Well, Thanksgiving is over for we Americans, but there’s another one coming up! If you were able to show a little bit of willpower this year, then good for you – you’re now one step closer to losing weight and mastering your body! But if you weren’t able to exercise control and put on a few pounds, then hopefully you can use these diet tips to help you out next year.
Knowing how to avoid Thanksgiving fat is important, but remember that you can also use these tips for Christmas, Easter, family reunions, or any time that you’ll find the proverbial feast in front of you. It’s important to know how to avoid fat in general, and you’ll probably never run into as much of it as you will on Thanksgiving.
Diet Tips on How to Avoid Thanksgiving Fat
White Meat
Dark meat turkey has way more fat in it than white meat turkey. During the holiday season, you can catch turkeys on sale for around $0.40/pound, literally, so if you have a big family and usually cook a big bird, you can buy two turkeys and only cook the white meat. At that price per pound, you can cook the dark meat separate and the dog will have some great food! Think about it...
Recipe Surf
Now, we could go into a 45,000-word article here, giving you a ton of healthy recipes to try out, but we’re pretty sure that if you’re reading this then your Internet must work. Yeah, you might not want to hear it, but you’ll have to surf around and find some healthier recipes! Check out Google and you will literally find thousands of recipes that substitute fat and sugars without sacrificing on flavors.
Reduction over Flour/Starch
If you’re the type of person that enjoys making homemade stock to make gravy, then this tip will work well for you. Instead of adding starch to thicken up stock, just reduce it until it becomes thick. It will still be “thin” by gravy standards, but the reduction packs much more flavor and you’ll use less of it.
Smaller Portions
When you’re looking to avoid Thanksgiving fat, you’re looking to avoid overeating. So, logically, you need to closely monitor your portion size. Eating smaller portions slowly will leave you as satisfied as eating more food. This way, you can eat the foods you crave; the idea being, of course, not to eat a lot of them.
What Leftovers!?
Believe it or not, it’s not the initial meal but rather the Thanksgiving leftovers that are responsible for most of the weight gain around this time of year. That doesn’t mean you can splurge on the normal meal, mind you; it just means to avoid eating those leftovers. Give them to the family or friends.
Stretching Thanksgiving out over days or even weeks is why people get fat and have trouble losing the weight. Leave it to that one day, monitor your portions on that Thursday, and then call it quits. That’s the best diet tip of all.