Top 3 Weight Loss Survival Tools for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is weeks away, and it is time to prepare for weight loss success even during a time where were all supposed to eat.  To ease your worries, I want to give you a sneak peek to my top 3 survival tools for weight loss on  Thanksgiving, and make it enjoyable and low stress while not having to worry about the scale the next day.

Survival Tool #1

1.  Eat a healthy fat snack

Controlling your hunger is going to be one of the mainstay strategies on how to help you control your portions of all of your favorite foods.  Don’t let your hunger meter approach the “hangry” level and cause you to eat more than you can handle.  The best type of snack to eat about 1 hour prior to your Thanksgiving meal is a healthy fat snack.  Fat is your natural appetite suppressant, and will help keep your hunger at a reasonable level.  Examples would include a handful of almonds, slices of avocado, and shrimp and salmon which are great sources of omega-3 fatty acids.

Survival Tool #2

2. Add sparkling water to your wine

Alcohol is considered empty calories – calories without nutrition.  Even worse, it slows down your metabolism because your body is too busy clearing out the alcohol instead of burning calories, and it leads to increasing your appetite.  Pour 3oz of wine and 3oz of sparkling water such as LaCroix or San Pellegrino, and enjoy your wine with just half the calories.  Don’t forget to hydrate with water, too.

Alcohol is considered empty calories – calories without nutrition.  Even worse, it slows down your metabolism because your body is too busy clearing out the alcohol instead of burning calories, and it leads to increasing your appetite.  Pour 3oz of wine and 3oz of sparkling water such as LaCroix or San Pellegrino, and enjoy your wine with just half the calories.  Don’t forget to hydrate with water, too.

Survival Tool #3

3. Cut everything in half

Portion control is the name of the game, but with Thanksgiving, we tend to stack up our plates will all of our favorite fixings.  The smells, the visual stimulation, the warm fuzzy feeling we get from comfort food causes our brain hormones to be stimulated as well and it will cause you to overeat to feel “full and satisfied”.  Cutting your portions in half creates a checkpoint.  Once you have eaten half, decide how many more bites do you need to feel full.  It is much easier to put on the brakes than to mindlessly eat away only to find out that you have passed feeling stuffed.  Give yourself water breaks in between bites too to help you slow down and create the full signal to tell you to stop.

Following just these 3 tools will help you survive and put yourself in position for weight loss after Thanksgiving!

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Dr. Angela Tran