​Thanksgiving Sampling A Great Way To Keep Calories In Check  

BY Chef Murph October 23, 2017

​Thanksgiving SamplingA Great Way To Keep Calories In Check :

By Chef Murph K.T.

Thanksgiving is a time to get together with family and celebrate all that we have to be grateful for. Most of the time, this celebration is accompanied by eating way too much. It can be hard to get everything you want to eat onto one plate, and often we choose larger than life portion sizes of our favorite foods.
How can you limit these portions and keep your calories in check during Thanksgiving? Sampling is a great way to try all of your favorite foods while still keeping your calories low during your Thanksgiving Day feast.
Be Picky

One of the biggest mistakes we make when we sample foods at a feast like Thanksgiving is choosing foods that are available all year round. WebMD recommends that you just skip these foods entirely. If you regularly eat mashed potatoes with dinner but rarely eat candied yams, you may want to skip the mashed potatoes and head over to the yams.
Just because you’re skipping regular staples doesn’t mean that you should load up on the foods you are getting. Often the serving spoons we use are ½ cup to 1 full cup of food.

Try only filling the serving spoon half way. This will make sure that you get enough to satisfy the taste for the food without overdoing it on the calories.
Use Proper Portions

One of the best things that you can do when sampling the foods available at Thanksgiving is to use proper portions. If you have a large selection, you may even want to cut those portions in half so that you can get a good variety of food on your plate. Did you know that a portion of lean meat, like turkey, is only the size of a deck of cards?
It is recommended that you learn some staple portion sizes, that way when you are dishing up your favorite foods, you already know how much to get.

A serving of rice or other high carbohydrate food can be as small as ½ a baseball. When you get these foods to your plate, make the portions smaller so that you can get a great selection of your favorites.
Side Dishes

Side dishes seem to be the fan favorite at big holiday meals. The average side dish is the equivalent of one serving of starch and should look like ½ a baseball.
It is a good idea to only have one of your favorite side dishes to limit your calories. However, if you take a few bites of each of your favorite sides, it may equal the one serving of starch.

This is where sampling can be a real lifesaver when building your plate. It is no fun to feel deprived during a social eating event, getting very small portions of each side dish can mean all of the side dishes equal one serving.
With this technique, you are going to get all of the decadence of a big meal without the big calorie hit at the end of the day.

Watch The Toppings!
When sampling many people opt to try a bunch of veggie dishes, this is great in theory. However, most of the vegetable casseroles and dishes have tons of extra calories in the form of butter and creamy soups.
Salads can even be a big culprit with hidden calories. Salads that are topped with things like cheese, nuts, and creamy dressings can end up being more calories than your candied yams.
Avoid the over the top veggies when sampling your favorite dishes at Thanksgiving. You can get some of the tastiest foods and not get stuck with all the hidden calories.

Sampling food has always been my go-to strategy at any big holiday feast. What is your favorite way to make sure that you are not overstuffing yourself with excess calories on Thanksgiving?
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Chefmurph.com

Enjoy

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