The holidays always wreak a kind of special havoc on those who are looking to improve their health by eating healthier. Between Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas cookies, and New Year’s champagne, you might as well write off the entirety of November and December from your diet plan. However, while certainly difficult, it isn’t impossible to eat healthy at Tampa restaurants or at holiday parties.
In fact, if you play your cards right, this might be the season where you can have your cake and eat it too. If you’re worried about not being able to stick to your diet this holiday season, here are some tips to help you out.
Bring your own food
Whether it’s a family party or an office gathering, you will face all sorts of holiday treats that will continue to call your name the longer you look at them. To avoid over-indulging yourself, bring something healthy that you can focus on eating and reward yourself with a little bit of the other foods. You shouldn’t completely restrict yourself, instead, balance is the key here.
Keep track of what you eat
It’s so easy to pick at everything only to end up realizing that you ended up eating much more than your intended caloric intake for the day. Mindful eating is an effective way to keeping track of what you’re eating and will help you realize when you should stop. Keeping a food diary throughout the holidays also helps you be more aware of your eating habits.
Eat something before going to a party
During the holidays, you will undoubtedly be invited to a lot of parties and dinner outs with friends and family. When this happens, one of the best ways to stop yourself from overindulging yourself is to eat a small, healthy meal before heading out so that you don’t end up eating too much unhealthy food at these gatherings.
Manage your portion sizes
When eating at Tampa restaurants, you will find that the portion sizes that they serve are too large for one meal and can make up more than your day’s needed calorie intake.
If this is something that you’re aware of, then you should learn how to manage your portion sizes by not eating the entire thing while you’re eating out. You can easily split this with someone else who is also trying to eat healthily, or you can simply have half of it boxed up so that you can take it home for you to eat the next day.
A large part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle doesn’t mean restricting yourself completely from treats, instead, it means simply controlling how much you eat and what you’re eating.