Let’s face it, mashed potatoes are good, stuffing is good, and some people even feel Tofurky is good. The point is Thanksgiving is full of decadent indulgences and an excess of calories. A common practice is to offset this giant meal by not eating anything for the rest of the day. I’m here to tell you that is absolutely wrong, so don’t do it.
From a science standpoint, when you don’t eat your blood sugar drops and your body goes into a starvation mode. Then when you finally introduce food your blood sugar is going to shoot through the roof turning your body into a fat storing machine. So, not only are you eating an extraordinary number of calories you have just ensured that virtually all of it will be stored as fat.
From a physical standpoint if you don’t eat you will be freaking hungry. I’m even going to go into how hunger leads to crankiness which is then combined with your family ultimately leading to an explosion. What I am going to go into is that when you actually do eat you are going to literally shovel the food into your mouth. It will bypass your taste buds and go directly to feeling uncomfortably full. So now you are on the couch feeling nauseous and you didn’t even really taste all of your favorite foods.
So what do you do? Eat breakfast, and if you are an evening Thanksgiving kind of family I would eat a light lunch too. Your breakfast should be protein based because that will keep you full much longer with not as many calories. An example of this would be egg whites with some veggies and/or salsa. If you are anti-egg go for a soy protein based breakfast. If both of those sound gross e-mail me and I’ll give you other ideas.
Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday full of family, fun and food. Start your day off right so you can enjoy every bite!
