Holiday Guide

Tips to Prevent Overeating this Holiday Season

Keep a sense of humor. Laughter is important, so make sure you find something funny to read or view each day.

Create a sense of balance. Take time to relax, spend time with friends and relatives, and take care of yourself.

Watch your eating habits over the holidays. It is okay to indulge with a few treats, but don’t overdo it.

Remember that fresh fruits and vegetables are just as important over the holiday season as they are in the summer months.

Take time for exercise each day. If you are at the mall, take time to do some brisk walking while you are window shopping.

Know that you are not alone. Many people feel alienated during the holidays, so find a support group of friends, co-workers, or relatives to share holiday war stories with.

Get enough sleep. The holidays will be a busy time for most people, but if you get enough sleep at night, you will find less stress in your life.

Holiday Food Safety and Diet Tip

For your holiday buffet, remember the two-hour rule – bacteria certainly will

Visiting with family and friends over long leisurely meals or grazing on buffet-style spreads while watching football games for hours is an integral part of many holiday settings. For the safety of your guests, however, make sure your holiday banquet doesn’t turn into a rampant bacteria buffet.

“One out of every four Americans suffers from some type of food-borne illness each year,” says Lona Sandon, assistant professor of clinical nutrition at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. “To make sure you’re spreading holiday cheer and not holiday food poisoning, don’t leave food out for more than two hours at a time. Two hours is a critical time, after which bacteria begin to multiply rapidly.”

If you’re watching calorie intake, Ms. Sandon offers another suggestion. “Provide smaller plates for holiday feasts. You also can place holiday offerings in smaller serving dishes.”

The result: guests tend to take smaller portions.

“In addition, if your buffet table is loaded with more choices than you should take, consider passing on foods that you can eat any time, such as mashed potatoes,” she said. “Go for those special items that you only get once a year, such as Granny’s sweet potato pie.”

Calorie Saving Tips

More Easy tips to save calories, avoid weight gain, and maintain your Holiday Diet while still enjoying the great food this Thanksgiving:

Pie crust is loaded with trans fat! If you are served a regular pie, eat the filling and leave the crust behind.
Replace butter and cream in your mashed potatoes with canned non-fat chicken broth for a rich, flavorful side dish.
Avoid self-basting turkeys, they're injected with additional fat and have more calories.
Traditional stuffings that contain sausage can have 400 calories per cup, or more! Leave the sausage out. Use non-fat broth, nuts, or extra vegetables such as mushrooms or celery.
Practice portion control. Enjoy your favorite foods, but have just a spoonful of each. A thin sliver of pie can be very satisfying.
Wear tight pants. You'll be less likely to stuff yourself.
Take a walk before the meal. You'll feel more lively, with less desire to overeat.
Give away all of the leftovers, except for the low fat turkey. If it's in the house, someone is going to eat it.

Low Calorie, Calorie Saving Tips, Holiday Diet Tips

Holiday Dieting Tips

Here's some more Holiday Dieting Tips so you can make it through the holidays and still maintain your diet and your weight!

1. Eat a decent breakfast and lunch. Don't starve yourself until the big meal arrives, you'll just end up overeating.
2. Exercise before the meal; this will suppress your appetite and boost your metabolism.
3. Drink two or three glasses of water before the feast begins.
4. Avoid conflict or dysfunctional family dynamics that can stress you out to the point where you take solace in food.
5. Eat 3/4 of the food on your plate and don't overload it.
6. Reduce your intake by refusing seconds and remember you can have leftovers the next day.
7. Eat slowly, give yourself time to feel full.
8. Overeating at one large meal is not a problem; many large meals in a row are.

Holiday Diet Tips

Wondering how to get through the holidays without busting your diet? Here's a few tips that will help you make smart diet choices and hopefully help you keep from packing the weight while still enjoying the food!

A 3.5 oz. serving of roasted turkey breast has 115 calories; a 3.5 oz. piece of roasted dark meat with skin has 221 calories; a 3.5 oz. piece of roasted dark meat without skin has 187 calories.

A piece of apple pie (an 1/8 of the pie) has 347 calories; a piece of blueberry pie (an 1/8 of the pie) has 387 calories; a piece of cherry pie (an 1/8 of the pie) has 418 calories.

A 1/2 cup of mashed potatoes has 111 calories.

A 1/2 cup of bread stuffing has 198 calories; a 1/2 cup of cornbread stuffing has 175 calories.

Weight Loss Supplements

ConsumerHealthDigest.com suggested 3 top weight loss supplements, while cautioning that most supplements help you lose money more than weight:

Lipovarin™ - Sterling Grant Laboratories

Anorex-SF™ - Klein Becker

Leptoprin-SF™ - AG Waterhouse

All dietitians and other weight loss experts emphasize that weight loss pills are NOT a magic solution to weight control. In order to lose weight successfully, without regain, you must combine weight loss supplements with a sensible diet and exercise program.

Weight Loss Diet Drug

Well with all the food posts to kick off, thought we'd post some news on a potentially promising new diet drug. Bad news is it's not likely to hit the market until 2006 - maybe just a bit late for the holiday season - expect Sanofi-Synthelabo Inc. to begin filing for approvals to market Acomplia in Europe and the United States in the second quarter of 2005, with the drug first becoming available for doctors to prescribe to patients in 2006

Study: Highly Encouraging Two-Year Trial Results Reported for Acomplia

The new diet drug Acomplia (rimonabant) helped people lose significantly more weight than a placebo in a two-year clinical trial, the largest of the studies of this drug conducted to date, according to researchers.

The study also showed that while most of the weight loss occured in the first year, continuing to take Acomplia was important to keeping the weight off. Trial participants who stopped taking the drug after one year regained the weight, while those who stayed on Acomplia kept it off, the researchers said.

Results from the two-year study entitled, Effect of Rimonabant on Weight Reduction and Weight Maintenance: RIO-NORTH AMERICA, were presented on November 9th at the American Heart Association's 2004 Scientific Sessions.

The eagerly awaited study showed that approximately one-third of patients who took a 20 mg dose of Acomplia daily for two years lost in excess of 10 percent of their initial body weight and almost two-thirds of the trial participants lost at least five percent of their body weight.

Equally important, much of the weight loss was of abdominal fat, which is widely viewed as a key indicator of cardiovascular risk.

Waist circumference of trial participants after two years was reduced by 3.1 inches for patients taking a daily 20 mg dose of Acomplia, by 1.9 inches for those taking a lower 5 mg dose, compared to 1.5 inches for trial participants taking a placebo.

Patients taking Acomplia also had significantly improved levels of HDL (good cholesterol) after two years, as well as lower triglycerides and improved insulin sensitivity, according to the researchers.

"I think you're getting a double whammy," said Dr. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, Chief of the Division of Endocrinology at Saint Luke's - Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York. "One is related to the weight loss and the other to the lipid improvement.