It’s that time of year when everywhere we turn we hear people providing weight loss information tips on how to stick to your healthy eating goals on Thanksgiving Day. This is a subject we talk about often in our healthy weight loss program at Green Mountain at Fox Run lately, as our Holiday Helpings program is currently in action. Being prepared for the holiday gathering and using strategies to avoid overeating — knowing that some overeating is to be expected and is okay — are all great ideas, but I’d like to instead focus on what happens before and after the Thanksgiving meal instead.

Not that I am suggesting anyone plans to overeat on Thanksgiving, but if it happens, remember that one day/meal of overeating isn’t going to make or break anyone’s weight loss program or overall healthy eating patterns. Thanksgiving is one day out of the entire year. It’s more important to look at what happens on the majority of those other 364 days of the year. Consistently making changes on those days versus fretting over our eating on Thanksgiving Day will very likely help us reach and maintain health and weight loss goals a lot more efficiently.

If you had to identify 1 or 2 food habits that are cause you to consistently overeat or eat when you are not physically hungry, what would those be?

Once we know what we need to tackle, this is where developing strategies comes into play. Spending some time thinking about what we need to change in our lives to help us move away from negative habits is time well spent. Getting nervous a week before Thanksgiving or using every ounce of energy we have to avoid the dessert table on Thanksgiving Day is clearly not the best use of our time and energy.

Click on this link to read our short list of tips about how to enjoy Thanksgiving Day without worrying about your weight. Then make the day about spending time with family and friends as well as enjoying a wonderful traditional meal and being thankful for it all. While giving the food the credit it deserves, taking the focus off eating as our main form of entertainment may help us more easily leave the dinner table feeling satisfied, having eaten as much as we want but not so much that we feel stuffed and uncomfortable.

Some of my favorite ideas for pre-meal activities are board games, card games, holiday themed puzzles, showing home videos, karaoke, flipping through photo albums, reading holiday stories to children, crafts with kids (and adults) and any party game I come across. I want to spend more time laughing than eating and you can’t do both at the same time!

What are your favorite Thanksgiving Day activities? Flying kites as shown in our picture above is a great way to spend some fun family time.  Thanks to shlomaster via stock.xchng for the picture.