Healthy Eating for the Holidays
How to knock out the fat from your holiday meals
Everyone knows the holidays are just about the worst time of year for your waistline. Between big family meals, office parties and an almost constant stream of sweets and treats, it’s hard to stay healthy during the holidays. Rather than eating rice cakes while everyone else around you is feasting on a great meal, the real trick is to make your holiday meals as healthy as possible without sacrificing tradition and taste.
So how do you make holiday meals healthy—or at least healthier? The first step is to take a look at your holiday meal plan, right down to the ingredient list for each recipe, to see where you can make changes to make it healthier. Instead of the fattening butter called for in most recipes, find a healthier alternative like substituting extra virgin olive oil when you can, or cooking whatever the food is on nonstick surface that’s good enough to prevent sticking and tearing without the oil and butter. A few tablespoons of butter here and there throughout your meal plan can really add up and pack on the calories, so find the places you can cut it out to start making your meals healthier.
On the subject of substituting ingredients, also look at the other ingredients in each recipe as you look for the butter to cut out. Particularly if you’re using old family recipes, it’s a pretty safe bet that they weren’t made to be healthy. Often, you can find ingredients that would be healthier but still provide the same taste. Also, always use fresh ingredients in your food to ensure you’re getting the most nutritious meal possible.
Of course, not every recipe can be made healthy without changing the taste and you don’t want to ruin a great dish that’s a family favorite trying to make it healthy. For those recipes that you absolutely can’t change, leave them alone—not everything at the table has to be a healthy dish, as long as the meal overall maintains a healthy balance. This is the great thing about looking at the full meal plan as a whole, because you can make changes for the better without bringing the quality of the whole meal down.
Once you’ve made adjustments to the meal plan to cut out what isn’t healthy, take a look to see where you can add things that are. Side dishes are a great place to start looking for ways to add in healthier alternatives to your traditional holiday fare. Instead of a relish tray, why not make a fresh vegetable platter? Instead of canned vegetables, why not steam as assortment of fresh vegetables to use as your veggie side dish? Along with your holiday pie, why not serve a side of fresh berries? By adding these healthy alternatives, you’re giving you and your family options that fit with the meal without making it seem like a diet.
Of course, your George Foreman Healthy Cooking products are perfect for helping make holiday dishes healthier, because that’s what they’re designed to do. You can steam vegetables, make a specialty rice pilaf as an alternative to your standard mashed potatoes and even knock out the fat on a meat or vegetarian alternative to you main course. The other great thing about these alternatives that use your George Foreman products is that it frees up your larger appliances for those big meal dishes that you’re cooking.
By making small changes to your holiday meals here and there, you can see a big reduction in the amount of post-holiday food guilt you have once we hit the New Year. You can knock the fat out of your holiday meals in a smart way, so your family’s palates and their waistlines can have a happy holiday season at the same time.
