumed adequately and slow metabolism if not enough. And drinking too little of it sends additional signals to the brain that cause the release of hormones telling your body to hold on to the water you do consume.
Make a commitment that what you don’t eat by the 2nd day (the day after Thanksgiving) you will throw or give away. By then you HAVE had enough. If you need to reset your pity-party switch now that tells you that two days of extra splurges is enough then begin good self-talk to accomplish this so you don’t feel you’ve been too good by stopping after the 2nd day.
If you want to log your Thanksgiving day make it easy. Unless you do eat very very clean simply log it as a day where you consumed 2-4 times what your average day usually is. If your average is 1400 calories then assume, honestly, that you consumed 2800 calories to 5600 calories. What is most common is probably between 2 and 3 times your daily average. Create one Custom Meal called Thanksgiving 2004 and input the data as 40% carb, 40% fat and 20% protein. Did you hear that difference? 40% carb, 40% fat, 20% protein.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving everyone! Be safe, splurge a little and be a good Lifestyler.