Healthy Eating Over the Holidays

Dec 18, 2019

When you’re trying to make healthy eating choices, the holiday season can be challenging to navigate. Gatherings, festivities, and social events are a wonderful time to get together and celebrate with loved ones, and they are almost always centred around food. Sometimes, these foods can be high in salt, sugar, and fat. Drink choices can include alcoholic beverages or other high calorie drinks. Enjoying these foods and drinks in moderation during the holidays and other special occasions can be part of healthy eating, but overindulging can throw your efforts off track. Here are some tips for healthy eating during the holiday season:

Include healthy choices

Whether you’re preparing a dish for a potluck, hosting a social event, or enjoying a meal at a gathering, choose healthy ingredients and dishes that include vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, such as seasoned roasted vegetables, a festive and colourful salad, or a fruit and cheese platter with whole grain crackers.

Eat regularly

Some people skip meals earlier in the day if they have a big event in the evening. Doing this can result in being famished all day long, and they then overeat when the event finally arrives. Afterwards, they may feel ill from eating too much. For people with diabetes, this can also cause extreme fluctuations in blood sugar levels. It is best to eat regularly during the day, including a small pre-event snack if hungry, to keep you from overeating at social events.

Use the healthy plate

When serving yourself at a party, try to build a healthy plate for a portioned and balanced meal. Fill ½ of your plate with vegetables and fruit, ¼ of the plate with grains and starches such as pasta, rice or potatoes, and ¼ of the plate with protein foods such as meat, fish, beans etc. Refer to the Canada’s Food Guide website for more information: www.canada.ca/foodguide

Be mindful

Eat slowly and mindfully, focusing on your food and taking the time to savour every bite.

Listen to your body, notice your feelings of hunger and fullness, and stop when your body tells you. Practice saying “no thank you, I’m full” when you feel pressured to eat food that the host has prepared.

Rethink your drink

Many holiday drinks can be higher in sugar and calories. Make healthy beverage choices such as coffee, tea, water, naturally flavoured water, club soda, light beer or wine spritzers.

Hold the guilt

If balance and moderation are a usual part of your lifestyle, it’s okay to overindulge once in a while. Remember the “80-20” rule, which says that if you are making healthy choices 80% of the time, it’s okay to splurge within reason for the rest of the 20%. So, enjoy your piece of cake during the holiday season.

Please contact the Sharbot Lake Family Health Team at 613-279-2100, if you would like more information about healthy eating or to make an appointment to see Saman Shaikh, Registered Dietitian. Visit our website at www.sharbotlakefht.com for more information about our Programs and Services.