For many individuals, Memorial Day is a great day to escape to the beach, join in a cookout with friends and spend the day with fun-filled celebrations. It can be easy to indulge and let go of your weight management goals for the day, but consistency is a key ingredient of the recipe for weight-loss and maintenance.
Strategies for Celebrating
Here are tips you can use to stay consistent and make healthy choices while you are celebrating this Memorial Day:
- Avoid wearing baggy clothing that allow you to expand as you eat.
- After you’ve eaten, stay away from the food tables at the party.
- Keep your hands busy by finding a way to help out. It’s the best way to distract yourself from the food.
- Avoid alcohol. When we drink, we’re more likely to abandon healthy eating.
- Fill up with water and other low-calorie drinks.
- Take a healthy dish for the pot luck – something you can eat: consider salad, fruit, raw vegetables and a healthy dip.
- Focus on your relationships, not on the food – learn to focus on enjoying the people and the special holiday experiences, on building special memories for yourself and your family.
- Meeting new people is another good way of distracting yourself from the food. If you’re shy, simply be a good listener.
- Plan ahead. The best kind of plan, when it comes to food, is about what you are going to eat – not about what you’re not going to eat. If we focus on what we can’t eat (or what we think we shouldn’t eat), this kind of thinking can set us up for failure because it simply leaves us feeling deprived.
- Don’t arrive completely famished – you’ll be more likely to eat in a way you’ll later regret. Plan to eat on the light side both before and after the event. Think about your meal plan for the day, and leave yourself some room to eat at the party.
Living a healthy lifestyle is a full-time commitment that starts with simple changes in the way you think and act around food. Remember to enjoy your holiday and the people you are with as you celebrate!
Get More Tips for Celebrating Healthy Holidays
If you’d like to learn about ways to manage holiday stress and get more advice for celebrating and sticking with your weight goals, you can read about “Holiday Weight and How to Avoid It” in Your Weight Matters Magazine!
The magazine is a free membership benefit offered when you join the Obesity Action Coalition (OAC), the founders of the Your Weight Matters Campaign! Learn more about the OAC today by visiting www.ObesityAction.org.
