Thanksgiving Day Healthy Eating Tips

Thanksgiving Day is approaching and for eating healthy here are some Thanksgiving Day healthy eating tips to help with over eating and weight gain. Thanksgiving dinner is generally a time when friends and family indulge over delicious Thanksgiving turkey, apple pie, wine, stuffing, mashed potatoes and many other favorite foods and recipes. Keep in mind that it’s ok to indulge over these tasty foods, but it’s important to be able to control your portion sizes. Overeating is generally the number one problem that people have during Thanksgiving day dinner.

 2014 Thanksgiving Day

– Don’t skip breakfast. Eat a regular breakfast that includes dairy, carbohydrates, and sugars. For example, oatmeal with bluberries, four egg whites, low fat yogurt, coffee and a 8 ounce glass of orange juice.  First off all, remember to eat breakfast. Generally,  people tend to skip breakfast and even lunch so they can indulge in the annual Thanksgiving dinner.

– Start the dinner with a side salad. If there’s a salad available, eat it prior to the main course! A salad will help you out with your portion control and keep you on track for the rest of the meal. Remember to use light dressing and avoid heavy cheese and croutons.

– Drink a full glass of water or beverage after salad. Often at times people forget to drink liquids while eating special meals, such as Thanksgiving. Drinking liquids throughout the meals well help break down the food digested and help suppress your appetite.

– Stick to White Meat. 8 oz portion and the white meat has 368 calories and 8 grams of fat while the dark has 400 calories and 16 grams of fat.

– Gravy Train Will Wreck You. Limit your gravy servings to one or none your Thanksgiving dinner.

– Alcohol. Wine, beer and liqouer will add calories and sugars quick. Avoid excess amount of drinks and avoid fruity drinks.

– Bread and Buns Equal Tons of Rolls. Thanksgiving dinner rolls can be a life changing experience, literally. Eat your  dinner roll at the end of the meal and stay clear of dosing large amounts of butter on those buns, rolls and bread.

– Veggie Out! Veggies can be your life saver. Make sure they’re on 1/3 of your plate and avoid the cream and butter soaked vegetables.

– Instant Stuffing – Quick and healthy.

– Replace up to half the fat in baked goods with apple sauce or pureed prunes. For corn bread, use pureed sweet potatoes to replace some of the fat. Check the baby food aisle for purees. Or try ripe, well-mashed bananas in place of some of the fat.

– Replace cream or whole milk with evaporated skim milk, especially in mashed potatoes and cream soups. Make a lower fat, yet very flavorful turkey by slipping herbs or poultry seasoning under the skin and basting with nonfat chicken stock rather than butter.
Make twice-baked potatoes with nonfat ricotta cheese mixed and top with part-skim shredded cheese.

– Use whole grain bread rather than white bread for the stuffing. Try whole-wheat flour in your baking recipes (start with replacing a quarter of the regular flour and experiment with what works best for that particular recipe).

– Make low-fat roasted vegetables by spraying with a little bit of olive oil (rather than pouring it on), and sprinkling with dried thyme, salt & pepper.
When you’re mixing in ingredients such as sour cream or ricotta cheese, you can easily use the low-fat versions and no one will know the difference.
Cook your vegetables and grains in low-salt vegetable or chicken broth rather than butter. You’ll add lots of low-fat flavor.

– Butter. If you want to add butter to a recipe, add a small amount just before serving. It’ll be the first thing you taste and smell, so a little will have a big impact.