How to eat healthier during the holiday season

It starts with a big bowl of leftover Halloween candy and doesn’t end until we’re making a bubbly toast on New Year’s Eve.

In the months between, we’re tempted by grandma’s apple pie and mom’s mashed potatoes and gravy, platters of Christmas cookies, holiday cocktails and parties with endless buffets.

With all that temptation coming at us on such a regular basis, we asked Cape Cod Hospital clinical dietician Brittany Grigorenko for her best advice to keep holiday eating healthy or at least healthier. Let’s start with that big bowl of candy. Grigorenko advises people to share the sweets.

“If you have the self-control to just have one piece of candy after eating a healthy meal, knowing it’s a treat, that’s fine,” she said. “But not everybody has a whole lot of self-control, so sometimes it’s easier to bring it to the office and share it wherever you can.”

For holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah, Grigorenko advises people to drink lots of water during the day. It’s also important to be careful with holiday beverages.

“An alcoholic beverage can add up calories pretty quickly, so you want to be mindful of what you are drinking, even on special holidays,” she said.

Even non-alcoholic beverages like hot chocolate, eggnog or fancy mocktails can pile on the extra calories. If you do want to imbibe on hot chocolate or eggnog, she advises people to look for low-fat and non-dairy options to keep the calorie count down.

Tricking Your Appetite

On Thanksgiving and Christmas, Grigorenko advises people to eat a normal breakfast and lunch so you aren’t starving and tempted to pile food onto the plate. Using smaller plates tricks our brains into eating less. She also has a formula for what to put on your plate.

“Fill up half of your plate with non-starchy vegetables and then a quarter of the plate with the protein and the other quarter with starchy vegetables like mashed potatoes and gravy,” she said. “With the yummy stuff, try to stick to smaller portions.”

Side dishes like sweet potatoes or butternut squash often have a lot of butter and added sweeteners like brown sugar. If you are making these items at home, let their natural sweetness shine without any added sugar. If you are eating at someone else’s house, ask the host what ingredients have been added so you can decide how large of a portion to eat.

“I never say to completely eliminate those foods, but definitely keep them to a smaller portion,” Grigorenko said.

If you are invited to a Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving potluck celebration, try to bring a low-calorie appetizer or a healthy side dish like a green salad, a raw veggie platter with hummus or a fruit tray, she said. Try to avoid anything that is fried or that has a heavy cream-based sauce. Also try not to go overboard with the gravy and skip the rolls and butter because they’re just filler food, especially on a holiday when there are so many other choices.

“If you are attending a holiday party with a buffet, have a healthy snack before you leave so you’re not going on an empty stomach,” Grigorenko said. “I think that is a big one that people sometimes don’t think about and then you end up grazing. It’s easy to graze and eat a lot. It’s better to fill your plate. It’s nice for our brain to see the big picture of what we’re eating as we’re eating it.”

Eat Mindfully

If you are hosting or attending a sit-down meal, try eating mindfully. Eat slowly and really enjoy each bite. Talking about the food is another way to be mindful instead of just absently forking food into your mouth as you get caught up in the dinner table conversation.

“Before you go back for seconds at any party, wait about 10 to 20 minutes,” she said. “Have a glass of water before that second meal to make sure you’re truly hungry. It takes our stomach about 20 minutes to tell our brain that we are getting full. There are lots of hormones and signals going on, so it does take a little while for that to register.”

Grigorenko’s last bit of advice is to bond with family and friends with movement. Her family does the annual Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day.

“The big picture hasn’t changed,” she said. “We need to eat less and move more.”