How To Portion Control During The Holidays So You Can Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Excess Weight

It's hard to say no to your favorite dishes when you're gathered around the table with friends and family. Whether it's apple pie, your grandma's signature stuffing, or truffle mac and cheese, it's the kind of food you don't usually have access to for the rest of the year so you want to make sure you savor every bite. The holidays are also the time when you see loved ones whom you don't normally get to spend time with, so when you're at Thanksgiving dinner, you're much less focused on the portion of food on your plate than you are catching up with your favorite cousin.

Even though the holidays are full of festivities and once-a-year dishes and desserts, there's always the thought in the back of your mind of whether you'll gain excess weight during this time period. And it's not even about the number on the scale or how your jeans fit. It's about how you feel, your mental clarity, your gut health, your immunity, uncomfortable bloating, etc. Gaining excess weight has many negative benefits that aren't even related to the way you look, which is why it's important to maintain reasonable caution with how much you eat over the holidays. The last thing you want is New Year's Eve to roll around, and you've suddenly got an extra 15 pounds on you that makes you feel sluggish and not at all like yourself. Fortunately, there is definitely a way for you to enjoy all the seasonal goodies without your health suffering. Here are some tips on how to portion control throughout the holidays.

1. Look at Your Fist, Palm, and Thumb

You shouldn't waste your precious time during the holidays trying to count calories or macros in order to prevent overeating, especially when you have to engage with many different people socially. Instead of stressing over how much you're piling onto your plate, think about it this way: Each protein serving should be about the size of your palm, each carbohydrate serving should be the size of your fist, and each fat serving should be the size of your thumb.

Each protein serving should be about the size of your palm.

That's a very general way to eyeball your portion sizes. Of course when you're eating Christmas Eve dinner with your family, you're probably going to eat more than that in one sitting. That's okay; just use these three sizes as a point of reference, with a little wiggle room for the foods you adore. So when you're serving yourself turkey or pot roast, try to measure it out on your plate as if it's the size of your palm (including the width of your palm). Try to roughly measure the size of your fist for mashed potatoes or stuffing, and if you're putting butter on your dinner roll, make sure that knob of butter isn't bigger than the size of your thumb. If you use these guidelines through the holidays, you won't feel uncomfortably full after every single meal.

2. Never Have 2 Bad Days in a Row

This is a goal I always give to my weight-loss clients. We're all human, so we're going to have days or moments when we fall off the wagon and don't eat how we planned to. That's perfectly okay—especially during the holidays. That's why I always advise you never let yourself have two "bad days" in a row. You had your fun at Thanksgiving. You ate your heart out at the dinner table. Be grateful you had all that delicious food, but when you wake up the next morning, don't approach your meals the same way you did the day before. Try to measure out your portions using the guidelines above, don't overeat, and refrain from snacking mindlessly throughout the day. This puts a stop to the snowball effect. In other words, you're not going to let yourself have a blowout for five days in a row—because that's how you end up gaining excess weight. You don't suddenly gain excess weight in a day, but you do if you keep up that habit for multiple days in a row.

3. Put Your Fork Down Between Each Bite

There's a lot going on at the dinner table during the holidays. Your wacky aunt is telling an inappropriate joke, your family members are fighting over something political, and you're trying to get a serving of garlic mashed potatoes before it runs out. There are many things to focus on and it can be sensory overload. Those are the moments when it's very easy to overeat, and you don't realize just how much you've eaten until you have a painful stomachache later and you have trouble going to the bathroom.

When we eat too fast, our body doesn't have time to catch up and tell us that we're overeating.

To prevent yourself from getting to that point, set down your fork in between each bite and really chew and savor your food. This allows you to focus on the most important thing at the table: the people around you. It also helps you listen to your body's cues of feeling full, which prevents you from overeating. One of the reasons we eat too much food in one sitting is because we eat it all too fast and our body doesn't have time to catch up and tell us that we're overeating. Prevent that by slowing down and taking your time with each bite.

4. Drink Lots of Water Throughout the Whole Day

You may be traveling during the holidays or hosting people in your home. Either of those will throw off your normal routine and make it easy for you to forget the basics, like drinking enough water every day. And when you're dehydrated, it's extremely easy to mistake thirst for hunger. You feel your stomach growling or you feel like your stomach is empty, and you end up digging into a huge plate of food. Next thing you know, you've eaten too much. This is normal, but it can easily be prevented by sipping water throughout the whole day, starting first thing in the morning. Keep yourself hydrated (even better if you add some sea salt to your water in order to help your body actually absorb the H20), and you'll have a much easier time managing your portions.

Closing Thoughts

Your holiday season should be one of joy, quality time with loved ones, and yummy food. You shouldn't stress about excessive weight gain to the point that it will ruin your Thanksgiving or Christmas, but you can certainly take some precautionary measures that will help you stay relatively healthy and prevent you from feeling horrible when the end of the year rolls around. But even if you don't stick to your own "rules" during the holidays, don't wake up the next morning and beat yourself up. You always get a new shot at taking control of your health each day the sun rises.