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Are you planning tasteless low-fat turkey for Thanksgiving? Or maybe it will be a carb-free meal with sausage stuffing and no potatoes, bread, rice or apple pie. But normal eaters don't have to put their Thanksgiving dinner on a diet.
If you celebrate Thanksgiving, or even if you don't, you probably know it's a holiday that centers around a sumptuous meal. Thanksgiving, and similar food-centered holidays, tend to upset dieters. But you don't have to be upset by holidays anymore. Let's take a close-up look at Thanksgiving dinner, and see what it means for a dieter.
You might feel as though you're breaking a diet rule. You may have learned from other support groups that you "shouldn't have a food focus." In the twelve-step programs, for example, individual groups, by consensus, may disallow all members from talking about specific foods during the meeting. Thus, at Thanksgiving, when everyone's discussing the food, you feel guilty.
And in your support group, which you dutifully visit the day before Thanksgiving, everybody's in denial. They pretend Thanksgiving isn't happening. Yet denial is a big issue in the twelve step groups. You're supposed to face your previous denials. This is irrational. On our Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board, we talk about food all we want.
Why break the "Don't talk about food" rule? Food is meant to be enjoyed, even elevated in importance, such as at cultural and religous events. Do you really think food should only be utilitarian? Tasteless but life-sustaining? It isn't true. Perhaps a reason why you've failed on diets before is because you believed you had to stop loving food, which of course was impossible!
Food is fun, food is social, food is delicious, and meant to be enjoyed. How about instead, if we change our attitudes toward eating too much food?
Thanksgiving dinner is about food. It always was and always will be. And why not? Delicious food weaves a tapestry through all cultures throughout time. Delicious food is a staple of our economy and our family life. It stands to reason that we would have a special holiday once a year that exalts it.
We get together with family, perhaps some folks we don't get to see very often. We stand around the kitchen, drinking in the smells and sounds. We work together on whipping those mashed potatoes. We give the kids the job of stuffing the celery. Laughter and joy waft up into the rafters. Everyone feels safe and fed.
But not dieters. They feel a twinge of guilt, or worse. They feel fear as well. Will I binge? Should I stick with my allotted points or calories? They're conditioned to feel badly about looking forward to a meal. This is distorted thinking. Dieters suffer from distorted thinking.
Thanksgiving dinner includes high-fat food, high-carb food, and sugar. Think of the gravy made from turkey drippings, the candied yams, the plum pudding. All of these foods are considered to be extremely high in fat, and therefore a "no-no" on some diets. But, unless you have some other medical condition, non-dieters can have these foods.
What about the high-carb foods? The gravy is filled with white flour, the mashed potatoes have a sky-high glycemic index, and the mince pie is carb-city!
And not to mention all the sugar. It's in the cranberry sauce, it's in the sweet potato pie, and it's certainly in the ice cream and cookies to cap off a spectacular meal.
You can have it all.
Thanksgiving dinner, like all meals, can be eaten in small amounts. Even tiny amounts. By choosing tiny amounts, you can sample practically everything. Or, you can choose which foods you will eat today, and which foods you'll have some other time. Maybe focus on those foods you don't have too often, such as creamy rutabaga (if you like that sort of thing).
If you ordinarily try to stick with whole grains, and not too much sugar, then you know best how these special Thanksgiving foods will make you feel. Gauge how much you eat according to how they will make you feel. Maybe eat half the whole wheat roll, saving room for just a little of the gravy.
Normal eaters learn from watching others. We can especially learn from children. Notice the children at your Thanksgiving table. They pick at their foods, and eat only what they find to be no less than scrumptious. Then they run from the table long before they're stuffed. They'll be back later to eye dessert.
Of course, as an adult, you don't want to run off to join in a game of hide-and-seek, especially if you're the host. You'll need to stay and talk to your guests. But push your plate away first, and sip some water while chatting. It's the adult version of running from the table.
If it pleases you, make a sport of surreptitiously observing what large portions some of your guests eat. This is not to criticize or laugh at them, but to be observant about portion sizes. Many folks simply eat too much food.
Obviously, if you're on a special diet due to medical needs, you will need to make some choices, and pass up some foods. But avoiding certain foods for medical reasons is not guilt-inducing, and will therefore never backfire. Interestingly, it's only when we restrict our choice of foods for the purpose of weight control that we feel guilty, controlled, and deprived.
Dieters worry about Thanksgiving. Why? Because they find themselves vacillating between "being good" and "throwing in the towel." But you don't have to be on that roller coaster. You can enjoy all the delicious foods served at Thanksgiving and be satisfied. How? Just follow the guidelines for Diet Survivors.
Instead of gnawing on dry white meat with no gravy, and enduring butterless yams, why not learn to be content with smaller amounts of perfect, delicious, well-balanced food?
See back issues of this newsletter to read more about topics of interest to Diet Survivors. (You'll see a list of back issues on the right-side column of this newsletter.)
It's time to think of Thanksgiving dinner as a win-win situation. Yes, Virginia, you can have your cake and eat it too. This year, toss out the whole idea of feeling guilty, or becoming resigned, or ignoring your weight, or any of those other black-and-white options. This mental work will require an adaptive change.
Instead, think "small and delicious." These are all changes in how you think, so they're called adaptive changes.
This month's technical change is to simply reduce the amount you eat from what you're used to on Thanksgiving. You know that overstuffed feeling that makes Uncle John drop into a chair and snooze after dinner? See if you can make a goal of not having your eyes glaze over after dinner.
Do you know what gives folks that sleepy look after Thanksgiving dinner? It's caused by an amino acid, in abundance in turkey, called "tryptophan." The glazed look is caused by an overdose of tryptophan. It's time you stopped overdosing.
Feel good this Thanksgiving month about how much you eat and how carefully you wait until you're hungry, and stop when you're satiated. Remember, when you serve yourself that turkey and creamed onions, take a small enough amount so you'll have room for dessert! These are all external changes in what you do, so they're called technical changes.
Keep in mind, too, that normal eaters do not eat the exact same amount of food every day. They eat according to their needs that day. What's also true is that there's some wiggle room in what it means to be satiated. There's lightly satiated, and there's well satiated. If you are tuned into your body's needs, you can be the kind of normal eater that eats a little bit more on Thanksgiving. You will automatically adjust by eating less on Friday. This may sound amazing, but it really works. Learn to be a normal eater. You will never regret it.
Need help? Join our free Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board. See you in cyberspace!
Learn more about the new book, How to Survive Your Diet, available now! Order from Amazon.com.
These Web pages provide sensible advice on healthy diets, nutrition, and weight loss. However, no advice given here is intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor when deciding to make significant dietary or lifestyle changes.
Direct all technical questions and comments about this site to webmaster
Last Modified: Wednesday, 06-Feb-2008 07:12:56 PST Betterway Press
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Is your turkey on a diet?  |
| To view the current issue of the monthly newsletter for Diet Survivors™, view Diet Survivors™ current issue |
| Learn more about the book, How to Survive Your Diet, available now! Click on the book cover to order. |
| Diets often don't work. Find out what is normal eating? |
| What is cognitive therapy? Cognitive therapy is a way to help yourself live a more rational, peaceful life, without having to delve into your past. Find out more about cognitive therapy. |
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What are technical and adaptive changes? These are two different approaches to bringing about improvement in your life. Many dieters mistakenly make technical changes, when they really need to make adaptive changes. Find out more about technical and adaptive change. |
| View back issues of this newsletter. See a list that links to every issue. Don't forget—these newsletters are printer-friendly! |
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| View further studies that support our principles of normal eating. |
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Order How to Survive Your Diet and Conquer Your Food Issues Forever by Linda Moran. Find out more about this book for dieters. 5.25" x 8.25" quality paperback 150 pages Index ISBN: 0-9749396-0-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2004092105 $14.95 |
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