Dieting During the Holidays?

The holiday season is quickly approaching! For many people, a significant part of what makes the holiday season so special are the delicious homemade foods available to eat. This poses a tricky situation for those currently on diets or seeking to lose weight. Someone dieting around the holidays might be thinking, ‘the holidays will be no fun this year because I cannot enjoy my favorite foods’ or ‘I will just restart my diet on January 2nd and enjoy eating as much of the holiday food as I want until then’. Should we maintain a diet during the holidays or forgo it completely to restart after the New Year? I am going to answer this exact question below, and provide some tips so that you can enjoy the holiday season without losing sight of your weight loss goal. To begin, I encourage those dieting during the holidays to reevaluate your diet and weight loss expectations. Consider loosening the reigns a little, give yourself permission to have more tasty foods than you usually do during your diet, and expect your rate weight loss to slow down or pause for the 6 or so weeks of the holiday season. Remember, sustainable weight loss (weight you keep off for good), takes time, and a 6-week delay is not a terrible sacrifice if it allows you to fully enjoy your holidays.  The ability to adhere to a diet long-term is primarily founded on building healthy habits, such as eating enough daily protein (for plant-based eaters, check out this great guide for protein sources!), eating mostly whole foods (e.i. vegetables, legumes, beans, whole grains), and maintaining a base of daily physical activity (e.i. 8,000+ steps per day). These three crucial habits can make adhering to a diet so much easier. Fortunately, all three of these habits can be maintained during the holiday season, and when they are, we can still enjoy holiday food without getting too far off track our weight loss goals. When we ensure adequate protein and whole food intake, we are more likely to feel full and less likely to overeat the super tasty, high calorie foods (e.i. desserts). During the holidays, prioritize selecting high protein foods, like turkey or ham, and a few different vegetables. Importantly, give yourself permission to enjoy some of your favorite foods during the holiday season (yes, even the dessert!). When you give yourself permission, you release yourself from the guilt that many people feel after they eat a food they feel they should not have eaten. I believe it is important and healthy for people to fully enjoy their holidays, and for many that means enjoying some really tasty foods! Finally, I recommend encouraging family and friends to go for a post-meal walk with you to both aid in digestion and work towards your daily physical activity goal. Going into the holiday season without adjusting your diet and weight loss expectations may very well lead to an unenjoyable holiday. And at the other end, completely stopping all the healthy habits that promote weight loss during the holidays may take you further off track than you would expect. This leads us to seeking a happy-medium, where we adjust our diet expectations to be more lenient while continuing the healthy habits of adequate protein intake, whole food intake, and daily physical activity. Do not expect perfection, and be kind to yourself. If you do not maintain all the healthy habits every day, that is okay! Do your best, and you will likely come out of the holiday season in a better place than if you had not tried at all.