Nutrition by Dawn - Blog

It’s the most delicious time of year: the holiday season! From Thanksgiving to the New Year, great scents are in the air and yummy food is all around us. If you’re sticking with your goals through the end of the year, the smell of all that food can sometimes feel like an obstacle to overcome. Today, I’m here to tell you why it shouldn’t be. 

My biggest advice to any of my clients is to live a life they love without any regrets. You may feel regretful if you find yourself binging, and it’s also important to remember that you’re going to regret it if you constantly restrict yourself, too. 

US Thanksgiving just passed, so if you celebrated, you had to make a choice. Did you decide to restrict yourself totally? Did you eat all day and live off of leftover pie for the next week? Or did you find some place in the middle?

Sometimes, we turn our holidays into full weeks, but any holiday is really just one dinner, and you should allow yourself to enjoy every bite of it, from appetizers to dessert. 

You only have this one life to live. I want you to enjoy it fully, and that means enjoying great food. 

With that being said, we don’t have to turn every celebration into a week or month long event. Personally, I enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, but I stuck to my usual plan the rest of the day, and had a healthy breakfast and healthy snacks leading up to dinner time, so I wasn’t restricting myself with the plan to eventually binge. When Thanksgiving was over, I went back to eating the kind of food that really fuels my body and my brain; I didn't survive on leftovers through the next week. 

Life is all about balance, and if you go too far in one direction or another, you’re almost guaranteed to have regrets. Yes, of course it’s true that you shouldn’t binge eat until you feel sick, but you’ll also regret it if you sit on the sidelines and let great food pass you by in favor of grilled chicken salads for every meal. 

The best advice I can give you is to remember your health goals and make healthy choices when you can. But when you’re celebrating and enjoying all that life has to offer, sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to simply enjoy it and eat the pie. 

What was your favorite dish on your table at Thanksgiving? What holiday meal are you looking forward to next? Let me know in the comments!

And if you need some inspiration for healthy living, please join me in my Facebook group Never Diet Again for a great community filled with yummy discussion!