Shawn Phillips | Start Strong Monday

With Thanksgiving a few days away I was thinking about the sort of wisdom I could impart this Monday that would be timely, relevant and add value to your life.

The first thing that jumped out was a new study that suggests the more you eat, the more you eat.

Thanksgiving on

The study published in the Journal Cell last month focuses on how overeating impacts the hypothalamus–your metabolic command center–stimulating cravings to eat more and creating a vicious cycle of calorie consumption that can lead to obesity, diabetes and insulin resistance–for starters.

Interesting at first. Seemingly relevant to the holiday but the more I looked at this science the less relevant it became.

My inner critic was saying, “So… You’re saying that the more I overeat, the more I’m inclined to overeat? Reeeeaaaaally.”

In my continued search for holiday fitness wisdom I happened across quite a number of Thanksgiving diet tips and tricks, culminating in Thanksgiving diet quiz on the Today show that my cat scored 90 percent on.

The sort offerings I found included such perennial life wisdom as:

• White meat is leaner than dark meat
• Pigs in the blanket are lower calorie than crackers and cheese
• Eat all your vegetables first
• Eat your pie but not the crust
• Cut back on the bread and butter

The more I witnessed the onslaught holiday dieting idioms the more clear I became that I don’t want to be involved. It trivializes something much more important. Telling people to “diet” for Thanksgiving is a little like screaming “duck” when you see the A-bomb coming. Nothing wrong with the intention but let’s face it, it’s a little too late to do anything about it.

About the only good coming from the heaping helpings of turkey day diet trivia is that it’s making me nauseous. I take no joy in seeing a holiday celebration become an excuse to widdle away at our freedom and besiege us with uninvited diet advice.

So, when it comes to slinging the turkey day trivia, using the holiday to slip in some public service messages, you-can-count-me-out.

My take is quite simple. Thanksgiving is a holiday—it’s one single day. And while I agree that most people overeat on this day; and that they would feel better and it might be helpful for them to eat less, in the big scheme of things it just doesn’t matter.

If you’re eating yourself out of house and home 364 days a year, incorporating some diet tricks to help push away from the table for thanksgiving is as pointless as teaching Charlie Manson table manners.

Thanksgiving is one single day. It’s not going to make or break you. How you’re living the other 364 days—also known as your lifestyle—is. A day is a day—it’ll be over too soon. Likewise, a diet begins and ends. It’s your lifestyle, the way you’re “being” the other 364 days a year that is screaming for your focus.

If you’re living your life at full strength, enjoying nutritional freedom and a naturally active lifestyle that embraces fitness or as I detail in my book, you’ve stopped doing fitness and are simply being fit, the last thing you want or need on Thanksgiving is dime store diet advice.

You may choose to eat less than you might have in the past but not out of discipline or with restraint. It will be your choice—an easy one. After a hearty dinner, you may choose to enjoy a walk or do something active with your family. Perhaps you’ll all play Twister, go Wii bowling or play some Guitar Hero with Grandma. Whatever works.

As for the copious diet tips take what you want and leave the rest. For even for their lack of remarkable, there’s no harm in stating the obvious. It’s always wiser to eat half a stick of butter rather than a whole stick and it may ever be helpful to solar cook your turkey (this I can’t say for sure). Just know that none of this is an antidote to your lifestyle—the person you are being the other 364 days.

In the interest of leveraging this day of gratitude that is Thanksgiving to support your freedom for those 364 other days, I leave you today with three original nutritional wisdom tips. You’ll find them together in one PDF document if you follow the link below and you’ll also see each is individually recorded for your listening pleasure.

Also, note the final word before you go, below.

<< Click Image to Download >>

Tip #1 : Indulge in the Light

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[41 sec.]

Tip #2 : How to Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

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[39 sec.]

Tip #3 : BaseCamp Bookends

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[49 sec.]

One last thought for you on this holiday…
For all the food and fun aside, this is a day of giving thanks, of expressing gratitude for the abundance we are so blessed to enjoy. Especially in these challenging times, there’s nothing that can be more elevating to your being than the silent, selfless expression of gratitude.

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[14 sec.]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.7MB)