Warning: holiday season approaching. As happy and fun as this time of the year may be, it poses as a serious threat to your weight loss system. If you’d like to stay on track towards your goal, here are a few healthy tips family practice doctors have to offer.

Eat First! – Don’t want to eat too much at the party when you get there? Then eat first. It might sound counter-intuitive, but if you eat before you go, you’re obviously not going to be as hungry when you get there. That doesn’t mean you should spoil your appetite, though. Just have a 100- to 200-calorie snack, like some fruit or peanut butter.

Graze When You Get There. – One of the most popular strategies for maintaining a weight loss system is to eat only during a certain period of time, like the first half hour of the party. This doesn’t work. What winds up happening is that you chew more quickly. You subconsciously start eating more in that half hour because you know you won’t for the rest of the party. Instead, just try to eat slowly. Don’t worry about cutting yourself off. Just make sure you don’t go wild. Graze, instead.

Don’t Take as Much at Meal Time. – One of the most obvious ways to prevent yourself from indulging during the holiday season is to put less on your plate. The key is to use a smaller plate for your meal. It actually makes us feel fuller with less food, because the brain associated a big white space on the plate with a smaller amount of food. In other words, if you just take a bit less and use a different plate, you’ll feel as stuffed as you would had you loaded up a bigger plate.

The holiday season is so jam-packed with delicious foods that it can knock even the best, most-regimented, top weight loss programs off course. With these tips, though, your weight loss system has nothing to worry about.

If you have any questions, feel free to share in the comments.