If there is one word that your diet fears the most, it is almost certainly Thanksgiving! The holiday season is a time where you are actively encouraged to overindulge and treat yourself on a daily basis, and this is fine for lots of people, but not so fine for those of us who are trying to stick to a calorie controlled, healthy lifestyle even though these celebratory periods! Don’t fear though, all is not lost! Here are seven ways to stick to your diet at Thanksgiving.
Assign someone in your family or your friendship circle to be your dieting buddy over the Thanksgiving period, having them check in with you to make sure that you are staying on track and not going overboard. When you know that there is someone you need to report to and someone looking over your shoulder, you won’t be so quick to fall to temptation at the first hurdle!
A lot of people’s diets go west during Thanksgiving because they just can’t work up the courage to say no thank you to a second or third helping of Aunt Carol’s best casserole! Work on your confidence and just feel content that your polite declining is the best thing for your health in the long run.
Fill your imagination with dreams of your healthier future rather than with all of the unhealthy food choices available at this time of the year! Take the time to put together a Pinterest board of the kinds of fit, lean bodies that you are aiming to get for yourself. The thought of achieving that is better than the taste of any pie!
No matter where you are going to celebrate, make sure that you arrive with a plan already in place. The clearer you are on what you are going to be eating and drinking and at what times, the less likely you will be to succumb to all of the snacking obstacles that being back home presents!
Be super militant and create a no cheat zone in a key space of wherever you are spending Thanksgiving. In this zone, even 99% compliance is seen as failure. This is the area in which you absolutely do not stray from your diet, even by a single bite or sip of something. It can be even more helpful if you get others to enforce the no cheat zone too!
Don’t go into the holiday with the mindset of “I don’t want to stray too much”, go in instead with the clear thought of “I’m going to lose weight”. The power of clear affirmation should not be underestimated.
Stop making excuses for your cheating, you are the only person that it is going to negatively effect! Don’t bring out the same old tired things that you tell yourself every year at this time, because all that they bring are five or six extra pounds that you then have to lose all over again.