There has been plenty of discussion of the HCG diet and its effectiveness, but even the best diet can be hard to maintain over the holidays. Communal eating is a holiday tradition. It is quite common for meals and snacks to be served almost constantly on Christmas Day or Thanksgiving Day. With all of this food and everybody eating, trying to maintain a strict regiment like the HCG diet, or just about any other diet, requires, is a recipe for completely falling off the wagon. Instead, a better solution is to temporarily ignore diets and instead trick your brain into not overeating.
There are numerous effective ways that you can trick your brain to avoid overeating. Some involve convincing yourself that you aren’t hungry while others involve paying closer attention to the triggers that cause you to overeat. The following tricks are those that are particularly effective during the holiday seasons.
Cutting Back on Snacking
The biggest threat to your waistline is that tray of crackers, cheese, and cookies that your nice old Aunt Betty always places in the living room. She means best, but it is absolutely devastating to your diet. In a perfect world you would ignore it completely, but watching other people eat simply isn’t any fun. There are a few things you can do to help yourself. First, if one of those bowls or trays has fruit on it, commit to only eating from the fruit options. If this isn’t the case, size up the tray and determine how much you think would be reasonable for you to eat from alone. This will likely be about 20% – 25% for something the size of a dinner plate. Then, mentally tell yourself to stop eating when that much is gone. The trick here is that it is a communal plate or tray. Others are gnoshing from it, too. Even if you go a little past your limit, you will still have eaten much less than you intended.
Soda, Fruit Punch, and Alcohol, Oh My
Holiday drinks are major threat for gaining weight. They tend to be filled with sugar. Even the cup of coffee that you drink with dessert usually has lots of calories. There is a simple solution to this. Find the biggest glass you can and fill it water at the start of the day. Don’t drink anything else until you have finished it. Even when others are drinking punch, your brain will register that you are drinking and won’t push you to change drinks. Also, filling your stomach will help you resist the urge to chew on food as well.
That Wonderful Full Feeling
One of the reasons that you overeat is your brain loves that feeling of drowsiness you get when you have eaten way more than you should. It is literally a chemical addiction. You’ve probably noticed that when you are tired like that for other reasons, your appetite decreases. If you want to cut back on the amount of ham or turkey you ingest, spend an hour in a hot tub or get a full body massage shortly before dinner. A strenuous bike ride, walk, or jog should similarly give you that feeling. An even body fatigue will truly help convince your brain that you are already well fed.
