Thanksgiving and Christmas are not an issue for me because I'm not crazy about turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, carrots, or pumpkin pie. My weakness is gourmet restaurant or catered fare. I'll be attending several professional meetings this month where the food is varied, high-quality and delicious. THAT's what I have to watch and plan for.

F.

Last year right at Thanksgiving I started my counting and did well but this year I have about 400 less to work with. Soooo.....I need to figure out how to incorporate the leftover pecan pie into Friday morning breakfast. Its a tradition. In all seriousness I am concerned with the week after and will do my best to get a grip on it. I am starting now and will work in added walking and cuting out my snacks.

I am so grateful for all the great ideas. All good food for thought! Thanks everyone. I'm not sure yet what my ultimate plan will be, but right now I will start upping the exercise by 15 minutes in preparation.:cool:

This is my first thanksgiving on a diet, sort of. Im skipping Thanksgiving. Not because of my diet though, i just work. I work Wednesday night from 8 pm to 8 am and then i work Thursday night (Thanksgiving) from 8 pm to 8 am, so I will be asleep during the day. Since I live alone, there is no left overs or pie to contend with and due to the nature of my work, it wont be at my workplace.

Christmas is an entire different story, im on vacation from December 17th to January 3rd. Its 7 weeks away, and I am already planning in my head how to handle December. I just got back on track and my mantra is "I have survived and endured everything thrown at me so far, I will continue to thrive". Im just getting back into the flow of things so i try to keep that positive frame of mind, it makes all the difference

My plan for this year is just to eat. I will eat what I want, however much I want on turkey day, and the next day I WILL have one turkey sandwich with REAL mayonnaise on white bread. If I don't, I will start to feel very sorry for myself, and a depressed Brandnewday is a gorging Brandnewday. I don't think two planned-for days is going to throw me off track.

Christmas will be much easier for me, believe it or not. I am not that attracted to sweets, and I'm not a baker, so I don't encounter really delicious cookies/candy very often. We also don't do a traditional meal with all my favorites - we are more sloppy joes, feed everyone fast and get to the presents kind of people. It will be easy to bring my own food.

I might have a beer on New Year's Eve, but most years I don't even do that!

I saved this thread and decided to look it over again since my family is having an early Thanksgiving celebration today. After all the great ideas, my plan involves calorie cycling (I ate less yesterday and am applying the extra calories towards today), exercise, and intermittent fasting (I'm saving all my calories for the big meal tonight). I've already logged everything I plan to eat based on the menu. The result--I get to have a nice, controlled splurge tonight and will still stay within my calories. :turkey:

We're not going "home" for Thanksgiving, so instead of making a big dinner for our family of 4, we'll be eating a thanksgiving lunch with our church. I plan to full up on mostly good stuff (turkey, veggies, fruit) but will allow myself to have a smaller portion of dessert if I really want it. The great thing is that we won't bring any leftovers home!

I haven't tackled Christmas yet!

I eat what I like but small portions of everything. And I'll pick ONE desert I want and eat that. It's really hard though. For Christmas my grandma makes 5 kinds of deserts (no joke) plus several kinds of cookies and chocolates. It's so frustrating. But I'm determined I won't fail this year!

Starting today I plan to eat 150 calories less a day until Thanksgiving, and not eating anything on Thanksgiving except for the dinner. I'll have a 500 calorie buffer. I'm not going to count and I'll eat whatever I want. Ill also be helping cook and on my feet all day followed by black Friday shopping, so I'll burn off a bit there too!

The pied are probably the worse thing we have, and at least they're homemade - and I'm diabetic, so I've never really over indulged in desserts anyhow due to the sugar.

Thanks for this timely thread! I miss my WW meetings and need all the ideas. :)

We eat relatively healthy as a family, so I don't worry too much about the food we cook. I don't like to over eat because it just doesn't feel good, though I definitely eat foods that aren't "normal" foods for me to eat (like gravy). Below is our typical menu for Thanksgiving. I eat small amounts of everything and stop when I'm satisfied. I skip cornbread and dessert because I don't care for them. Usually the only issue is that we drink alcohol for most of the day. That's my downfall.

Turkey with gravy
Tofurkey with mushroom gravy
Mushroom strudel
Stuffing and vegetarian dressing
Mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows
Vegetarian collard greens
Cornbread
Green bean casserole
Homemade and canned cranberry sauce
Roasted brussels sprouts

Purchased pies (usually pumpkin, apple, and pecan) and a homemade low calorie whipped pumpkin "cheesecake."

You know what's funny? We're supposed to eat candy on Halloween, an abundance of food on Thanksgiving, holiday treats throughout December--and then be thin and sexy on New Year's Eve! I think I'm going to start shopping for a NYE dress, just for motivation!

I eat everything...Just in VERY small portions...Like a dollop of potatos, a small slice of ham(I don't eat turkey) a bite or two of a roll, and so on and so forth...Dessert is my only main issue that I have to watch

I still estimate my calories, eat healthy for the most part, and I make SURE to get a long workout in the next day or two...enough to burn off an extra 200-300 calories...Haha