SMART SOCIALIZING
8 Tips to Make Holiday Parties Fun, Not Fattening
Whether you’re hosting a big bash for 200 or a dinner party for 20, parties should be a blast. Everyone should be able to attend a festivity-or host one herself- without worrying about weight gain and too-tight pants. With the right strategies, parties can be fun, not fattening.
- Eat with your non dominant hand. If you’re a righty, use your left hand to eat appetizers, or vice versa. It’s harder and more awkward to eat with your non dominant hand, so it slows you down and makes you pay better attention to how much food you’re eating.
- Move away from the buffet. Location is everything when it comes to weight loss. We eat with our eyes, so never stand near the buffet table! Take one or two items, and then move away.
- Use smaller plates. A salad plate for a dinner buffet, for example. You can eat up to 40% fewer calories!
- Use a white-wine or champagne glass. It’s easy to pour more generously into a wider, deeper red-wine glass. Stick to slimmer white-wine or champagne glasses so calories don’t add up so fast.
5. Take a 30-minute time-out. Wait until you’ve been at the party for at least 30 minutes until you start eating. This gives you time to relax when you first walk in, get involved in the festivities, and survey the best food picks for your diet plan.
6. Be sneaky. Carry your own salad dressing packets or low-calorie alternative chocolate bar in your bag. Use them to help you say no to hidden calories or certain foods without feeling like you’re missing out. I often pass on dessert and then eat my 100-calorie chocolate pretzels on the car ride home!
7. Use the garbage pail. Better to throw away fat-and calorie-laden foods than your self-esteem, self-confidence, hard work, and skinny jeans. Are you still having a hard time parting with tortilla chips because you feel guilty about wasting food? Here’s a thought: donate the food to a local shelter or religious institution, both of which provide daily meals for the less fortunate. You’ll feel much better, even relieved, to have the tempting food out of reach.
8. Ask for help. If there’s a favorite food you must serve at an event, ask someone else to prepare and bring it. It will be easier to separate from a food, even a favorite one that you didn’t invest any time, effort or money in. I always farm out dessert, especially baked goods, since that is my Achilles’ heel. I don’t want to see it days before a party or have it loitering around my kitchen for days afterward
Lyssa Weiss, M.S., R.D., C.D.N., is the owner of Skinny Jeans Nutrition, LLC and a weight management and obesity specialist in private practice in Westchester County, New York. She specializes in emotional and compulsive eating; teaching women who have been on every diet imaginable that weight loss has little to do with calories, and everything to do with strategies. Weight isn’t the problem for most dieters. It is a symptom; a symptom of being out of control with food. What you put in your mouth is secondary to what you put in your head. Lyssa Weiss teaches you how to live thin, forever, with an eating plan that is built around you. It is a brand new script for living and thriving in the world of food. Her motto is “get smart and skinny!”
