Be Thankful! (in Moderation...)

Being thankful is not something that you should limit on any day, especially on Thanksgiving. However, when consuming the celebratory meal that reflects that thankfulness, you may want to consider practicing that lovely word that you may be tired of hearing so often these days: moderation.

It's true that there are ways to make a traditional Thanksgiving meal healthier. You can make green beans without condensed soup. You can make the mashed potatoes with skim milk and garlic instead of cream and butter. You can eat the white turkey meat instead of the dark. You can make stuffing from scratch with whole grain bread, mushrooms, celery, and cranberries instead of from a box (basically refined flour and salt). You can eat pumpkin or sweet potato pie instead of warm, gooey, delicious pecan pie.

But the reality is that Thanksgiving comes but once a year and many people don't want to do Thanksgiving 'lite'. They want all the fixings from the creamy gravy to the browned marshmallow crust on the sweet potatoes. And that's OK to have! That is, as long as you have it in moderation. But don't just take my word for it. Let's look at a possible scenario...

You wake up on Thanksgiving morning and eat breakfast. Then you watch the parade and cook for several hours (tasting dishes along the way or snacking on appetizers). Then you sit and eat dinner for a couple of hours and then sit and watch football for another several hours. Then you either go to sleep or head for the mall to sit in line waiting for black Friday sales to begin.

The person that I've described probably burned around 2,000 calories that day being mostly sedentary. The Calorie Control Council estimates that the average Thanksgiving dinner contains 3,000 calories. First of all, eating that much in one sitting is going to make you feel very uncomfortable (if you've ever felt like you were going to explode after eating, you know what I mean). Plus, that is 1,000 extra calories that their body does not need and cannot use at the moment. Assuming that the extra calories are a mixture of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, guess what it will all turn into once you've eaten it? FAT. Extra fat stored in the body equals extra weight which is a heck of a lot harder to get rid of than it was to put on.

This Thanksgiving, the choice is yours: healthy portion control even if the dishes aren't as healthy as they could be, or reckless abandon complete with stomach ache and more fat stores. Whatever your choice, I hope you're able to spend the holiday relaxing with family or loved ones. And don't forget (after you've done all of the eating and drinking) to be active!

I'll leave you with a scene from my family's Thanksgiving morning five years ago: