holiday eating

A Holiday Gift

December 7, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Just in time for the crunch of the holiday season —

My new book — 30 Ways to Eat Your Holiday Favorites and Still Get Into Your Jeans — is available as a free download for your kindle or kindle reader this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (12/7 – 12/9).

The book is filled with useful and practical tips and info to help you navigate your way through the holiday season with your waistline intact and your belly happy.

Head on over to Amazon to download your free gift — and please share this info with anyone else who might be interested.

I hope you enjoy the book. I would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a review on Amazon.

Enjoy the holiday season.

Your Holiday Eating Cheat Sheet

December 5, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Are you feeling some holiday pressure? Are you, along with lots of family and friends, jumping into entertaining and cooking mode?

Is food a good antidote to all of that stress (at least in the moment)? What about the pressure – subtle and sometimes not so subtle – to eat everything that’s set out on the table by those close to you?

Then there’s the anger/guilt about eating way too much – and then repeating the whole process.

Consider These Ideas:

Don’t feel obliged to eat out of courtesy – especially if you don’t want the food or you’re full –because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. Get over it – the calories are going into your mouth, not theirs.

Give yourself permission to NOT eat something just because it’s tradition. Whose tradition?

Only eat it if you want it. Eat what you want not what you think you should.

Say no to the friend or relative who is pushing the extra piece of pie. You’re the one stepping on the scale or zipping up your jeans the next day – not them.

Have some personal rules and commit to them. An example might be: I really want pecan pie for dessert so I’ll have only one biscuit without butter with my meal.

Make a deal (with yourself) that you can eat what you want during dinner. Put the food on your plate and enjoy every last morsel. Clean your plate if you want to. But – that’s it. No seconds and no double-decking the plate.

Make trades. Trade the biscuit and butter for wine with dinner. Limit the hors d’oeuvres. They really pack in calories. Make eating one or two your rule.

Choose your beverages wisely. Alcohol adds calories (7 calories/gram). Alcohol with mixers adds even more calories. Plus, alcohol takes the edge off lots of things – including your ability to stick to your plan.

Drink water. It fills you up. Have a diet soda if you want. If you’re going to drink alcohol, try limiting the amount – think about alternating with water, seltzer, or unsweetened beverages.

Control your environment. Don’t hang around the buffet table or stand next to the platter of delicious whatevers. Why are you tempting yourself?

Talk to someone. It’s hard to shove food in your mouth when you’re talking.

Get rid of leftovers. Leftover stuffing has defeated the best-laid plans.

Don’t nibble during clean up (or preparation for that matter). Broken cookies, pieces of piecrust, and the last spoonsful of stuffing haven’t magically lost their calories.

Don’t starve yourself the day of a grand meal. If you do in an attempt to save up calories for a splurge, you’ll probably be so hungry by the time dinner is ready you’ll end up shoving food into your mouth faster than you can say turkey.

If you end up overeating, add in some longer walks and a couple of days of moderate eating afterward.

Do you want some more really helpful (and sometimes humorous) info about the holidays and holiday eating? Check these out:

New on Amazon: 30 Ways to Eat Your Holiday Favorites and Still Get Into Your Jeans

Available from the iTunes store: Eat Out Eat Well magazine

Do Holidays And Overeating Go Hand In Hand?

November 21, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

What’s your favorite holiday food? How much of it do you eat?

A lot of us actually plan to overeat during the holidays – although we may not admit it: think about it — do you know that you’re going to overeat? Do you think it wouldn’t be normal or celebratory if you didn’t overindulge and eat three desserts at Christmas or double helpings of stuffing and sweet potato casserole on Thanksgiving?

It’s all too easy to do that. Food is absolutely everywhere. It’s there for the taking — and most of the time, holiday food is free (and in your face) at parties, on receptionist’s desks, as sample tastes while you shop. How can you pass it up?

On top of it all, it’s sugary, fatty, and pretty. How can you not try it? Of course, sugary and fatty (salty, too) means you just crave more and more. Do you really need it? Do you even really want it? If you eat it, will you feel awful later on?

Are you eating because of tradition – because you’ve been eating the same food during the holiday season since you were a kid? Maybe you don’t even like the food anymore or it disagrees with you. So why are you eating it? Who’s forcing you to?

Do you think you won’t have a good time or you’ll be labeled Scrooge, Grinch, a party pooper, or offend your mother-in-law if you don’t eat everything in sight? Really?

You can still love the holidays and you can still love the food. In the grand scheme of things overeating on one day isn’t such a big deal. Overeating for multiple days that turn into weeks and then months can be become a bit and weighty deal.

The question is: do you really want to overeat? If you do, fine. Enjoy every morsel and then take a nap. Tomorrow is another day. Just know that you don’t have to. You make the decisions about what goes into your mouth. Make thoughtful choices and enjoy them along with everything else the holiday represents.

What To Do

Have a plan. Think about how you want to handle yourself in the face of food, family, eggnog, and pecan pie. Nothing is engraved in stone but if you have an idea about what you want to do and how to do it you’ll be far less likely to nibble and nosh all day and night. You’re the one in charge of what goes into your mouth.

Visualize the situation that you might find yourself in. What do you want the outcome to be? Rehearse, in your mind, how you’ll respond or behave to successfully navigate the eating challenges. Sports coaches use this technique to prepare their athletes to anticipate what might happen and to practice how to respond. Sports performance improves with visualization exercises—so can eating behavior.

Make sure your plan is workable and realistic for what you’re aiming to achieve over the season. The plan doesn’t have to be complex – just decide what you want to do and what steps you need to get there.

Write it down –even if it’s on a napkin. It will both reinforce your intentions and act as a measure of accountability.

Consider what your surroundings will be. Will your plan work for you – it may sound great, but is it doable for the situations you might find yourself in? Will your host insist you try her special dessert and refuse to take no for an answer? Will you be eating in a restaurant known for its homemade breads or phenomenal wine list? Are your dining companions picky eaters, foodies, or fast food junkies? What will you do in these situations?

Armed with your rehearsed plan, go out, use it, and stick to it as best you can. You assume control, not the circumstances and not the food. You are in charge of what food and how much of it will go into your mouth.

Do you have an ipad or an iphone? Maybe both? Check out Eat Out Eat Well Magazine coming soon to the Apple Newsstand.

Are You Ready For Holiday Eating?

November 19, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Holiday cookies, latkes, pumpkin pie, cornbread stuffing, eggnog, and a relative’s specialty of the season … food, food, food!

‘Tis the season to eat and there are “food landmines” everywhere you turn. We all have to eat but it can be a very slippery slope to eat well surrounded by food; family; friends; an encyclopedia of cultural, religious, and family traditions; and a whole host of expectations.

Holidays are supposed to be days of celebration and special significance — often religious, cultural, or traditional. Sometimes, they’re days just meant for play. A common denominator is that we often incorporate food – and lots of it — into celebrations.

Realistically, the actual content of your Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, or other holiday meal matters very little in the grand scheme of things. Although a few hundred calories here or there can make a difference when added up over weeks and years, the impact of overeating at one meal is usually negligible – even though your stomach might be singing a different song.

It’s the inevitable mindless eating – those treats on the receptionist’s desk, the gift of peanut brittle, the holiday toasts, the second and third helpings, the holiday cookies in the snack room – that are the main source of excess calories and added pounds during the holiday season.

What To Do

See it = eat it. It‘s incredibly difficult not to nibble your way through the day when you have delicious treats tempting you at every turn. How many times do your senses need to be assaulted by the sight of sparkly cookies and the holiday scent of eggnog or spiced roasted nuts before your hand reaches out and the treat is popped into your mouth?

Don’t keep your trigger foods stocked in your pantry or fridge. If you need to have supplies, don’t make them immediately visible. Hide them in the back of the cabinet or in a “not too easy to be reached” location.

Be aware of openly displayed platters and bowls of cookies, nuts, candy, and other holiday specialties. Make up your mind that it’s not okay – just because it’s the holidays – to taste test everything that crosses your path.

Coming soon to the Apple newsstand for your ipad and iphone: Eat Out Eat Well Magazine!

Leftovers Will Defeat The Best Laid Diet Plans

December 20, 2012 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN 1 Comment

You open the fridge door right after the holiday party and what do you see? Leftover pie, cake, stuffing, turkey, ham, potatoes, lasagna, pizza – you name it.

With all of that tempting stuff staring at you, how can you possibly not nibble away?

The best laid plans have been defeated by left over stuffing – or pie – or lasagna (in my house, it’s pastitsio rather than lasagna).

Don’t forget, nibbling during clean up counts as leftovers, too. Broken cookies, pieces of piecrust, and the last spoonfuls of stuffing haven’t magically lost their calories.

The Two Most Effective Things To Do

1. The first most effective way to handle leftovers: Get Them Out Of The House through whatever means you choose. Here are some “getting them out of the house” options:

Send them home with your family and friends — right away – as they’re going out the door. The longer the leftovers are in your kitchen, the greater the chance you’ll eat them.
Throw them out. Some people might consider it a sin to throw food out. You need to weigh what works best for you and your conscience – whether to keep the food and eat it or to let the garbage man take it away. You could always feed some animals if you like, too.
Bring it to someone in need. There must be a food pantry or shelter that would welcome some extra food. There are many people who would appreciate a meal that they are unable to provide for themselves and their families.
Take it to the office or send it along with someone to take to his or her office. There always seem to be ravenous people in offices. Just don’t eat someone else’s leftovers as you try to get rid of yours.

2. If you just can’t bring yourself to get your leftovers out of the house: Hide The Stuff That Tempts You. Out of sight, out of mind is really true. We all tend to eat more when it’s right in front of us. Food we like – especially higher calorie sugary, fatty, and salty foods, which means many holiday foods — trigger cravings and eating.

Keep the veggies in the front of the fridge and the chocolate pudding in the back.
If the food hasn’t made its exit immediately, package it up and store put it in the back of the fridge where you can’t see it at first glance (and might forget about it).
Freeze it – although freezing alone isn’t enough to deter some leftover hunters (frozen butter cookies still taste great). Shove the food all the way in the back of the freezer behind the frozen peas where you can’t see it and have to move things around to get at it. It will help.
If you’ve bought jumbo size packages of anything in anticipation of holiday company and still have some food left in the packages — put that excess away, too. Put it somewhere inconvenient so you’ll have to work to get at it. Once again: out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind. Put it far away, too. We tend to be lazy so if you have to exert energy to get the food it may take some of the desire out of it. So store the food in the basement or garage — someplace out of the kitchen.

In Case You Keep The Leftovers

Here are guidelines to help you avoid getting sick along with stuffed.

Remember: 2 Hours–2 Inches–4 Days
Food can stay unrefrigerated for a maximum of 2 hours from the time it is taken out of the oven and then placed in the refrigerator.
Refrigerate or freeze leftovers within 2 hours of cooking by any method — otherwise throw the leftover food away.
Leftover food should be stored at a maximum of 2 Inches of thickness so it cools quickly.
Food should spend a maximum of 4 days in the refrigerator–otherwise freeze it.
The exception to 4 days in the fridge: stuffing and gravy should be used within 2 days. Reheat solid leftovers to 165 degrees F and liquid leftovers to a rolling boil. Toss what you don’t finish.
Frozen leftover turkey, stuffing, and gravy should be used within one month.
To successfully freeze leftovers, package them properly using freezer wrap or freezer containers. Use heavy-duty aluminum foil, freezer paper, or freezer bags for best results and don’t leave any air space. Squeeze the excess air from the freezer bags. Without proper packaging, circulating air in the freezer can create freezer burn – those white dried-out patches on the surface of food that make it tough and tasteless.
Leave a one-inch headspace in containers with liquid and half an inch in containers filled with semi-solids.

Those big holiday meals are coming up! For more hints and tips about holiday eating get my book, The Sensible Holiday Eating Guide: How To Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Weight, available from Amazon for your kindle or kindle reader.