Sleep Does a Body Good
Getting seven hours of sleep per night helps keep you from turning to food—especially carbohydrates—for comfort. This will also promote muscle growth. Therefore, you should stay away from habits that interrupt sound sleep, like drinking too much alcohol and eating within three hours of bedtime.
Holiday Cooking...Tasty and Healthier
Cooking healthier meals for the holidays doesn't mean that your family will have to sacrifice flavor. Dr. Oz recommends a few ways that you can add good nutritional ideas to classic dishes.
Reduce the amount of butter and use pecans as a substitute to flavor some foods. Mix in chopped fruits or herbs—add fresh cranberries to roll recipes, stir raisins into stuffing mixes, and whip crushed garlic into mashed potatoes.
Spicy food can help reduce your appetite, so add ingredients like cinnamon and red pepper flakes to old favorites.
Cut the saturated fat in your meal by skimming the fat off the top of gravy, flavoring squash with pineapple juice instead of butter, replacing sour cream dips with hummus, and eating turkey's light meat rather than its richer dark meat.
Adjust Your Party Plan
With the spread of delicious treats and flowing alcohol, it can be especially hard to monitor your waist at the multitude of holiday parties you'll attend this season. For these parties, Dr. Oz says you really have to focus on adjusting your behavior.
Prepare before you leave. Eating some nuts 30 minutes before heading to a party will cut down your appetite.
When you arrive, always have one hand free to greet others. This is both good manners and will keep you from two-fisted eating or having wine in one hand and food in the other.
Alternate drinking glasses of alcohol with water to dilute the effects of lowered inhibitions. Or, if you're at a dinner party, have drinks only after dinner for dessert.
When Snacks Attack
One difficult part of watching your waist during the holidays is all of the time you spend with snacks nearby.
To reduce the impulse to mindlessly munch, buy walnuts in the shell. The time it takes to shell a single serving—roughly one ounce or about 14 halves—may help you avoid overeating.
Dr. Oz also recommends keeping mint breath strips around. They can satisfy the desire to taste and satisfy your brain's craving center.
