Think Before Indulging In Holiday Temptations

It’s not news that this is the season in which many people get fattened up for winter. But not everyone goes overboard at the buffet or around the dining room table at the family get-together.

Why is it that some people can look at the groaning board of holiday favorites and say, “Just one piece for me, thanks,” while others think “In for a dime, in for a dollar” and load up?

“Willpower is a funny thing to talk about,” says Mary Lou Klem, a senior research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine. Klem is one of the researchers with the school’s National Weight Control Registry, which tracks about 2,000 people who have managed to lose and keep off at least 30 pounds for more than a year.

“If there is such a thing as willpower,” she says, “it’s because these people have found ways to have fun but certainly in moderation. They don’t go into a situation unprepared to monitor what they eat.”

Consciousness, not a unique inner strength, is the key to keep from bingeing, agrees Dan Kirschenbaum, director of the Center For Behavioral Medicine in Chicago.

“Awareness is a critical element,” Kirschenbaum says. “The holidays bring in a whole slew of factors, high-risk situations that make us overeat.

“Being around family, being away from home, a change in routine,” he says, all contribute to the desire to indulge in foods that we may avoid the rest of the year.

And so does the desire to re-create scenes from childhood, when all that food - particularly special holiday recipes - invite a trip down memory lane through your mouth. The willpower some people demonstrate is really a matter of being able to mentally separate real hunger from a binge on Christmas cookies for old times’ sake, the experts say.

Those who maintain or even lose weight during the holidays are the ones who are “consistent self-monitors,” Kirschenbaum says. A study he helped lead, to be published next year in the journal Health Psychology, showed that the people with the most consistent level of weight loss during the holidays were those who agreed to an “intervention” by researchers. That meant not only keeping records of food intake and exercise, but also being subjected to daily mailings about watching weight and one to two phone calls a week during a two-month period encompassing Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

“We always talk about planning and focusing” with clients, Kirschenbaum says. Yet although some people manage to control their eating on Thanksgiving Day, “Christmas goes on and on” with office parties, family gatherings and year-end celebrations. “It’s a dramatically difficult time.”

“It’s very hard to be consciously on a diet during the holidays,” says Dr. Anne Becker of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center in Cambridge, Mass. “But it’s not the time to say you’re going to wait until Jan. 1 to control eating because you set yourself up for overindulgence.”

So think before you drink and dive into the dip. Make careful decisions around the holiday table, such as starting the event with a glass of water instead of wine or a cocktail, suggests Johanna Dwyer, a professor at the Schools of Medicine and Nutrition at Tufts University in Boston. It also helps to do some “anticipatory undereating,” she says; in other words, watch your food intake in the week leading up to a party.

Don’t starve yourself, Becker advises; real deprivation is only going to lead to overeating later. But keep full with moderate, low-fat and low-calorie meals beforehand that will let you sample some of your holiday favorites without throwing yourself face down in the eggnog.

And think of it this way: This won’t be the last chance for months to taste corn-bread dressing, scalloped oysters or fruitcake. What was a once- or twice-a-year treat when we were kids - because we were too young to cook - can be reproduced in the kitchen anytime we want, so don’t try to eat it all in one sitting.

You will see pumpkin pie again in your lifetime. It just doesn’t have to come back to haunt you.