It’s great that the year ends with two wonderful, family-oriented holidays—Thanksgiving and Christmas. While these holidays are about family, they are also about food. We want to socialize but we don’t want to get fat in the process. Here are some ways we can lighten the dinner and keep our figure.
We take for granted that the holidays will bring with it some sort of weight gain. That seems to make it okay for us to overindulge in every high calorie goodie we ever wanted to eat. While we can indulge, accepting that we will gain weight gives us permission to overeat. That is not what we need.
In fact, what we need is permission to taste all the good things to eat but not to eat until we are about to burst. In an effort to achieve this, use a few tips and tricks. They are sure to give us our cake and we’ll be able to eat it too.
Start with what you have in your home. Hosting a Christmas dinner is the perfect opportunity to slim down the meal without changing the taste. Guests won’t even know that they are eating foods that have been specifically tailored to be good to them.
There is not much to do to the turkey after roasting. To eliminate the temptation to eat the skin, strip it off as you slice the turkey for the table. Slicing pieces that are an appropriate serving size keeps you and your guests from cutting a piece that is much too large a portion.
Instead of making homemade gravy using water and flour, use a can of fat free turkey or chicken gravy as the base and mix with a bit of the turkey essence from the bottom of the roasting pan. Add some sage, salt, and pepper to taste.
Other side dishes can be slimmed as well. Sausage stuffing goes well with roasted turkey and gravy. Instead of pork sausage, consider using ground turkey sausage as the base. Cube some sourdough bread or a loaf of whole wheat bread and bake them for the stuffing. Use butter flavored cooking spray to grease the cookie sheet instead of butter.
The tips for slimming up that Christmas dinner don’t only pertain to the actual food but the drinks and table settings as well. When setting the table, use smaller plates. If all the plates are the same size, no one will notice the difference.
Set the table with water and wine glasses instead of soda. Wine, particularly red wine, has properties that improve heart health and lower cholesterol. Dessert wines complement cake and pie as well as other dessert dishes. It does provide a few calories but people drink less wine than they do soda.
This Christmas, give that meal a chance to make everyone smile instead of fall asleep. Cut the fat and carbohydrates while filling in with healthy fats and vegetables.