57. Savoring the Season: Mastering Holiday Leftovers Without Overindulgence

In this episode of Weight Loss Made Simple, Dr. Stacy Heimburger tackles the common challenge of holiday leftovers. Discover effective strategies to manage those tempting dishes without sabotaging your weight loss goals. Learn how nostalgia influences our eating habits, the importance of mindful portion control, and creative ways to repurpose holiday meals into healthier options. Join Dr. Heimburger as she shares practical tips for creating a leftover plan that helps you savor your favorite foods while staying aligned with your wellness journey. Tune in to learn how to enjoy the season mindfully and avoid the pitfalls of overindulgence!

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.

Transcript

Do you find yourself battling the temptation of leftover turkey, stuffing, all the side dishes, and all of those desserts? Well, you’re not alone! As we get into this holiday season, a lot of us struggle with all those festive foods lingering around. So, I want to talk about some strategies for managing these holiday leftovers and enjoying them mindfully without overindulging.

Welcome back! I’m Dr. Stacy Heimburger, and this is Weight Loss Made Simple. I want to tackle this challenge that many of us face during the holiday season: the idea of leftovers. We often think of holiday eating as being confined to one day, like Thanksgiving. But there are so many leftovers, and they’re super tempting!

We love these foods, and we remember sitting and eating with our family, which creates emotional connections to the food. The smells of our favorite foods can trigger overeating, especially when we’re surrounded by those familiar flavors and scents. It’s very easy to overindulge without realizing it. I think we can all relate to that—who hasn’t overindulged because of Grandma’s stuffing, which we’ve had for years?

The first strategy is to recognize and be aware that maybe some of our hunger for these foods is really just the nostalgia attached to them. So, awareness is key. We can also try to be mindful about portion sizes on the day of the meal and with our leftovers too.

I don’t know if any of you have ever tried the trick of using a smaller plate, but it really does help! Especially if you don’t like your food touching. Lots of people don’t, so there’s no judgment here! If we don’t like our food mingling and all their juices running together, a smaller plate can really help manage portion sizes and reduce food intake.

So, let’s say we’re sitting at the table, and we know we love Grandma’s stuffing. We’re going to take a small serving of stuffing and be super mindful when we eat that small serving. Let’s try not to be distracted and really enjoy every bite. So far, we’ve got awareness and mindfulness.

The other strategy is to consider substituting some of your nostalgic recipes for something a little bit healthier. I can tell you my sister tried to do this one year, and people thought we were asking them to put barely dead roadkill on the buffet! But we did it anyway, and we had a mix of unhealthy and healthy options, and people were willing to accept it.

Now, can we repurpose those leftovers into a healthier meal? Instead of just eating turkey and stuffing again the next night, we could make turkey soup or put those veggies on a salad. Let’s focus on healthy alternatives for those holiday meals!

The idea I love is creating a leftover plan. If we have a plan for our leftovers, things tend to go a little bit better. What are some plans we could have? If you’re hosting, you could have leftover containers ready and make sure everyone gets a container to take home, reducing the amount of leftovers left for you to deal with. We could freeze those leftover containers into dinner-sized portions, using clear containers so that if we’re keeping a bunch of leftovers in the fridge, we can at least see what we’ve got.

When I’m hosting, I need to be aware of the nostalgic foods and watch my portion control. Can I be mindful when I eat those nostalgic foods?

I’ll give you an example: we make a potato soufflé in my family, and I’ve sweetened it with bananas instead of all the sugar. It’s delicious! But it still has a lot of sugar and butter. I used bananas instead of sugar and coconut oil for the topping instead of butter. It turned out really well!

So, can we take something we love, a family staple, and try it with a little less sugar or make some healthy substitutions? Maybe we don’t have to change the entire dish to something unrecognizable, but we can just make it a little healthier.

It reminds me of Corrinne Crabtree, who does NO BS weight loss. She always asks “Can I just … ?” Can I just tweak it a little? Can I use half the sugar and see if it’s still good? Can I modify it a little bit?

Can I get rid of leftovers? Can I give all the food away? Can I take a small portion of leftovers from someone else’s house if I’m not hosting?

There are lots of tips here that allow us to savor the season and enjoy food in a way that fits our plan while managing the leftovers to align with our goals. We can always set up a new nostalgia for some new foods that are a little bit better.

So, we’re going to plan, be aware, try to use portion control, and be mindful while eating foods that we truly enjoy. We can make healthy swaps where we can. Just be aware that nostalgia might make you eat a little bit more, so being prepared for that and using some tactics, like smaller portions, can help counteract that urge.

I would really love to hear if you have ways to make your family favorites healthier. If you’re not in the Facebook group, please join and share some recipes! I’ll be sharing mine, and I’d love to hear about traditions you have for a healthier Thanksgiving. Let me know if you’ve created a leftover plan or have tips to share. I’ve heard many people say that they find these strategies helpful, and I’d love to know if any of these suggestions worked for you.

Let’s try to keep Thanksgiving a day or two long instead of extending it into a week of just eating leftovers!

All right, I hope this is helpful. Please get into that Facebook group or send me an email to let me know if any of these strategies worked for you. Until next time, take care, and I’ll talk to you next week!