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I've already been stressing over this for weeks. I thought I could get through Halloween with no issues but got derailed completely. I too make baked goodies and give as gifts and love that part of the season. Last year I started baking at Thanksgiving all the way through Xmas and kept the stuff in my freezer. Terrible plan. This year, I'm going to try and do all my baking in one weekend and then get it out of the house. As for the parties, gosh I don't know, haven't really made a plan for those yet.

My challenges will be drinking, homemade goodies, and sticking to my exercise regimen. I'm having a hard enough time with the exercise one without all the holiday insanity!

I refuse to forbid myself a few drinks - I LOVE a nice glass of wine or butter rum in the winter (well, wine anytime ) and beer is good too....My plan for this is TWO drinks at a time. Or Three if I've eaten dinner in between and am going out afterwards, but that's the cap. DONE. I'm being very generous to myself - but I refuse to give this up at the holidays.

For the baked goods... ooooh boy. I don' t have a plan yet, but I'll need to figure something out. I think setting a limit may be better than total avoidance. For me, swearing total avoidance is just setting myself up for a late-night cookie binge.

Meg,
I relate. Giving up my holiday baking was the absolute hardest part of this journey. I was throwing away traditions, that I took years to establish.

It took me a while to realize that they were antiquated traditions that needed an overhaul.

Baking - I make a gingerbread house with the kids. We decorate, enjoy the tradition, but not a calorie of it passes my lips

The family attends holiday events where home-made baked goods are served. Church events mostly, but also others. Family members can eat their fill of home-made goodies (just not home-made by me)

I have substituted other food traditions at home. Healthy "special" meals. Low-cal and/or healthy beverages.

We take to money I used to spend on all those baked goods, and buy something for Project Christmas (a community effort to give a "real" Christmas to empoverished families in our community - 1100 families last year).

It has taken me a while to adjust to new traditons. My sugar cookie cutters are now only used for play-doh projects.

But, most of all - I am surprised that the old traditions meant more to me than they did to the family. They adjusted quite well. It was me that gave up those things kicking and screaming

My biggest challenge during the holidays is a disruption of my routines. I find it hard to find time to exercise. I have to be very creative and sneak it in.

I ordered more winter walking gear this weekend. I plan to walk as many places as I can. I have poles and Yaktraks. I am adding wool ski socks, a headlamp, and LONG, warm, winter coat.

I've offered to help DH with the shoveling - even if I have to get up earlier.

While I didn't gain last holiday season, my fitness level did suffer. So, my goals are to get different, but equal amounts of exercise this holiday season.

CD, I appreciate your insights. You hit the nail on the head when you said that the traditions mean more to us than to our families. I think that's exactly right and it's my issue where food still equals love in my mind. Even after all these years of healthy eating (and my kids losing 55 and 70 pounds each), baking for the holidays still feels like a way to show my family how much I love them. And so not baking feels like depriving them.

At least putting a name to it makes me able to confront it. Thanks!

I call November 1 the kickoff to the eating season! LOL.

I do love to bake for the holidays. My husband and I are quite the foodies and we host the big Christmas Eve dinner. I have found the last couple years that if I allow myself to eat as I wish for 2 days of the season (Thanksgiving and Chrismtas Eve), I am more likely to have better control for the rest of Nov and December. I also have set limits on certain things like eggnog lattes. I can have 2 during the season. It's sort of a give an take for me. I allow a little more than what I would normally have the rest of the year, but I refuse to let myself go overboard on a daily basis.

Lori, I always allow myself an eggnog latte for each holiday, just two, usually the day before Thanksgiving and the last work day before Christmas. Funny, I don't like eggnog plain, but something about those eggnog lattes....

Anyway, I gave up baking cookies several years ago. My DH loves cookies, and he bakes of his mother's recipes to send to his family on the east coast. I don't touch them - they're not mine. He gets plenty of homemade goodies at parties, and I bring him home my share from what our patrons bring us at the library. We go next door for both holiday dinners, so I don't have a lot of calorie-filled leftovers. So my challenge becomes parties. I have 5 that I know of now. Interestingly, only one involves much alcohol. But 4 of the 5are - groan - potlucks. Everyong breaks out their favorite recipes for those. I do bring heathier stuff, but I need to work on what I take of everyone else's dish. I need to have a plan and visualize it a number of times for each party..... ANd I need to keep up my exercise routine and my clean eating the rest of the time. We can do this. I made it last year, I will make it again!

My biggest challenge is that I just give up. I am an all-or-nothing type person. So, if I have a party on a Thursday night, and then one on Saturday too, then I will eat like crap on Friday because I think, "What's the point?" So I can end up being off plan for the whole two months!

It's starting early for me this year, too. My ILs are coming and staying for a week. Long story, but I get very stressed and angry when they visit and I tend to eat those feelings, all.week.long. Then the following week is my birthday, then we travel for Thanksgiving.

So the goal is to know there are going to be off plan days, but when there's no event or party, stay on plan! Exercise as normal, whenever possible. Keep coming here and stay accountable!

Thanks for starting this thread, Meg.

This is what I do also, Ward. I had been thinking about the holidays and thought "well I'm not going home to my parents house for Christmas so I'm safe" but that really isn't true at all. Instead that means I'll be visiting my BF's family, most likely having at least one Christmas meal with them, then traveling further to see my DS's in-laws family, which is where my sis and parents will be, and having some type of holiday meal with them. Not to mention my sis likes to fix "special" foods for the holidays even when visiting the inlaws (not sure if my parents will feel at home enough to do the same as they do when at home), and when my parents are on the road in the past they bring a box of snacks including at least some of the goodies that would have ended up on "the fat table" at home, plus there will still be "road food" and staying in other people's houses. Not to mention Thanksgiving - office dinner plus either BF's family or friends of ours (as I said, we're not sure about our plans). Oh yes, and all the Christmas parties, a cast party coming up before turkey day, baked goods at the office, candy, etc. etc.

It's unrealistic to think that I won't have a cookie or glass of mulled cider, or a slice of my Dad's pie if given the opportunity. I think the most important thing for me is to remember that going to a party later means I should eat healthier at breakfast and lunch, instead of "giving up" like Ward said. The second most important thing is for me to stop when I'm full, or stop after 1 slice of pie, etc. This isn't hard when I'm sitting down to a meal I've cooked at home, but when there are trays of party food around me (It's all special food! Wheee!) it's much harder. Also if I do overindulge, get right back on the healthy food wagon, don't "give up" there too. The third most important thing for me is to be vigilant about my gym workouts. I can run off two cookies and a glass of wine. I can't run off 10 cookies and a bottle, at least not in one workout. And fourth, get enough sleep.

I'm going to remind myself that what is special about the holidays for me is seeing my friends and my family, who I don't get to see often because we live so far apart. It's not actually the food, as much as my inner child would like to think so.

Challenges: the biggest one is that I'll be in LA for a week for Christmas with my family. The second biggest is Thanksgiving leftover pie.

The Thanksgiving leftovers won't be as bad this year as last year. Last year we went out to the country for the whole weekend with the entire family, so we were all in a house with 10 extra pies for three days after the main meal. This year we are just going over to the in-laws' house for the meal, then going home again. I'll plan to bring back leftover turkey and veggies, but to leave the pies there.

Christmas is another matter. I'll be in LA for 6 days. The general plan is just to lose as much as possible before then, and then just expect them to be 6 days of indulgence. I am going to make a commitment to exercise though -- I *will* stay on my workout schedule while we're in LA! My parents have a treadmill and a weight machine so there are no weather excuses if it rains.

Strategies:
1) Since I know I will be indulging when on vacation for xmas, I should be able to *resist* indulging when I'm at home.
2) Keep up the exercise exactly on schedule. Workout out makes me want to eat better.
3) Don't take home leftover pie from Thanksgiving.
4) Wear cute "skinny" clothes to all holiday meals. You can't loosen your belt if you're wearing a little black dress.
5) Load up the plate with salad and veggies, and don't bother eating dishes that I don't absolutely love. Mashed potatoes? Waste of calories.

HoliDAY, holiDAY, holiDAY!

The reality is that one off plan meal a week would not keep me from losing the last 5 lbs. It's all the other off plan things that sneak into my body. Having a plan is so important. I too struggle with the all or nothing mentality.

On one of the threads here recently someone said something to the effect of, if I don't plan it, I don't eat it. Which I think I will adopt as one of my mottos this year. A slice of pie is okay. A slice of pie, plus 4 more slivers, plus cheese dip, plus a second helping of, well, everything, yeah, not so okay.

Here are my holiDAY plans:
Tomorrow night is our midwife holiday party. We do it early and it is so fun. I'll check out the menu today and PLAN what I'll eat, and eat what I plan, and no last minute temptations or self-sabotage (I'm soooooo good at justification in the heat of the monent!)
Friday night is my birthday. I'm plannning bread pudding for dessert. DH doesn't know that yet. I guess I should tell him. But that's 2 meals out of the week. No excuses for anything else.

Mid November is a road trip to check out a school for DD. I know what to do, and I'll do it!

DD's birthday and Thanksgiving in late November. Neither call for calorie blowouts. A small piece of cake is fine. It will be a strange Thanksgiving. We usually go to my inlaw and it's potluck style. This year my inlaws will be out of town. For all my joking about defrosting a turkey in the Operation Take 5 thread, I'm having a little trepidation about throwing my own dinner. So I'll keep it simple. I probably will order a turkey. We'll do potatoes of some kind, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green beans, and pie. I think that will be quite enough. We don't need 900 side dishes, appetizers, desserts....Maybe I'll let each kid be "in charge" of a dish. They can choose the recipe, help shop and then prepare it.

My personal favorite meal of the year is Christmas Eve. Enchiladas, beans, rice, biscochitos....I'll be on plan all of December so I can indulge guilt free. Again, one meal won't break the scale. All the cookies, fudge, junk that spontaneously appears in every corner of my world from mid-October until mid-January is what will kill the scale.

Another motto for the season (borrowed from DD): The pain of discipline is less than the pain of regret. Words to live by....

So my plan is to plan. To eat what I plan and to allow those plans to include desserts on special DAYS and to not pull up a chair to the cultural feeding trough. 2 months is 1/6th of the year. 17% of the year! Who needs to go off the rails for 17% of the year? Not me! I will be below red line on New Years Day!

I love that. DEFINITELY need to adopt it as my new motto!

I also like the idea of planning what I will eat (and drink) and sticking to it. It's harder at events where people bring food and I don't know what there will be, but I think I could still say something like - one plate of main course of food, one (smaller!) plate of dessert food. And two drinks - wine, cider, whatever. Then back to water. I love sparkling water - I may have to start bringing this to holiday gatherings, it feels like a treat moreso than regular water.

No holiday temptations for me this week, but I will be at a conference and that tends to not have the best food options. However I did check and discover that our hotel has a fitness room. So I WILL make use of that!

Hey guys, I hope you don't mind me joining the maintenance forum now. I do want to shed another 5 lbs or so, but those are vanity pounds, and for the most part, I am just trying to maintain.

The holidays are always a HUGE stumbling block for me. I am another one where holiday traditions equate to love=food. Not a good mindset. Every year, the holidays have derailed me. But I am hoping that since I have actually gotten really close to goal (other years, goal felt so far away) that I will be able to resist the temptation, since I know how much hard work it took to get me here.

I have always been a fan of "Everything in moderation" and that has been the eating plan that has worked for me up until this point. Instead of a bowl of ice cream, I have a scoop; instead of 5 cookies, I have 1. I am hoping that if I can just continue this trend through the holidays (one dessert on each holiday) that I will be just fine.

But, only time will tell. Good luck all. Together, we can keep each other on track.

Ah, the holiday season... Scared me silly last year, I feel a little more prepared this year, but not a lot.

My challenges:
1) Thanksgiving is at my house this year, so stressful
2) Lots of crazy scheduling between my family, DH's family and DSS's mother's family. Also stressful, which makes me want to eat.
3) DH's ex is a great baker and does a lot at the holidays. She often bakes too much and sends it to our house, to keep from eating it herself.
4) My dad's birthday in November.
5) I love eggnog...

Survival techniques:
1) Going to plan healthy food options for Thanksgiving and keep myself too busy to eat much.
2) Trying to get the schedule hashed out now. I can't wait until the last minute again this year.
3) I can't feel guilty throwing the baked goods away. I don't bake for a reason, and I shouldn't have to feel like a garbage disposal for other people's baking, even if it is fantastic... I'll allow myself small bites of things and the rest will go in the trash if it ends up at my house.
4) Going to plan for the birthday in advance, will eat better duing the day to allow for peanut butter cake.
5) DH hates eggnog, so I'll only buy it in a small container and can only have it 1-2 times the holiday season.

Last year I decided that I wanted to try all the desserts I had never eaten before - pecan pie, apple pie, banana pudding mainly, so I ate light the few days before gatherings, ate a light meal at the gathering and then had small servings of several desserts. It worked well for me, I think I'll try it again. The small portion allows me to sample the things I don't get normally and I don't feel like I went crazy. It will be easier with not going to my grandmother's for Thanksgiving, only one exposure to the 12-14 dessert offerings at her house...

I'm working hard to let go of the 'all or nothing'. I'm finding that if I plan for a splurge afternoon and know all week that it is coming that I'm not as likely to overindulge leading up to it, it helps with the 'I'm doomed anyway' mindset and keeps me from going overboard the next day, too. Doesn't always work, but I'm plugging away at it.

Moderation got me through last year and I'm hoping it will get me through this year, too.

We can do this!

I feel a little more confident heading towards the holidays this year. I had just reached my goal weight last year & I was afraid of regaining the weight back I so overcompensated by exercising like crazy and didn't give myself a chance to really enjoy the holiday goodies (when I did I felt really guilty). So here's my holiday plan to overcome the obstacles & cut myself some slack:

1) Pumpkin Crunch - I make this for both Thanksgiving & Christmas and always end up eating more than 1 piece because I take some home & eat more. I resolve not to bring home any pumpkin crunch leftovers.
2) Dark, gloomy & rainy weather - this puts a cramp in my running. However, I have an elliptical, stationary bike & jump rope - so there are really no excuses.
3) Office goodies - following the 3FC candy challenge really helped me get through Halloween so I'm going to follow the same principle & not eat the cheap chocolate stuff. That said, we'll probably receive a basket or two of godiva chocolates. so I'm going to allow myself to savor a piece but only after I eat a healthy lunch. By that time, my co-workers wll probably empty the basket.
4) Goodies received as gifts - do as I did last year & regift all of them & save myself some $ on christmas gifts