Thanksgiving Day…things for me to remember today

Happy Thanksgiving!  I’m sure that Lib, Libby and the rest of the family are very happy to hear that I’m not going to bring my food scale to Thanksgiving Day dinner today, to weigh my food portions, and offer help to others 🙂

sooo, I’m going to take a day off from logging my Food Log

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks updating my focus on nutrition, and ‘rewiring’ my portion control thinking…good progress…so we’ll see how that tests out today…I’m going to go by our Emotional Eating scale, and see how it turns out at the end of the day.

A few things for me to remember today, faced with a banquet table of fun food choices.

First…one pound = 3,500 calories…so even if I _totally_ pigged out today, I’m not really going to actually gain any weight…I may feel lousy, and fat, and bloated at the end of the day, and tomorrow, but when it all shakes out, even an extra 1,000 calories on top of a ‘normal’ 1,000 calories for dinner is 1/3 of a pound, so not even noticeable on the scale…and a 2,000 calorie dinner, would definitely put me well past the ‘uncomfortably full’ point on our Emotional Eating Scale, so I should be getting body signals well before that.

However…I have been trying to behave, so:

1. Exercise: I’ll get in about 1,000 calories of exercise burn to create a calorie cushion
2. Portion control: a smaller ‘taste’ of servings rather than piling on
3. Eat slower, and monitor how full I feel
4. Thinking about leaving room for dessert, may help the portion control thing
5. And when eating dessert, think about that portion control thing…like _really_ tiny portions of the _really_ fun stuff
6. And keep the alcohol thing in check to leave some calorie room for the food thing and dessert thing

So here it is, for those that want to plan a bit…I have read that the average Thanksgiving dinner can be 3,000 calories, and another factor:

The average American will consume more than 4,500 calories and 229 grams of fat on Thanksgiving Day alone, according to the Caloric Control Council. Surprisingly, most of these calories come from the all-day snacking in front of the TV while watching parades and sporting events.

Here’s a video showing how to get to 2,000 calories before appetizers, dessert and drinks

ouch…maybe a bit of a plan ahead of time might help keep things in check just a bit:

…the Thanksgiving Calorie Calculator…includes how far to walk off the calories

…and just a calorie list of popular Thanksgiving foods