Thanksgiving diet

As we round the corner toward Thanksgiving, people want to know, “How should I approach the holiday to remain healthy?” You’ll hear health gurus saying “watch your portions, eat vegetables, avoid fats and sweets,” and all the rest. But not from me. I say, eat whatever you want! As much as you want! Go ahead! It’s Thanksgiving, for heaven’s sakes! Eat, enjoy, indulge, celebrate! Gulp down the whole turkey! Consume only apple pie and ice cream if you want! No need to restrain yourself and put a damper on your day! Eat! Eat! Eat! After all, it’s only one day a year, right?

You see, if you are healthy, what you eat on one day of the year isn’t going to make a big difference to your health or to your weight. So, I say, enjoy yourself. The real question is, what are you doing on all the other days of the year? Are you treating every day like Thanksgiving, stuffing yourself until you’re in a food-induced torpor, engorged like a plucked tick? If you are, it’s those other 364 days of the year you need to work on. So let’s talk a little about those other days of the year and what you’re doing to your body on those other days.

First of all, let’s get an idea of how healthy you are. Take a tape measure, preferably a cloth or plastic one like a tailor uses. Wrap it around your belly right at your belly-button. What’s the measurement? Studies have shown that the simplest risk for heart disease is this measurement, the “umbilical girth.” Regardless of your height or your build, if your umbilical girth is over 40 inches, you’re at high risk for heart disease. Below 35 inches starts to decrease your risk, and 30 inches or less is ideal. If you’re more than 30 inches, Thanksgiving is not your problem. The other days of the year are what will kill you. If you don’t have a tape measure handy, just take a pinch at your navel. Can you pinch more than an inch? I’m sorry to report that you’re at risk for heart disease and the other sequelae of carrying around extra weight.

Losing weight is a miserable endeavor. The human body simply was not designed to give up its stores of energy (also known as fat). You have to wrestle every calorie away from it. No matter what diet you follow, there are two themes that will keep coming up. First, you’ll have to give up something. You cannot keep eating the same things and expect to lose weight. Yet at the same time, a diet that leaves you hungry is doomed to fail. Your body is designed to eliminate hunger, and you will… by eating. Now, I’m going to tell you a secret. You can actually eat as much as you want, and still lose weight. The secret is, you cannot eat whatever you want. Got it? Eat as much as you want, but not whatever you want. Naturally, the question arises, what are the foods that I cannot eat in this “as much as you want” diet? You cannot eat fat and you cannot eat carbohydrates. So, limit the amount of oil (fried foods) and animal products, which are where most of our fat comes from; and limit the amount of carbohydrates: bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, cakes, cookies, sweets and soft-drinks and beer, ideally to just half a cup per day. That’s half a cup per day TOTAL. You can eat as much fruits and vegetables as you want. Eat 20 oranges in a day if it strikes your fancy. Eat 10 heads of lettuce if you like. You will not be hungry, and you will lose weight.

The second theme that comes up in any diet you examine is that you do actually have to exercise. This is in part so that you’ll burn more calories, but there is a more important reason. When you start to lose weight, your body senses the loss, and reacts. “Hey, what’s going on here?! We aren’t supposed to give up these stores of fat. We need them for survival in a famine.” And the body, in response to the loss of calories, lowers its metabolism. It slows down so that it doesn’t burn calories as quickly. It goes into a conservation mode. So, you need to battle this slowing metabolism and you can do this through exercise. It doesn’t take much. Vigorous aerobic exercise, as little as 20 minutes three times a week, helps trick your body into keeping its rate of metabolism up or even increasing it, so that you can keep burning calories and losing weight.

Now, I must give you a warning about totally indulging yourself on Thanksgiving. This if fine if you are NOT overweight, do NOT have diabetes, hypertension or heart disease, or any other health problems. If you have heart problems (and you may not even know you do), it is dangerous to overeat, even one meal, because eating takes blood to your stomach and away from other vital organs like the heart and brain. If you heart is already strained, a heavy meal can take valuable blood away from it. In fact, heart attacks often come after a heavy meal. And of course with diabetes, you cannot take in too many calories because of the risk of skyrocketing blood glucose which can lead to a coma.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving and spend your effort on making every day of the year a healthy eating day.

(This information is provided for general information only. It is not intended to provide medical advice, and should not be relied upon as a substitute for consultations with qualified health professionals who are familiar with your individual medical needs.)