Sticking to your Weight Loss Goals at Thanksgiving

If you’re facing your first Thanksgiving dinner after a sleeve gastrectomy, you may be concerned about the effect that mountains of food will have on your diet. After you have surgery for weight loss, the rest of your family, unfortunately, is likely to continue eating the same way they always have.

To stick to your goals at Thanksgiving, make sure to have food you can eat readily available. If you’re traveling from North Miami to relatives in another area, bring food with you so you can resist the plate of cookies your mom shoves at you the minute you walk through the door. If you don’t have food with you to eat immediately, it’s much harder to resists the goodies.

On Thanksgiving itself, sticking to your diet is all about portion control. If the dinner table is covered with different side dishes, put just a taste of each on your plate, so that no one is offended that you didn’t eat their offering. Fill the majority of your plate with foods you can eat, so no one asks why you’re not eating.

Certain foods at Thanksgiving may be trigger foods for you. If you know that you can’t stop at one mouthful of mom’s turkey dressing, you might be better off not to eat any of it. This takes incredible willpower and a good supply of foods you do like and can eat.

You may want to skip sugar-laden desserts altogether. Packing your own dessert substitutes so you can indulge in sugar-free pudding while the rest of the family eats pumpkin pie decreases your feelings of being deprived.

Thanksgiving with a sleeve gastrectomy takes advance planning. You don’t have to skip all your favorites, but choose only those that won’t cause gastrointestinal problems, and will keep you on track towards you weight loss goal.