But could there be something else going on that has nothing to do with how the food is prepared or the portion size you choose? Heck yeah. Is your diet diva going to tell you? Absolutely.

It’s called food “complexity” and “taste satiety.” Basically, you overeat at Thanksgiving because you are eating mindlessly. You’re not taking the time to intentionally slow down, serve yourself a small amount of food, and enjoy and savor each bite. If you did this, you’d get full well before you hit the 1,500 calorie mark, maybe even before hitting 1,000 calories.

When you have too many choices of foods, it’s hard for your taste buds to feel “satisfied.” They are unpacking all the tastes and flavors of the stuffing and then here comes a bite of potatoes and while they’re working on that they got a hit of turkey and cranberries. So as you pack on the calories the “taste satiety” signals stay low and you keep eating. You may even go for seconds because the brain is like “hey, I loooooooooooved that stuffing and I want more.” Meanwhile, you cleaned your first plate 15 minutes into the meal.

Now, I’m not advocating for boring Thanksgiving meals, but I do think it is possible to get all the pleasure and enjoyment out of Thanksgiving with healthy foods, eaten in the right portions. Remember that the holiday is about the people and the only thing that should be stuffed is the turkey.

If you want to try to overcome the “taste satiety” challenge, I’d suggest making sure there is a nice, healthy low-calorie green salad to include on your plate, take 3-4 ounces of turkey (no skin) and choose between mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and rolls. If you take small amounts of each, you might not get that “satisfied” feeling the tastebuds want. Don’t feel bad about passing on some of the items. There are always leftovers!

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Is Your Thanksgiving Buffet too Complex?

Manage Stress

Is it me or are most people pre-wired for high anxiety and the go-go-go mentality? Work pressures. The economy. Life drama. No matter what day it is, you can bet there’s something going on that is making your blood boil. You don’t see it, but it’s killing you.

Chronic stress is linked to six of the leading causes of death. The link between stress and diabetes is hormonal. Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is a stress hormone that increases with severe or prolonged stress. The main effect of the hormone is increased food intake, increased proportion of energy stored as fat, and decreased physical activity. Uh oh. If you read the post on preventing diabetes, you know that excess fat, especially in the belly area, significantly increases your diabetes risk.

Point well taken. So how the heck do you calm down? My quick tips for stress management are very basic.

1. Say “no.” Don’t put too much on your plate. The overcommitment increases stress levels, eats up valuable free time for nutrition and exercise, and frankly wears you out unnecessarily.
2. Just breath. When you feel the stress piling on, take five minutes and lie on your back in a quiet room only focusing on your breath. The drop in blood pressure also allows your crazed stress hormones to take a reprieve.
3. Sip on herbal tea. Teas like peppermint, ginger, or chamomile are very soothing and help you come down from that stress frazzle.

But there’s one more thing that can weigh down the risk for diabetes. Yes, sleep.

Sleep

Research shows that people who get less than six hours of sleep are 4.5 times more likely to have problems controlling their blood sugar – and that, my friends, leads to insulin resistance and eventually diabetes. What’s more, lack of sleep also throws your hungry/full hormones out of whack so when you don’t get sleep, you’re hormonally hungrier the next day thanks to higher levels of ghrelin (the “grow” hormone).

So, cheat yourself of sleep (maybe due to poor stress management) and now you’re hunger hormone is raging like a teenage boy at cheer camp. Of course you’re going to overeat and gain weight, which takes us back to our “top three” ways of preventing diabetes… eating healthy, exercising, and losing weight.

Behavior change starts with awareness. What can you do today to make yourself more aware of your behaviors?

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Sleep and Relax to Prevent Diabetes

Tryptophan, Serotonin and Melatonin

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid (protein building block the body cannot make). It is high in many protein rich foods, like turkey. Tryptophan helps build muscle like other amino acids, but it is also a specific precursor of serotonin. Nearly all serotonin is in the gut where it regulates GI movement, but about 20% is actually dispersed in the central nervous system (CNS) where it regulates mood, appetite, sleep, muscle contraction, and some cognitive functions including memory and learning. Some serotonin can become melatonin, which regulates your sleep/wake cycles.

Besides turkey, your starchy foods like rolls, potatoes and stuffing have something to do with the “food coma” that ensues. The insulin your pancreas releases after eating carbs does its job, which is partially to pull essential amino acids into muscle (yay for muscle building), but there is one lonely amino acid that doesn’t go into cells…  tryptophan. This amino acid didn’t get an invite to the party, and so left alone in the blood it increases serotonin levels and sleep eventually comes along.

Perhaps the real question is “Who cares? What’s wrong with enjoying a hearty meal with family and napping yourself into a more relaxed and carefree state, at least for a day?” If you ask me, we don’t really rest enough and enjoy our families as we should. Our inability to slow down does more to wreck our weight management hormones than one gut-busting, coma-inducing turkey dinner. Nevertheless, your best bet is balance. Strike a “happy middle” with the desire to enjoy food and the urge to overeat.

Here’s are some Turkey Day Eating Tips:

• Most meals are 1000+ calories per plate! So stick to one plate, and that’s it. Include some green vegetables on that plate. Take a little of everything that looks good and enjoy each bite. You shouldn’t need a fork lift to lift your fork!

• Start with a healthy breakfast – stay full with oatmeal made with cranberries and walnuts and have a morning snack of a handful of nuts and low-fat cheese. Try this recipe for Simple Mashed Cranberries.

• Don’t compete for the award for biggest plate and cleanest plate. Just enjoy the conversation and company. This is not about the food. It’s about people.

• Instead of seconds, have a cup of hot peppermint or ginger tea to aid in digestion and put off the dessert a couple hours.

• Make a “top crust” apple pie with thinly sliced apples. They bake crispy and people love the look and it has less guilt!

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How to Avoid the Thanksgiving Food Coma

These five tips involve slashing sugar, saturated and trans fats, and cutting back on calories so you can lose weight and better control your blood sugar levels.

1. Swap water for calorie beverages. Water has zero calories, that’s the bottom line. Used to sodas? Try sparkling water with a twist of lime. Need more flavor? Add some mint or unsweetened iced tea. I love using herbal teas! You’ll save 17 teaspoons of sugar for each 20-ounce soda.

2. Swap a coffee beverage with a small skim milk latte. A small pumpkin spice latte made with 2% milk has almost 40 grams of sugar (about 10 teaspoons – a day’s worth of added sugar), whereas a small, fat-free latte has only 16 grams sugar and that comes from the milk! If you would like, you can always “split the difference” and ask for one pump of pumpkin spice. That’s about 10 grams of added sugar – just under three teaspoons. Sure beats 10, doesn’t it?

3. Swap a hamburger with a portobello mushroom burger. If you’ve never had a grilled portobello mushroom you have no idea what you are missing. This large vegetable has a thick “meaty” texture. The saturated fat is no comparison. You’ll save grams of saturated fat.

4. Swap “partially hydrogenated” on packaged foods with whole or packaged foods without. If you can avoid packaged and fried foods altogether then you can avoid most of the world’s trans fat. That’s not realistic for a lot of people, so the next best thing is to cut down on the amount and frequency of those kinds of foods. Look at an ingredients list for the words “partially hydrogenated” and rethink your purchase. The good news is that most companies have taken it out of foods.

5. Swap full-fat cheese for lighter. I love cheese, but the saturated fat in that tiny thumb-sized portion is enough to make your arteries clog in sheer terror! OK, not exactly, but even so, just remember full-fat dairy products are mostly saturated fat. I like to use low-fat cottage cheese for a “most of the time” food. I also like the reduced-fat mozzarella and cheddar cheeses in the store. Up to 50% reduced fat of a good brand will slash the saturated fat in half, but you don’t notice a taste difference. I also like goat and feta cheese because they are strong. A little goes a long way and their “softness” means more water and guess what, less saturated fat per serving.

Hopefully you can choose at least one of these tips today to work on!

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Five Easy Food Swaps to Prevent Diabetes

So, wouldn’t it be great if you knew what you could do to control your diabetes, or better yet prevent diabetes, in the first place? Well, you’ve come to the right place. This blog post will describe the top three steps you can take to prevent or reverse type 2 diabetes.

1. Eat healthy

If you already have type 2 diabetes, then you have (hopefully) learned about the importance of keeping carbohydrates consistent throughout the day, meaning enjoying a small amount of healthy carbohydrates with each meal. Well, this also works in preventing type 2 diabetes.

I recommend people choose carbohydrates in the form of fresh or minimally processed starchy vegetables (like potatoes), fruits, beans (like lentils), and whole grains (like brown rice, quinoa, and corn) for their meals. Non-starchy veggies have such low carbs for the calories and they are almost 100% water that you don’t need to limit those.

Just watch how they are prepared. Steamed or broiled with herbs, spices or a little olive oil is best. Refined sources of carbohydrates should be limited as much as possible: sugar, white bread, white rice, etc. You don’t need to eliminate all foods with these ingredients, but try to make a healthier swap whenever possible and limit your portion sizes of these foods.

2. Exercise more

Exercise can help slow or prevent the progression of diabetes a number of ways. Exercise helps to maintain a healthy weight, lose weight, manage stress, and improve sleep (more on that next). Exercise also helps people manage a healthy blood sugar level whether you have diabetes or not.

When you exercise, you burn sugar for energy. Regular exercise also helps keep blood vessels healthy to prevent heart disease, which diabetics often get from damage to blood vessels. You don’t have to be a marathoner either. As little as 1,000 calories worth of activity spread throughout the week (walking 30 minutes and 20 minutes of strength training three times a week) causes your muscles to utilize sugar more effectively and keep it from floating around in your blood, which leads to diabetes.

3. Lose weight

Get a tape measure and take a waist measurement. Men, if you’ve got 40 or more inches around the waist you have 12 times the risk of developing diabetes than a male with 35 inches. Women, if you have 37 or more inches around the waist you are 12 times more likely to get diabetes than a female with 32.5 inches.

Eating healthy and exercising more are the best steps to losing weight. Get a trainer, dietitian, join a class, or buy a book/dvd… but do something to help yourself lose weight sensibly.

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Top Three Ways to Prevent Diabetes

That’s why I was thrilled to see this cute idea from the California Almond Board for easy portion control and portability.

The California Almond Board handed out these petite tins that hold 23 almonds – exactly a one-ounce serving. Now, don’t go counting out almonds every time before you eat them, but do it once so you can see how it fills your hand. Then think about how mindlessly eating high calorie food can totally sabotage your hard work.

Find a tin you can use (and reuse to be green) and start taking your nuts to-go in the right portion. Pair this high energy snack with an ounce of reduced fat cheese for a snack that is sure to leave you satisfied.

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Food Finds: California Almonds Snack Packs

Watch my video for more tips and recipe ideas with these whole wheat, 100 calorie tortillas.

I love these tortillas because you can keep them in your desk at work and use them for quick meals and snacks. For example, next time you get a salad for lunch, wrap this tortillas around it so you can get some healthy, whole grain carbs. If you need a pre-exercise snack, you can have a tortilla with some peanut butter and jelly.

You could also make:

Healthy Tuna Salad Wraps

Twice Grilled Chicken Fajitas

Biggest Loser Breakfast Burrito

Black Bean Mushroom Quesadillas

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Food Finds: 100 Calorie Tortillas from La Tortilla Factory

A one-ounce serving of 50% reduced fat sharp cheddar has 8 grams of protein and only 2.5 grams of saturated fat. If you don’t know what an ounce of cheese looks like, give me a “thumbs up” and there you have it, it’s about the size of your thumb.

This reduced fat cheese makes a healthy snack between meals. Pair it with a handful of nuts like almonds or pistachios as an afternoon snack instead of hitting up the vending machine. You’ll be sure to be satisfied.

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Food Finds: Cabot Reduced-Fat Sharp Cheddar Cheese

Watch my video review of the small Coke cans and another new product, Sprite Green, sweetened naturally with Truvia, the sweetener made from the Stevia plant. Sprite Green has 70 calories in 12 ounces.

If you are someone who is trying to lose weight and know you are drinking too many liquid calorie beverages, this may be just the solution you need to help cut back. These may also be a good idea for parents who don’t want to give their kids artificial sweeteners or a “big soda.” They will be sold in packs of eight at grocery stores nationwide.

I think this is a step in the right direction. When you are trying to lose weight, you need to nourish yourself, and too many sweetened beverages get in the way of getting healthy foods that fuel your body. Cutting portions and calories are important strategies. So now you have no excuse. If you love your sodas, get the smaller cans, sip, and save calories.

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Food Finds: Sprite Green and Mini Cokes

Next Best Thing to Being There

We can’t all be at The Biggest Loser Ranch. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have the same transformations. Just look at Jerry Hayes from Season 7, the at-home winner barely had any time on the ranch and he still lost hundreds! Cheryl Forberg explains the Biggest Loser eating plan in a nutshell, how to determine your calorie needs to lose weight, and the best ways of cooking food to keep nutrients high and calories low.

Simple, Sensible, and Smart Changes

Life is hard. Being healthy shouldn’t have to be. Cheryl takes the struggle out of it by explaining the role of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in the body. She explains the best food sources of these nutrients and then goes on to provide simple tips for getting more of “the good stuff.”

For example, swap white rice for lentils to get 10 grams of protein in a half-cup. What’s more, she even gives a killer recipe! Who needs drive-through windows and meal delivery plans when you can have culinary creations from Cheryl, and even a few recipes from former cast members? Try the huevos rancheros and quinoa with spinach and cheese. mmmMMMmmm

Like Having Five Books in One

From estimating portion sizes to understanding nutrition labels to using a hunger scale to curb emotional eating, Cheryl provides exactly what you need to initiate a weight loss trend and continue watching those numbers fall without any gimmicks or empty promises. I literally could replace my top-five nutrition books with this one and be happy. It has everything you need and nothing you don’t.

But perhaps what I like best are the inspirational and honest stories from the former contestants. They’ve been there. They’ve changed. So can you.

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Biggest Loser Simple Swaps Book Review