Healthy Holiday Eating-Part II: Be Thankful and Give

Halloween is over but it might be lingering on in the form of candy at your home.  If this is the case in your home, consider giving it away or coming up with a different creative way to remove what might have become your snack of the day or stumbling block in your healthy meal-snack plan, because the next big holiday in the holiday eating season is just around the corner.

Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on all we have been blessed with.  For many of us, we are blessed with an abundance of food.  For others, putting food on the table on a daily basis is a challenge let alone providing a celebratory meal at Thanksgiving.  We call the situation for this second group of people food insecure.

If we think about those who are food insecure, it might help us take a different approach to eating during the holidays.

Here are some tips for doing that:

·         Take 20-30 minutes to eat your Thanksgiving dinner, all the while thinking of those who may be eating a holiday meal alone or not eating one at all.  This will give your brain time to tell your stomach it is full when it reaches that point.

·         Use a hunger-fullness scale to guide your eating during the holidays.  Attempt to eat only when you are feeling between lightly hungry and full and keep the food insecure in mind when tempted to overindulge.

·         Rather than being a member of the “clean plate club”, stop eating when you are full.  To eliminate food waste, save the leftovers for a snack at a later time rather than throwing them away.  Remember the food insecure would love to have the food you are considering throwing in the trash.

·         After the big day, take the leftovers from your family gathering to the local food pantry or give them to someone you know who might be food insecure.

Family Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt

·         To put holiday eating into perspective, gather your family to volunteer to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the food insecure in your community.  You will have done a good deed and can use the time you would’ve spent preparing and cleaning up your Thanksgiving meal on quality time with your family being physically active by going for a walk, shooting trap, tossing a football around, or some other form of activity your family enjoys.