The Busy Mama’s Guide to Healthy Holiday Parties: How to enjoy a holiday party without overeating or gaining weight
Do you have a holiday party that you’re looking forward to this month? I love going to holiday parties! It’s so fun to gather with friends and family and just share in the magic of the season.
There’s just one tiny thing that can make holiday parties hard for mamas who are trying to pay attention to their health: the food.
Before I learned how to enjoy food and make healthy decisions I would go to a party and have an amazing time. But I’d overeat or over drink and it would ruin the whole night for me. I didn’t remember singing carols with my kids, or how much fun my friends and I had dressing up in ugly sweaters. All I could think about was how stupid I was for eating the cookies or how many drinks I’d had.
I would make myself feel so terrible about the choices that I had made. I’d punish myself the next day either by restricting what I ate or by spending hours in the gym.
Either way, the shame, guilt and regret were making me hate the holiday parties I had once loved! I decided that that wasn’t how I wanted to feel during the holiday season and I decided to change how I approached holiday parties so that I could enjoy them without throwing away all of my hard work.
This guide will walk you through the three things you can do to enjoy holiday parties without overeating, gaining weight or feeling bad about yourself.
Make a plan ahead of time
I always start my holiday season with a plan. Part of healthy eating is making nutritious decisions 90% of the time. I like to look at the whole holiday season and decide what parties or events are the ones where I want to have a little more flexibility with my food and which ones I want to stick to my normal eating patterns.
For example, one of the mamas in the Busy Mom Simple Nutrition group hosts her family’s holiday party every year. They decorate sugar cookies, everyone brings their favorite appetizer to share and they have s’mores and hot cocoa for dessert. This is an important event to her and she wants to enjoy it. For this event, I’d tell her to do just that! This can be the event of the season where she doesn’t worry about tracking her food, she just enjoys herself!
However, if she also had two or three more parties during the month, I’d have her plan out what she wanted to eat and stick to that plan!
Here are a few ways you can create healthy plans and boundaries to follow at holiday parties.
Decide if you will drink and if you do, how much will you drink? You can drink alcohol and still be a healthy person! (We’ll talk more about alcohol in a few weeks, but here’s a good resource if you need one before then!)
Find out what will be served at the party and plan your day around that. You may choose to eat a healthy meal before the party so you eat less food at the party.
Bring a dish to the party that you know fits into your food boundaries. That way you have something healthy to eat that you can look forward to.
Whether you’re going to track or not at a holiday party, it’s also important to make a meal plan for the day of the party. If you’re not going to track the food you eat at the party, then make sure you eat plenty of food before the party. A hearty breakfast and lunch can help set you up for success before the party.
If you are going to track your food at the party, then just include it as part of your meal planning. You may need to eat higher in protein and lower in carbs and fats earlier in the day to allow for more holiday foods later.
When you have a plan it makes making healthy choices, even in the face of temptation, so much easier! Do not go to a holiday party without making a plan of what you want to eat!
Eat more protein throughout the day
Protein is one of the most important nutrients for healthy living, but it’s also the easiest macronutrient to not get enough of! If you’re going to be indulging in your favorite holiday foods and treats at a holiday party, then make sure you plan to eat plenty of protein before you go!
Most of our favorite foods are higher in fats and carbs, both of which are important parts of a balanced diet, but we need to make sure that we keep the balance by eating enough protein!
Protein is the slowest burning macronutrient, which means that protein will keep you full for a longer time than carbs or fats. By eating high-protein foods throughout the day, you’ll feel fuller and be less inclined to reach for treats!
One of the best ways to add more protein to your day is through breakfast! Not only will a high-protein breakfast keep you fuller throughout the day, but when you start your day with protein it influences the choices you make for the whole day!
A few of my favorite high-protein foods are:
Eggs - especially egg whites!
Cottage cheese
Yogurt
Tofu (makes a delicious scramble!)
Turkey bacon or sausage (having a low-fat breakfast meat will leave you more space for holiday treats later in the day)
Deli meats
Chicken
Beans and lentils
One thing that usually keeps us from eating more protein is that it takes more time to prepare. If you know you’re going to be in a rush, then try and prep your proteins ahead of time! Cooking up chicken breasts and having them in the fridge will make it much easier to heat up and have for lunch or for a quick snack as you’re headed to your party.
Use intuitive eating to gauge how much to eat at the party
We've talked a lot about how to set yourself up for success before you get to a holiday party, but now I want to teach you the most helpful tool to prevent overeating while you’re at a party!
This is a new tool that I’ve started using with myself and my clients to help them enjoy parties, holidays and eating out without completely throwing off all the hard work they’ve put into their health.
A big component of intuitive eating is knowing not only what to eat, but when to eat. One skill that we usually have to re-learn as adults is listening to our body’s hunger and full cues.
Most of us ignore our hunger or full cues until we reach the extremes. As mamas, we tend to wait until we surpass hungry, zoom past hangry and are teetering on the edge of starving. Then we eat, and eat, and eat. We don’t stop when we feel content. We don’t stop when we feel full, We only stop when we can’t even think about putting another bite in our mouths.
This starving to stuffed cycle can get us into trouble when we’re eating out, or at a party, because we don’t recognize the difference between content and overly full. We think we are supposed to feel crazy stuffed to be happy.
When in reality, if we ate when we first started to feel hungry and stopped when we felt content, it would help us avoid gaining weight any time we ate outside of our normal boundaries.
Before you attend your holiday parties, think about what cues your body gives you when you’re hungry and full. Think about what the two extremes look like. Then choose what cues tell you it’s time to eat and when it’s time to stop.
While you’re at your holiday party, pay attention to your body. When you have the thought, “Man, I’m getting hungry” start eating! Because you aren’t starving, you’re less likely to grab too much food. Then when you start to feel content - maybe you have the thought, “That was so good, I really enjoyed my meal.” - stop eating.
If there’s still food on your plate when you start to feel full, that’s ok! You can cover it with a napkin, pass it to your spouse to eat off of, or get up and throw it away.
If alarm bells just went off in your head when I said throw it away, I want you to listen up! It’s OK to throw food away! It’s OK not to finish every morsel of food on your plate. I need you to realize that you don't have to be a human garbage disposal just to avoid being impolite or because you think it’s wasteful.
Your health is more important that the last few bites on your plate. You aren’t going to feed a hungry kid in Africa by stuffing yourself. You are the one who has to suffer the consequences of overeating. Be kind to your body and don’t feel guilty over putting your needs before anything else.
These three tools will help you enjoy your holiday parties without worrying about undoing all your hard work! You can have your Christmas cookie and eat it too! If I could help you learn to eat intuitively all year so that you could lose weight while enjoying your favorite treats, would you want in? Check out my Macros Made Easy Program where I help busy mamas learn exactly how to do that!
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