Healthy Holiday Eating Strategies to Support Your Heart
Introduction
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As the fall season is now well underway here in the Midwest, people are already starting to think about the upcoming holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas. For many of us, holidays often include gatherings with family and friends, as well as a varied assortment of holiday foods and beverages.
Although these gatherings are often an enjoyable part of the holidays, they can also pose challenges for people who are trying to manage their health. For someone with abnormal cholesterol levels and/or heart disease, the foods available at these gatherings may often be far different from what is usually consumed at home.
As the holidays get closer, you may be feeling a little trepidation about how you’ll manage your food choices at multiple events and gatherings. But although there are challenges, enjoying holiday gatherings doesn’t have to seem almost impossible.
In this post, we’ll discuss some tips for managing holiday parties and gatherings when you have heart disease and/or abnormal cholesterol levels.
Quick disclaimer—although I am a registered dietitian nutritionist, your reading of this or any articles on this website does not constitute medical nutrition therapy advice nor create a practitioner-client relationship. The information I provide here on this website is for educational and informational purposes only. Please see my full disclaimer for more information.
Planning Ahead
One of the frequently mentioned strategies for enjoying social events is that of planning ahead. Although it may seem counterintuitive, doing a little planning can often help you enjoy events more while managing what and how you’re eating to support your heart health.
Although you likely won’t be able to plan for every possible scenario, there are a few ways you could manage various situations.
If you’re heading to a catered event and have access to the menu, scan it over to see what items might be more heart-healthy (more on this later), and take note of a few options you feel would be wiser choices you could enjoy.
If you’re attending more of a family gathering with no menu access, think back to trends from the past, or ask the host for information on what will likely be available at the gathering.
If the meal will be served at a time when you typically don’t eat, you could consider adjusting your meal schedule a bit. Examples include: adding in a smaller snack if your meal is a later lunch or dinner, or making sure that you’re eating at least every 4-5 hours during the day to avoid becoming overly hungry and end up overeating at the event.
Also consider planning to use “the plate method,” which can be a helpful way to manage your portions and overall meal balance. You can aim for a rough breakdown of about 1/2 non-starchy vegetables, 1/4 starchy vegetables or grain products, and 1/4 protein on your plate. This method can also support blood sugar management.
Making Heart-Healthy Swaps
Since we’ve discussed planning ahead and structuring a balanced plate, let’s move on to the actual composition of the foods on a balanced plate. To support your heart and cholesterol levels, I would encourage you to make as many nutritious choices as possible during each event, and then save room for 1 or 2 smaller treats to enjoy.
Depending on the nature of the event, you may or may not have control over which foods you’re served. But if you do have some choice over what goes on your plate, consider focusing on a few things.
First, when it comes to protein sources, try to choose ones that are more simply prepared. For example, avoid breaded or fried or heavily sauced proteins, and instead choose more lightly sautéed, grilled, or lightly glazed proteins.
Second, try to choose the leanest protein option(s) available as opposed to options that tend to be higher in fat, such as ribs or well marbled steaks. But if your options are limited, at least take the skin off your poultry before eating it and cut off the fatty rim from steaks or pork chops as much as you can.
Third, aim to choose fat sources that will better support your heart. For example, avoid creamier salads, salad dressings, gravies, and butter-cooked dishes. If you have the option to use oil and vinegar for a dressing, or add avocado as a sandwich topping, or sprinkle nuts on a salad, do that instead.
Fourth, try to keep foods higher in added sugars (think desserts, pastries, candies) to a minimum as much as possible. Consider having fruit (if available) as part of your dessert to cut down on how much added sugar you’re having.
By using some of these tips, you’ll reduce your saturated fat and added sugar intake. Keeping saturated fat and added sugars as a smaller part of your eating pattern helps manage LDL (“bad cholesterol”) levels and maintain heart and vascular health.1
Navigating Buffets and Potlucks
The next strategy on our list is wisely managing buffets and potlucks. As delicious as the numerous available options there can be, overdoing it in these types of situations may not be most helpful for your heart.
When you know you’ll be at a buffet or in a similar environment, acknowledge that it’s going to be challenging. But try to keep in mind how you’d like to feel afterward in terms of your energy and fullness levels, and allow that reminder to help moderate what you choose.
One tip I’ve heard from many dietitians and that I often share with my patients is to look over the available options before you start adding foods to your plate. Knowing what’s available can help you key in on some items you might really want to enjoy versus others that you wouldn’t enjoy as much. Try to prioritize items you’re really looking forward to eating and go from there.
Another tip that may help is to have a stronger focus on vegetables, as alluded to in an earlier section of this post about the breakdown of your plate. Vegetables (depending on how they are prepared–avoid extremely creamy or fried versions) may fill you up faster because of their fiber and water content. You may find that you eat less of other items if you add more vegetables to your plate.
A last tip for this section is to consider bringing a heart-healthy dish of your own if the gathering allows for it. Depending on what you bring, you could allot a greater area for it on your plate and have less of other foods that might not be as heart-healthy.
Practicing Mindfulness/Enjoyment
A fourth important strategy for managing how much you’re eating is mindfully approaching each holiday meal as much as you can depending on the environment you’re in.
A recommendation I’m frequently providing my patients with is to work on chewing thoroughness and lengthening meal timing. Believe it or not, it’s an underestimated method for managing hunger and fullness signals and supporting a healthier digestive process.
During a meal, it takes some time before the stomach and the brain “talk” to each other to signal fullness. If you’re eating quickly and not chewing thoroughly, before you know it you may become uncomfortably full. Slowing down and taking longer to finish your plate can help reduce that discomfort from extreme fullness.
So how do you do this? Start practicing days and/or meals before the event by chewing your food as close to applesauce texture as you can for as many bites as you can. This definitely slows you down!
If chewing like this at all meals feels overwhelming, start with one meal a few times a week and work up from there. The more you practice thorough chewing, the higher the likelihood that your stomach will thank you during the holidays!
Another part of mindfulness at meals is taking a moment to enjoy the visual array of foods on your plate and the appetizing smells of those foods before you dive into eating. Take a little time to pause and enjoy the experience.
Maintaining Hydration
In addition to managing food at holiday gatherings, hydration is also important. If you’re not well hydrated, you may feel hungrier than you actually are, which means you could end up eating more than you had originally intended.
Try to drink water throughout the day and hours leading up to the gathering. It may be difficult, but do the best you can under the circumstances. Listen to your thirst, and also check the color of your urine (pale yellow is often adequate) if desired.
If you choose to consume alcoholic beverages, avoid consuming them on an empty stomach. Also keep in mind that alcohol can irritate your gastrointestinal system, act as a diuretic (which makes you urinate sooner/more often),2,3 and potentially include added sugars.
Keep a Regular Meal Schedule
Last on the list, which was alluded to earlier, is to maintain a regular meal pattern and avoid skipping meals or eating minimally to save up for the big event.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t cut back a bit at other meals/snacks during the day. But I would submit to you that skipping food groups or eating very low-calorie items earlier in the day before your event will probably not give you sustainable energy to support good decision making and manage hunger later on.
Instead, ensure that your meals/snacks before the gathering are balanced—include a good source of protein and a carbohydrate, preferably one with fiber.
Try to eat every 4-5 hours to maintain sustained energy, and avoid going more than 6 waking hours without food of some kind. You might be surprised how differently you feel if this has not been a usual practice for you.
Conclusion
As we come to the end of our discussion, I hope you’ve found at least one or two takeaways you can use when it comes to your holiday meal plans.
And remember, every little step counts when it comes to managing nutrition for heart health. You don’t have to use all of these strategies. Instead, pick something you feel you can stick to and be consistent with it. Over time you can continue to build on that foundation.
On that note, enjoy your holidays!
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References
- Kirkpatrick CF, Sikand G, Petersen KS, et al. Nutrition interventions for adults with dyslipidemia: A Clinical Perspective from the National Lipid Association. J Clin Lipidol. 2023;17(4):428-451. doi:10.1016/j.jacl.2023.05.099
- Bode C, Bode JC. Alcohol’s role in gastrointestinal tract disorders. Alcohol Health Res World. 1997;21(1):76-83. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6826790/#:~:text=Gastric+and+Intestinal+Motility,alcohol+concentration+and+accompanying+meals.
- Bishehsari F, Magno E, Swanson G, et al. Alcohol and gut-derived inflammation. Alcohol Res. 2017;38(2):163-171. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5513683/
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