Dear Wrestlers and Family Members,
We would like to wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving. Here are a few tips to help you stay on track with your nutrition plan during the holidays.
1) Follow your regular plan up until your Thanksgiving meal. That means: eat breakfast, your morning snack, and lunch of the lowest calorie day in your plan.
2) For appetizers, choose vegetables and dip over higher calorie foods. Low fat chips and salsa are good as well as some low fat cheese for appetizers.
3) 2 hours before your Thanksgiving meal, do some kind of aerobic exercise for 30 minutes. Some options can be a short run, jumping rope, throwing a football, jumping jacks, even play tag or football with your family or friends. The goal is to get your heart rate up to about 160 for 20 minutes to burn some calories, not to sweat off weight.
4) 30 minutes before everyone is going to eat: eat either a bowl of salad or a plate of vegetables. That will fill you up a little, so you eat less of the higher calorie and higher fat foods.
5) Use a smaller plate for dinner. A full plate helps you feel satisfied, and a smaller plate gives you the full plate feeling with a little less food.
6) Eat a lot of vegetables, a lot of turkey, and a little bit of everything else.
7) Save your desert for a later snack. Try to choose fruit over pie and cake, or have some fruit and a smaller piece of cake or pie.
8) If you eat early and want a snack later, consider a sugar free jell-o. If you want to have some leftovers, eat more meat and vegetables, and less of potatoes, stuffing, and rolls.
9) Stay hydrated. Make sure you are drinking your full amount of water, and even a little more. Many Thanksgiving foods have a high salt content the water will help drive this out of your body. Being hydrated will help you feel more full as well.
Don’t be upset if your weight is up a little the next day; that is to be expected. Just get back on your plan, and add some extra cardio to burn some more calories over the next few days.
Any questions, problems or concerns, don’t hesitate to call / text / or email. We are here to help you at all times. And it’s never to late to start a weight loss or management program; we can help you make weight more easily, recover from workouts faster and compete harder. Contact us for more information!
- Turkey will deliver you about 20 g of protein and is also low in carbs and fats. Besides a nice dose of protein, turkey also provides good sources of vitamin B6, B12, and minerals iron, phosphorus, potassium, zinc and selenium.
- If your Thanksgiving Meal consisted of Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, a dinner roll, cranberry sauce, green beans and a slice of pumpkin pie you would need to run between 13-15 miles to burn off all of the calories.
- While it Is true that tryptophan makes people drowsy, turkey doesn’t contain enough of it to be the cause of post-feast sleepiness. There is a sufficient amount of energy producing protein and iron in turkey to negate any effects of tryptophan. The real reason people feel sleepy after dinner is because of overeating. The more you eat, the more blood that has to travel to the digestive system to help process the food, which takes blood away from the brain and other extremities.
