Dietitian Shares 4 Simple Tips to Avoid Thanksgiving Weight Gain

1 | Proactively boost your metabolism.

Hennigan's first suggestion is to boost metabolism, which she says can create “a little bit more of a calorie cushion” when you're surrounded by higher-calorie holiday foods. To do this, she suggests significantly increasing your protein intake.

“Protein is the most difficult macronutrient for our body to digest, which means that every 100 calories we eat of protein, 30 of those calories go towards just digesting that protein,” she explains. “So if your diet is higher in protein, then you are going to be expending additional calories, therefore giving you a little bit more of a cushion.”

2 | Increase your step count.

It’s not just overeating that can upend your healthy routines during Thanksgiving: Travel, meal preparation, and social obligations can also make it easy to skip physical activity. However, Hennigan says you can still stay on top of it by increasing your step count or just aiming to be a bit more active.

“I do this to take advantage of the ‘NEAT’ part of your metabolism, which stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is all the activity you do in a day that isn’t dedicated exercise,” she says.

She adds that “NEAT” is the most flexible part of the metabolism.

“So just by trying to be a little more active in a day, you can increase your calorie burn by an additional 100, 200, 300, 400 calories in a day without having to do dedicated exercise or going to the gym or ‘getting all sweaty’ exercise,” she says.

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3 | Limit your indulgence to just one day.

There are a few days of the year when indulgent eating is as prevalent as it is on Thanksgiving. But the fact that it takes place on a Thursday can sometimes cause a weekend-long slide. That’s why Hennigan suggests treating the proper holidays like holidays and the following days like normal days.

“Honestly, if you consume a lot of calories on a day like Thanksgiving, that’s really not going to make or break your progress all that much,” she says. “But if you turn Thanksgiving into Thanksgiving weekend, and you’re acting exactly like you did on Thanksgiving for all of those other days, that can definitely deteriorate some progress.”

Instead of extending the celebration, she suggests waking up on Friday morning and trying to get back to normal. “Whether you want to include some of those Thanksgiving leftovers in there, that’s totally fine, but do it in a balanced way,” she suggests.

4 | Take advantage of the “doorway effect.”

It’s common to feel a little out of control around food during the holidays. Fortunately, there’s one trick to combating this feeling.

“If you’re walking around your house cleaning up and you walk into another room and you’re like ‘What the heck was I just doing?’ that’s the ‘doorway effect,’” Hennigan says.

She explains that this is a psychological phenomenon where “your brain kind of goes through a little mini reset when you cross through a threshold” or enter from room to room. While this typically causes that frustrating scenario where you can’t recall why you walked across the house, it can also work to your advantage in avoiding Thanksgiving feast-induced weight gain.

“If you are someone who feels very out of control around these holiday foods and you’re kind of feeling that pressure, go to another room,” she suggests. “If you’re sitting at the table, get up and run to the restroom really quickly, take a couple of deep breaths, and come back. I guarantee you that pressure will at least be lessened, if not gone completely. It will then be so much easier to follow your body’s cues and not overeat.”