Holiday Macros

19 Nov Holiday Macros

Hello boot camp fam! How are you doing? With Thanksgiving Day right around the corner, we’re reminded how thankful we are to journey alongside you towards your fitness and wellness goals. Core Motion Fitness simply cannot do what we love without you, so thank you for showing up and trusting us with your workouts and goals. 

In anticipation of Thanksgiving Day food and delicious leftovers, we’d like to highlight our macronutrient food groups once again and share how these classic foods can still fit into our goals.

Macronutrients are carbohydrates, protein, and fat. In the past we have shared this blog post to explain the ins and outs of this style of eating. Whether or not you actually track your food intake, it is helpful to know the general recommendations of how much to eat of each category. For most people, the goals are 40-60% of your calories from carbohydrates, 20-30% of your calories from protein, and 30-35% of your calories from fat. With this in mind, a person can use the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate or Athlete’s Plate as visuals for your plate distribution at meal time.

Looking ahead to Thanksgiving Day, this would mean that your Thanksgiving meal could look like: a quarter of your plate consisting of turkey, half your plate filled with veggies (keep in mind corn, potatoes, and peas fall into the carbohydrate category), then small portions of Thanksgiving carbohydrates, such as rolls, potatoes, stuffing, etc. to fill the remaining quarter. Add in some holiday movement like a walk, jog, workout, etc. and you’ll have more wiggle room for extra portions in any of these food categories, such as pie. 

Remember, this is one day out of the year and part of living a healthy lifestyle means that you are loving, kind, and gracious to yourself. Resist the temptation to judge the Thanksgiving Day spread as good foods and bad foods, don’t grant yourself a “cheat day,” or shame yourself for over-indulging, or punish yourself with extra workouts. If your goal is overall wellness, this includes physical, but also mental health, so please remember that none of us are perfect and we can enjoy the holidays with a balanced approach and perspective. The healthy eating 80/20 rule of eating nutritiously 80% of the time and less healthful the remaining 20% of the time gives most of us plenty of freedom to have a healthy relationship with food, which is a life-long relationship worth fostering. 

by Victoria Emmitt RD