By Dr. Jon Thomas, DC, PSc.D, Board
Certified Chiropractic Physician.
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| Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons |
The First Thanksgiving took place
in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in November of 1621. The Pilgrims and the Wampanoag
Indians gathered for a feast to celebrate the autumn harvest. While the meal
may have featured turkey, there was probably some other fowl as well, including ducks, geese, and swans. Yum, yum.
There may also have been seafood including lobster, clams, and oysters.
Some of the locally grown and
organic vegetables for the meal were probably onions, beans, lettuce, spinach,
cabbage, and carrots. Fruits for the meal may have been blueberries,
plums, grapes, raspberries, and cranberries. It really
sounds like a fairly healthy meal.
Thanksgiving is one of our
country’s great traditions. It’s also one of the biggest holidays of the year
for most Americans. Getting together with family and friends for a big
delicious meal is something most people enjoy. However, many people enjoy the
food so much that they tend to overdo it.
Portion Control - Eat, drink, and
be merry, within reason
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| Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons |
Some people like to get a serving
of every food presented. Sweet potatoes, mashed
potatoes, potatoes au gratin, green beans, baked beans, peas, carrots, a
biscuit, a piece of cornbread, a piece of garlic bread, a little dark meat, a
little white meat, stuffing, apple pie, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, Boston cream
pie, etc. With the wide variety of foods available at many Thanksgiving
dinners, all those servings can add up to double or triple the calories of a
normal meal.
Here’s a tip: You don’t have to try
everything. Also, eating and eating and eating till you can barely move isn’t
all that enjoyable. Just because it’s Thanksgiving doesn’t mean you should
forget your health objectives, especially if one of those is to control your
weight. So, at some point, you just have to put down the fork down and step
away from the table.
Trigger Foods
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| Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons |
One of the things NutriMost patients
learn about is trigger foods. Trigger foods are the foods that cause people to
pack on the pounds quickly. They’re not all the same for everybody either. For
one person, peanut butter may be a problem. For someone else, pizza might be a
problem. With some trigger foods, once you get started it’s hard to stop. For
example, Oreo cookies can be a problem for some people, especially if there’s
some milk to go with them. In order to
avoid your trigger foods, you must first become aware of what they are.
One way to develop an awareness
about trigger foods and how they affect you is to keep a close eye on the
scale. If your weight is up two pounds one morning, whatever you had for dinner, the night before might be a problem. If
you know what your trigger foods are before Thanksgiving, you’ll know what to
avoid. It could be the bread, or the
potatoes, or the apple pie. For most people, green beans are probably OK. In
any case, if you want to wake up raring to go for a full day of extreme
shopping on Black Friday, you might consider avoiding your trigger foods.
Thanksgiving Recipes
There are lots of great foods that
are delicious, and that won’t put you off
course in terms of your weight. In fact,
we’ve posted a file with over a dozen great Thanksgiving recipes on our
Facebook page. The recipes include:
Thanksgiving Baked Chicken or
Turkey: 170 calories per serving.
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| Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons |
Ingredients for one serving: 3.5 oz chicken or turkey
breast, ½ c Swanson chicken stock, 1 T chopped onion, a pinch of sage, a pinch of
marjoram, a pinch of thyme, pink salt, and pepper to taste.
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Mix spices together in small
bowl
3. Dip meat into broth and coat
with spices
4. Transfer to baking dish
5. Add chopped onion and rest of
broth to bottom of the pan
6. Bake for 20 minutes or until
cooked thoroughly
Dairy-free Deviled Eggs: 150
calories per serving.
Ingredients for one serving: 2 hardboiled eggs, halved, four t dijon mustard, 1/3 t apple cider vinegar,
2-4 drops liquid stevia, 1/16 teaspoon garlic powder, dash of salt, dash of
pepper
Directions:
1. Scoop egg yolks into a bowl and
set egg whites aside.
2. Mash yolks, vinegar, mustard,
stevia, garlic powder, pepper, and salt.
3. Spoon yolk mixture into egg
whites.
4. Refrigerate until ready to
serve. Lemon Garlic
Lemon Garlic Crockpot Chicken: 182
calories per serving.
Ingredients for four servings:
Four chicken
breasts, 4 T minced onion, two lemons, a
whole garlic bulb, two tablespoons of
thyme, 2 cups chicken broth or stock, salt and pepper.
Directions:
1. Pour chicken broth into crockpot
2. Place chicken breasts in
crockpot
3. Sprinkle minced onion and a
little salt and pepper onto each chicken
breast
4. Peel and chop all of the garlic
cloves and sprinkle on top of the chicken breasts.
5. Slice the lemons and placed them
on the chicken breasts
6. Sprinkle thyme on top
7. Put the lid on and set the timer
for 6 hours on low
Mustard Baked Chicken: 165
calories per serving.
Ingredients for two servings:
7 oz chicken breast, 1/4 c. Brown mustard, 1/2 T. Bragg's liquid aminos, two
pkts. SweetLeaf Stevia
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 425
2. Line baking dish with parchment
paper
3. Place chicken, smooth side up
into the baking dish
4. In a small bowl stir together
mustard, liquid aminos, and stevia
5. Brush mustard mixture generously
over each chicken breast
6. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes or
until no longer pink, brushing with mustard mixture half way through cooking
Life In Balance and NutriMost
At Vibrant Life Health Center, we
now offer a program that brings all the key components for wellness together
under one roof. Our Life In Balance Program addresses weight and nutrition,
fitness and exercise, musculoskeletal health, and more. Our goal is to help
patients get their lives into balance and to give them all the tools they need
to stay in balance. If you have any
questions about the Life In Balance Program and you’d like to find out how it
can help you, please call to set up an appointment.
NutriMost is a fat loss program
that has enabled many people to lose twenty pounds or more in just forty days.
Instead of putting on five or ten pounds through the holiday season, you could actually lose twenty pounds or more by January.
Wouldn’t that be a nice way to start the year? If you’d like to learn more
about NutriMost, check out our website or call to set up an appointment.
Schedule a Free Tytron Scan at Vibrant Life Health Center.
Vibrant Life Health Center is
currently offering free Tytron scans
through the end of November. See for yourself how this amazing device works and
how it can help you to get your body back into balance. If you have acute or
chronic pain and you’d like to find out how chiropractic can help, set up an
appointment with Dr. Thomas at the Vibrant Life Health Center.
If you’d like to learn more about
the benefits of detoxification, call Vibrant Life Health Center. If you’ve been
struggling to lose weight, let Dr. Thomas explain how the NutriMost program has
helped many people lose twenty to forty pounds or more in just forty days. And if you’d like to check out the Life In Balance
plan which can address every area of a patient’s health, call Vibrant Life to
set up an appointment.
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In this article, I have discussed
what people ate on the first Thanksgiving and how to eat healthier for
Thanksgiving now. I’ve also given a few great recipes for Thanksgiving foods
that will match up with your weight and fitness objectives.
If you have a comment about this
article, please leave it in the comments section below. If you know of someone
who might benefit from the information in this blog, please share it with your
friends and colleagues, as well as on social media.
The Google Plus button and other
social media sharing buttons are below.
At Vibrant Life, we address all the
key elements to add vibrance and vitality to your life. This includes nutrition, Chiropractic care, and fitness. If you
need to consult with a chiropractor about your neck, back, or any other health
concern, please contact our office to set up an appointment.
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| Courtesy of Vibrant Life Health Center |
