Thanksgiving Day Eating Survival Guide

The holiday season is a time for connection, gratitude, food! Getting through Thanksgiving can always be a challenge. Below is a compassionate, mindful guide to enjoying the holiday feast while respecting your body needs and signals.

Before Thanksgiving: Set Yourself Up for Success

Preparation is key

• Plan your post-holiday meals. Stock your fridge with your typical meals for after Thanksgiving. Having your optimal options ready to go will prevent dreadful spiral of all or nothing thinking and mindless eating.

• Keep your routine. Stick to your normal habits leading up thanksgiving. This creates consistency and helps prevents overwhelming feeling by sudden changes in your eating patterns.

Thanksgiving Day: Mindful Indulgence

Start Your Day Right

• Eat your usual breakfast. Skipping meals can backfire by making you ravenous at dinner.

• Stay hydrated. Drinking enough water will support proper digestion and helps mistaking thirst for hunger.

During the Feast

1. Survey the Table

-Before you dive in, take a moment to look over all the food available. Plan your plate with a little bit of everything you’d like to try.

2. Build a Balanced Plate

-Choose the amount of food that you suspect will get you to about 70% fullness when you’re done.

-If you can include a protein and a vegetable to balance out the heavier carb and fat dishes.

3. Slow Down

-Take 15–20 minutes to eat your meal.

-Use strategies to pace yourself:

 Put your fork down between bites and become mindful of your breaths

 Engage in conversation with family and friends.

 Try eating with your non-dominant hand. Let me know how this one goes, that one is a great patience builder.

4. Tune Into Your Senses

-Notice the taste, texture, and smell of your food.

-Ask yourself how much you enjoy the food you’re eating. This will enhance satisfaction and helps you stay present.

5. Wait Before You Get Seconds

-When you finish your first plate, take a 20-minute break to let your body process what you’ve eaten.

-During this time, get lost in the holiday atmosphere. Connect with the people around you and really enjoy the moment.

-If you still feel hungry after the pause, go back for seconds, choosing either something new or your absolute favorite from round one.

-Repeat this as many time as you like. But be respectful of what you body is telling you.

After Thanksgiving: Making the Most of Leftovers

Thanksgiving leftovers are great! I suggest to approach them mindfully:

• Use leftovers for meal prep while being calorie-conscious.

-3 ounces of food = ~200 calories. A balanced meal around 400 calories will be about 6 ounces of food (not including desserts).

-Sweets and desserts are calorie-dense: 200 calories per 1.5 ounces. Portion thoughtfully.

• Get creative and incorporate them into your regular meal plan.

Final Thoughts

Thanksgiving is a time to embrace gratitude—for food, family, and yourself. Enjoy the moments but listen to your body. If you are an eater this will be a great way to as much as you can, if you can’t really eat a lot this allows you to really pick and choose what you want. In both cases your GI system will thank you because you are allowing more time for better digesting and deepening a healthier connection to food. Incorporating leftovers into your regular eating also challenges you to break the idea that there are such thing as good foods and bad foods. Some foods are more nutrient dense than others. Be mindful, prepare, savor every bite and return to your routine feeling refreshed, not regretful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

5 of 5 - Mindful Eating

Mindful eating is the foundation to long term healthy eating. It does not matter how lean you can get, or how much muscle you can gain, if you have not taken the time to practice mindful eating you may slip back into unhealthy eating patterns. You must spend the time and energy required to build the right connection between food and your body. To practice mindful eating pay attention and be fully present while eating, without distraction or judgement. Sounds easy right?

Hunger and Fullness

When you eat mindfully you can listen to your body. Your body communicates to the mind. It tells you when you are hungry and when are you full.  The problem is we neglect to validate these hormonal cues. When you are eating fast you bypass the ability to sense when you are satiated. If you over eat that suppresses leptin. Leptin is the hormone responsible for telling your mind to stop eating.

On the other hand, the hormone ghrelin communicates hunger levels. When we become really hunger, we may become ravenous. This may cause us to make rash food decisions. On the contrary, when we eat most people never really pay attention to when we become no longer hunger. The ability to acknowledge when we have eaten just enough to be no longer hunger can help sharpen and regulate this hormone.

Eating regularly throughout the day and paying attention to these bodily signals allows these hormones to communicate efficiently to the brain. The erratic hunger spikes and uncomfortably full eating episodes will dampen out over time. This happens because eating mindfully allows the body to better absorb ingested nutrients, stabilizing your blood sugar levels and makes your body’s energy system more efficient and robust. And we tend to make better food planning decisions.

Another perk of listening to your body it this is helps you become accountable to yourself. Here are some questions that begin to pop up…

-          Am really I hungry?

-          Will eating this entire amount make me feel yucky later?

-          Why do I feel like I have to eat the entire amount?

-          Am I eating because I had a long day?

-          I am full should I stop eating now?

-          Why am I so ravenous? Did I miss a meal or am I stressed?

-          Is food a reward?    

-          How can I better prepare next week for success?

Improves Digestion

When you eat mindfully you are eating slowing. This calms down the nervous system an put us in a rest and digest state. Chewing more allows you to “predigest” food before it enters the stomach. The smaller particles in the stomach help to reduce bloating. And due to calmness and awareness during the chewing phase the stomach secretes more acid and digestive enzymes. Getting the body ready to better absorption nutrients.

Making “Less Pained” Decisions

Eating mindfully allows you to identify foods that do not work well with us. For example, if you always have cheese with a meal and your stomach hurts afterwards or during the meal, try the same meal without cheese and see how you feel. Do you get the same symptoms?

There may also be a case where smaller quantities work.

For Example: I found out that I can only have green beans in small quantities. Previously I had been eating them in large quantities, this happened for several years. I noticed stomach pain but ignored it. I only acted after I decided to eat mindfully. This brought attention to how this food made me feel so I decided to act against it. I concluded that if I have less than 3oz of green beans per serving my stomach feels fine!

How to Practice Mindful Eating

Set a timer – Each day pick a distraction less meal that you can eat and sit quietly for. Set a timer (5 or 10 minutes) and slowly eat your food. Set the fork down and breathe in between bites. Do not watch TV, do not listen to a podcast, do not do this while standing, walking or driving. You need to be fully present for  the experience. That is how to eat mindfully!

After the habit is created keep a “food mindfulness journal”. This should include…

-          Descriptions of the food’s taste, texture, smell and bodily sensations you experience.

-          Hunger levels before and fullness levels after the meal.

-          Be aware that random thoughts will pop up just gently acknowledge them and get back to paying attention to your body and food.

-          Make connections. You may have thoughts that are tied into your food, jot ‘em down. I discovered I like ketchup because when I was younger, my I ate a lot for hamburgers and hot dogs. Because those foods were hot and hard to swallow, I used ketchup to cool the food and aid in the swallowing. So, every time I had ketchup, I justified the superfluous amount of ketchup with those two reasons. Now I portion out my ketchup with my meals to prevent over eating this condiment.

Simple 8-week Mindfulness Practice Plan

Week 1 – Set timer and eat 1 meal slowly. Limit distractions. Do nothing else but eat and be present.

Week 2 – Start a mindful journal. Describe the food using taste, texture, smell, and any bodily observations (I personally like to describe each bite before I take the next bite).

Week 3 – When finished eating identify fullness level (1-10, 10 being 100% full).

Week 4 – Before eating identify hunger level (1-10, 10 being ravenous).

Week 5 – Before eating identify hunger level (1-10). While eating identify when you are no longer hungry. During eating identify when you are at 80% full. When you are done identify your fullness level (1-10).

Week 6 – Stop eating at 80% full.

Week 7 – Stop eating when you are no longer hungry.

Week 8 – Try this practice with a different meal.

The Pursuit of Mastery Never Ends

Learning to pay attention is not hard especially when you are trying your best each day and you have an easy progression to follow.  When we listen to our bodies, we become our own accountability partners. We are more truthful to ourself when we understand why we make the decisions we are making. Being mindful gives us an opportunity to rewrite our core beliefs around food, giving us more self-respect and allowing us to accomplish the long-term goal of having a healthy relationship with food and our bodies.

The Stone Cold Facts: 4 of 5

The way we gain or lose weight is through calorie balance. For most people gaining weight is easier than losing weight because gaining doesn’t require you to be mindful of your hunger and fullness cues and caters to your impulsive response to stress and cravings.

An abridged method for weight loss or gain

-Calories for weightloss multiply 8 x body weight in lb.

-Calories for weight gain multiply 12 x body weight in lb.    

The way I recommend to find the sweet spot for weight gain or lose is to

1. Stabilize calories intake with current eating habits

2. Based off assessments adjust calories and macro nutrients profile

All Calories are Comprised of 3 Marco Nutrients

Fat, Carbohydrates and Protein   

 Everyone must know. There are…

• 9 Calories per gram of fat

• 4 Calories per gram of protein

• 4 calories per gram of carbohydrates

When you are trying to gain or lose weight pay only attention to…

-Total calories per serving

-Fat

-Carbohydrates

-Protein

Peanuts @ 1oz = 170 calories. The majority of the calories are coming from Fat

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When you choose foods that are nutrient dense it is makes it easy to be satiated.

Notice how balanced the Marco nutrient profile is

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When you choose foods that are calorie dense it is makes it easy to eat a surplus of food because it’s much less volume

Notice how much calories are coming from carbs and fat

Key Takeaways

-          The volume of food

-          Average calories per ounce

-          The Marco nutrient balance

Closing Thoughts

Knowing the facts for weight gain or loss doesn’t really matter unless you have built a foundation of food preparation and food ingestion consistency. What this means is having a steady calorie intake. This, for most people, requires planning your meals in advance down to the portion sizes, reflecting on a weekly basis on things that prevented compliance and strategizing for the upcoming week to move the success needle closer to or above 90%. When you are trying to lose weight, you want to basis your food intake with the nutrient dense choices. This will keep you satiated. If you are looking to gain weight choosing calorie dense foods could be a good strategy.

How to Approach Nutrition Series: 3 of 5

Build Nutritional Autonomy

 What is nutritional autonomy? It is the ability to pick the correct foods in the correct quantities to allow you to you to gain, lose or maintain weight. For simplicity purposes losing or gaining weight comes in the form muscle, bone density, or fat. What the happens to the body is a byproduct of the consistent caloric density and physical activity.

Metabolic Homeostasis

The metabolism is a complex system can operate erratically when dietary calories are not consistently stabilized. Before you tackle nutritional goals make sure you have built the habit of exercising at least 3x per week. When you are ready start with an initial assessment. This could be body weight scale measurement or photos. Then stabilize caloric intake.

In order to stabilize calorie intake at least 90% of the week one must consume around the same number of calories. I recommend to take start with what your current food intake is and make the quantity consistent. This will bring the calories to close to the same. The metabolism can then level out and be where it normally should be. After a couple of weeks. Your assessment should tell you where you are.

Assessment data

If your goal is to weight gain and you are not gaining add 200 calories each day. If it is weights loss remove 200 calories each day by either by adding cardio or reducing calorie intake. I recommend a combination of both. If your assessment reveals you are heading in the direction you want stay the course!

This All Sounds Simple Right?

In most cases stabilizing calories intake is challenging. We are up against lifestyle habits, psychological and physiological constraints. The journey now becomes finding a way stabilize your calorie intake in a way that allows you to consume around the same amount daily calories daily while having foods and quantities that allows you to feels physically and psychological satiated and energized with minimum bodily side effects and lifestyle alternations.  

How to Approach Nutrition Series: 2 of 5

Achieve a High Compliance Rate

Showing up every day for something for a long time is how you can get good at anything. Nutrional habits are no different. The nutrtional goal is to implement a plan that give you at least a 90% compliance rate.

Understand the Following

In order to lose weight or gain weight for the long term the most important part is to stabilize your calorie intake.  I suggest to eat regularly throughout the day evenly splitting up calories across all meals.

This is two-fold, you can either have the foods prepared in advance or you can predetermine what you will have to eat. Success can from either method or a combination of both

Honesty

Before you decide on a plan you must feel confident about it. Be honest with yourself. It is typical when people are highly motivated to set unsustainable goals. Try to be realistic about where you are and what you are capable of.

You will know if it is too aggressive when you…

-feel restricted,

-get frustrated,

-consistently battling hunger or fullness cues

-feel like your life is falling apart

-feel like a failure

If that happens, stay calm. Reflect on a weekly basis and be okay with thumbing back your goal to something a little bit more sustainable.

Set Your Plan Right

For example. If you go out to eat every day and feel like you never have time maybe you should reconsider your food prep goal of cooking and preparing 21 meals in advance. In this case I recommend to change the goal to…for lunch at a typical restaurant you go to predetermine 1-3 specific item off the menu and choose from you. Make sure that the meals you choose are enjoyable!

For extra credit, the meals can also have the following components…

-around 400-800 calories

-a lean protein source

-a high quality fat source

-a vegetable source

-a complex carbs source

Take Your Time

You may need take 4 weeks to build a compliance plan for each meal of the day. Start with the easiest meal to standardize, come up with options that are roughly the same number of calories and master the habit of getting that meal in everyday around the same time. If you stick with that you have increased your compliance rate to 33%. Now you only have 56% more to go. After you feel confident about building the consistency of eating that meal daily turn you attention to the next one easiest meal to normalize.

At this stage be careful about physical assessments. Because weighing yourself can manipulate your motivation levels leading to inflated or deflated motivation. Both pose a serious risk to compliance. I recommend to change the assessment from “did the scale move?” to “what was my compliance rate?”. See where that number is and reflect upon it asking questions like…

-Did I hit my consistency goal?

-Why or why not?

-What will I implement differently next week to allow for more success?

The Next Stage

If you are at a point where you have created a plan with most of your calories accounted for the reflection process is a little different. You must use a bodyweight scales or progress picture to determine whether the plan is working. Make sure compliance rate is over 90% or above. Then fine tune calories to match your body composition goals. You may find that you need to increase compliance rate to 95% and reduce or increase calorie intake and add in extra conditioning or hypertrophy work.

This is my foundational meal plan

In Conclusion

Building the consistency of a food plan that is roughly the same number of calories every day is the foundational piece to any body composition goal. For long term success you must set the bar a tiny bit higher then where you are at. This may take a week; it may take months. It also may take working with specialist over a longer term. Before starting a plan take an educated guess on where you are by reflecting honestly on your capability levels, past experiences and future goals are. Be realistic, open to change and patient.

How to Approach Nutrition Series: 1 of 5

Decide on a Nutritional Plan

This plan needs to be specific as possible and requires a good amount of planning. Meaning you must determine in advance the type of food and in what quantities you’ll eat.

Planning

In the planning stages you’ll decided how many meals you’ll have per day (I recommend 3-4), what will be in the meals (I recommend each meal contain a lean protein, a complex carb, a high-quality fat and a vegetable) and in what quantities. You’ll also need to create a grocery list, decide when you’ll go to the store, when you will cook and when you will portion out your meals.

To plan correctly you must be honest with yourself. If you don’t have a huge chunk of time to prep you may want to create the meal plan, create a grocery list, go to the store, cook and portion out meals all on separate days.

Take a good look at where you are currently and create a plan that capitalizes on your current nutritional habits then over weeks systematically tweak your nutritional plan. This reflection process hones your nutrition plan.

Example case:

Breakfast: You might always make time for breakfast, in this case just portioning out its components is all you really need to do. A cup of this, a ¼ cup of that and a 1tbs of this, and you’re done. Portion out breakfast like this every day.

Lunch: If you find that you are chronically skipping lunch make it easier to succeed. Keep a protein bar in your bag ready to go, set an alarm for 1pm and eat it when the alarm goes off. Repeat every day.  

Dinner: when you get home you may always feel like you’re scrambling because nothing is made, you’re tired and stressed and just thinking about what you want to eat is burdensome. In most cases you do one of following things, 1) you just skip dinner altogether, 2) you mindlessly snack, or 3) you order out.

To combat these…

1. Skipping dinner - have food cooked in the fridge. This might look like a big container of rice, steamed carrots, cubed chicken and shredded cheese. If you find you’re self not able to properly portion out food you may want to consider pre-proportioning these items into sandwich baggies to the amounts you need. Or you may want to consider a premade frozen dinner. Either way you make dinner decision easy, grab, nuke and eat.  

2. Mindless snacking - If you mindlessly snack you can make it a healthier choice by switching it to a more nutritionally dense option, try having have a huge bag of raw carrots or a jar of pickles handy.

3. Ordering out – Look at the menu and make a decision in advance. Have it written is down as your go-to. Pick these meal(s) when you are emotionally calm. Making sure they work within your plan. If you order from a few different places do a little bit of research and figure out which ones work within your plan and stick with it.

Conclusion

When you decide on a fitting plan it is your duty to create the correct environment for success. This mean anticipating bumps in the road and coming up with a solution for it before the emotional rollercoaster starts moving. You want a plan that relies on the smallest amount of willpower possible, preferable a plan that is grab and go, with close to no thinking required. A good environment will allow you to easily make the right decision. When it’s tough to make the right decision that’s when you’ll give up. Keep in mind we want to keep adherence as high as possible because that is what produces results.