Up Your Produce & Change Your Mindset: Avoid Holiday Weight Gain, Part 2
This site contains affiliate links to products. I may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. However, this does not impact my reviews and comparisons. I highlight products I use and recommend to friends.
You can enjoy the treats that come with the holiday season without sacrificing your pants size with some simple and failproof tricks!
Now that Halloween candy is but a recent memory (unless you’re one of those people with oodles of self-control who don’t eat it within three days), we are in the full swing of holiday season with Thanksgiving and all its food on the horizon.
And of course, after that, we have tons of Christmas parties and NYE, which brings a myriad of opportunities to overindulge in sugary and salty treats, plus alcohol galore!
The great news is that you can enjoy these seasonal treats without worrying about jumping on the scale on January 1st to a nasty surprise. The key is to be selective about where and when to indulge.
In part one of this series about How to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain, I discussed the importance of focusing on your liver health, because when your liver is working efficiently, your fat burning and nutrient retention are maximized! (Read the full post here.)
Related to this focus on liver health is the importance of loading up on fruits and vegetables every single day. (It’s related because your liver is its healthiest when you are loading up on the rainbow and its wide spectrum of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Find the best superfoods for your liver here.)
Eating a lot of produce daily unfortunately seems overwhelming and boring to a lot of people. It’s easier than you think though, and this a great time of year (with all the extra focus on spices and such) to give it a try! You can start with these fruits and veggies that are in season and at their peak in November!
The reason eating produce will help you with weight management is pretty obvious – a lot of food for little calories. The fiber, water, and nutrient content help fuel your body without adding extra pounds.
However, there is another reason produce helps you manage your weight while indulging around the holidays that most people don’t think about, and it is all about a mindset shift.
When you are focused on what your body needs, you are less apt to obsess over what you “can’t have.”
That means you won’t be having dreams of gingerbread men or eggnog. You won’t feel deprived or that you’re missing out on what the season has to offer. Plus, the added bonus of eating so many fruits and vegetables is that you have room to have some gingerbread and eggnog!
Because when you’re filling up on lots of produce, you just naturally have less room for all the crap you can eat on an hors d’oeuvres table.
You can still feed your sweet tooth or have some yummy fried cheese thing, but you will be pretty full so won’t be able to have more than a few of them.
That means you’re naturally crowding out the overly caloric holiday splurges. You have room only for the ones you really and truly crave and love. Because if you’re going to splurge on something, it may as well be something you enjoy, right? Not just that you’re hungry, and it’s there.
So to recap, there are two benefits to loading up on produce:
1. Fruits and vegetables fill you up, ensuring your body is getting all the nutrients and fiber it needs to stay full, thus meaning there’s less room in your stomach for more than a few extra splurge treats.
2. The shift in mindset from what your body needs rather than what you “can’t have” means you won’t feel deprived and then binge on a bunch of crap.
I started eating this way YEARS ago after reading a book that changed my mindset about how to look at food and how it actually fuels my body. What Color Is Your Diet touts the importance of eating the rainbow to prevent chronic disease and to treat food as medicine.
My copy is old and worn and dog eared; I often return to it for a reset, after the holiday season or a long vacation or just when momentum has moved against me, and I have fallen into some less-than-ideal habits for my health. I go right to the recipes and tips for eating out sections, because even though I know what I should be doing, seeing it in black and white reinforces that!
The easiest way to get your health habits under control is to make it simple and not feel like deprivation, so this approach to eating is failproof. Remember that if there are any vegetables you hate, you don’t have to eat them. And in these days of Pinterest and Google, you can usually find a recipe that will make something you don’t tend to like palatable!
And even if you don’t read the book, you can use these basic principles to avoid packing on a bunch of added weight at holiday parties that will make a new year’s resolution seem so onerous. How about instead we focus on treating our bodies well, indulging where it’s worth it, and making a resolution in January to do more traveling or talk to friends who don’t live nearby more often?
For a new twist on your favorite veggies as holiday sides, sign up here for my Liver-Friendly Holiday Sides Menu!
The point is, nothing about the holidays (whether the enjoyment or the aftermath of it) should feel like punishment or something bad. And that can be the case if you nourish your body now and enjoy the things unique to this season…you will probably find you even enjoy all the festivities more!
If you want an added boost, try my 30 Day Plank Challenge! It is a good way to sneak in some exercise (even during a commercial break!) during a really busy day. If you stick with it, you’ll have a noticeably stronger core by Black Friday!
