Contributor: “Dr. J”
Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.

Sometimes a cookie is just a cookie.

The season of celebration is upon us. Many of us have more parties to attend than we can handle. Although this is a good thing, we only have so much time — and often, we also have many other responsibilities to our job or family that must take priority over all the merriment. Then we have the problem of keeping health and fitness plans intact with all the high-calorie treats we’ll face when we do find the time to party on. Is there any wonder that the holiday season can be so stressful?

How do you handle all the party cookies? Do you follow all the advice on blogs about how to deal with the food and drink at parties? Perhaps you just let all those ideas slip away with that finger food; after all, with your New Year’s resolutions in a month, you can get back on track, just like you did last year, right? Maybe you have established good health habits all year long and you just laissez les bons temps rouler.

If your inner party animal (or French lessons) need some additional help, try some of these ideas at party time to keep those cookies in check:

Call it like it is

Sometimes that first cookie will lead to a party binge. If that is your problem, don’t start with a cookie, eat and drink high-volume, low-calorie foods and save that cookie for a goodnight treat for a job well done.

Be concrete with your plans

Have specific coping strategies for the parties. Don’t drink until you can’t control yourself with the cookies. Focus on the people and other party activities rather than just the cookies.

Keep it simple

Look for whole healthy foods and drinks at the party. Even the most decadent hosts accidentally add these foods. If you look for them, you will find them.

Try and modify

Even if your cookie-eating strategy isn’t perfect at the first party, all is not lost for the entire season. Learn from your mistakes and plan accordingly for the next big event.

Have a reminder

Keep a note in your pocket, or wear a pin or other ornament that you have decided before the party is your no-cookie reminder, and continually read or look at it to help you keep your cookie vigilance running.

Stay with the tried-and-true

When you have learned what works for you, keep doing that until it becomes a habit. These habits will sustain you even if your attention is distracted by a cookie monster.

Have a buddy

If possible, before the party, get a cookie buddy and support and encourage each other at the event to stay with the program.

Sometimes a cookie is the beginning of that pathway to failure; sometimes, however, a cookie is just a cookie. The choice is always ours.

7 Ways to Resist the Cookies and Eat Healthy at Holiday Parties is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

You Knew College Would be a Chance for Them to Grow, but Still…

(CC) FLICKR/KATIEKILLS

For a lot of families, this Thanksgiving will be one at which a son or daughter returns for the first family reunion since they went away to school. Sometimes the child will show the effects of the legendary “Freshman” 15,” as in pounds gained since leaving. Sometimes, the parents will be caught off guard by the degree to which the child has filled out.

How should the parent react? What should the parent do, if anything, about the returning offspring’s weight gain? Especially when the Christmas and New Years’ holidays, awash with calories, also loom just over the horizon? Here are a few thoughts on the matter, courtesy of Daphne Oz, daughter of celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz, recent college student, and author of The Dorm Room Diet.

Source: “Don’t fret over Freshman 15,” Jennifer LaRue, Washington Post, 11/21/10.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

When the Holiday Season Meets the “Freshman 15″… in Your Kitchen is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

The Ones Who are Still Carrying Last Christmas’s Pecan Pie

It’s mid-November, which means it’s time for every media entity in North America to issue its very own list of tips and guidelines for weight-watchers who desire to avoid the dietary pitfalls of the Holiday Season. Here’s ours:

(CC) FLICKR/ILMUNGO

And one more very important point:

Easy on the booze.

Alcohol is intensely caloric — that glass of sauvingnon blanc equals a serving of cornmeal stuffing with gravy — and adult beverages will be a staple at many holiday gatherings, especially those involving co-workers or bowl games or New Year’s. Here are some of the most and least caloric libations:

Note:

The calorie amounts are based on the beverages as served by a professional bartender, and not by your pleasantly buzzed neighbor, boss or brother-in-law. Enjoy the holiday season, and good luck.

Sources:
“Tips for season’s eating,” S.F. Chronicle, 11/15/10, p. E1
“Keep tabs on beverages,” S.F. Chronicle, 11/15/10, p. E3

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Holiday Diet Survival Tips for those Fearing the Season’s Effects on Clothing Size is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

The problem with handing out truly healthy treats on Halloween — apples, raisins, trail mix, home made baked goods, etc. — is that such ploys can get your house toilet papered or worse by kids with fairly narrow and uncompromising notions of what constitutes a legitimate treat. About all you can do is try to avoid the worst, most nutrient-devoid and insanely caloric choices. Since we’re talking about the candy industry, that’s rather like choosing between migraine and stomach flu, but here are some assorted and highly subjective opinions on how to do the least damage to trick-or-treaters next Sunday night.

The Best and Worst Halloween Candies

Mens Fitness asked nutritionist and Wall Street Diet author Heather Bauer for her best and worst candy suggestions. For Best, she picked lollipops, because they last longer, are fat-free and contain as few as 20 calories. But they’re almost pure sugar and particularly conducive to cavities. Presumably, jawbreakers would also fill the bill in this category. She also gave the nod to Smarties, those little sugar pills that come in cellophane rolls about the size of a crayon and pack just 25 calories per roll.

(CC) Juushika/FLICKR
Beyond that, she likes dark chocolate (not milk or white) for its heart-friendly attributes, but even the best probable option here, Hershey’s dark chocolate Kisses, delivers 20 calories and about a gram of saturated fat per Kiss.

Her Worst picks are those mini-Mounds bars, which even in their diminutive form pack 63 calories and 3 grams of saturated fat each, and candy corn, almost pure high fructose corn syrup and calorie-intensive.

So what do the kids really want?

Some good news in this regard arrives via a recent survey showing that kids for the most part hate being given candy corn on Halloween, probably for the same reason that your dog doesn’t really consider a handful of kibble to qualify as a treat. What the kids say they really go for are M&M’s and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, candies that at least moderate the sugar load with the nutritional presence of peanuts, either whole (M&M’s) or ground (Cups). On the downside, just two bite-size Reese’s Cups contain 72 calories and 3 grams of saturated fat.

(CC) Scurzuzu/FLICKR

Finally, from Men’s Health magazine comes a warning to avoid the little “fun size” Butterfinger Bars, which are loaded with 100 calories, almost 40 more than a similarly-sized Three Musketeers, and to shun Twix Miniatures, which hammer home 50 calories and 2 grams of saturated fat per bite-size piece, far more than the preferred Tootsie Roll alternative. And don’t get them started on Brach’s Caramels, a mere four of which amount to 160 calories and 3.5 grams of saturated fat.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Halloween Candies: How to Choose the Merely Unhealthy Over the Absolutely Ruinous is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Raising the Question, “Do the People in the FDA Actually Have Any Kids?”

The Food and Drug Administration has issued its more-or-less usual list of Tips for a Safe Halloween, which range from the sensible to the frankly self-deluding. Here are their tips, with comments from Yours Truly.

• “Don’t eat candy until it has been inspected at home.” Good luck with that, unless you plan to accompany the kids every step of the way. Face it, you’re a grownup, and you still have to hit the bag of fries on the way home from McDonald’s or Burger King.
• “Trick-or-treaters should eat a snack before heading out, so they won’t be tempted to nibble on treats that haven’t been inspected.” Kids are tempted by food items that are designed to tempt them, regardless of what or when they have already eaten. Have you never been or seen a child hitting the pecan and pumpkin pies after tucking away an entire Thanksgiving dinner?
• “Tell children not to accept — or eat — anything that isn’t commercially wrapped.” Oh please. Isn’t this event commercialized enough already, that we have to further put a ban on apples (candied or au naturel) and other fruit, or homemade baked goods that are far healthier than the candy industry’s various overpriced single-serving forms of high fructose corn syrup? “If it’s not fully processed and mass produced, avoid it” is probably not the message we really want to convey to the current generation of overweight kids.
• “Parents of very young children should remove any choking hazards such as gum, peanuts, hard candies, or small toys.” Or, parents and their very young children could just stay home until the kids are old enough to appreciate and participate in trick-or-treating without risking asphyxiation.
• “Inspect commercially wrapped treats for signs of tampering, such as an unusual appearance or discoloration, tiny pinholes, or tears in wrappers. Throw away anything that looks suspicious.” Based on everything I’ve read, this is a response to a classic Urban (or maybe Suburban) Myth: the old razor blade in the apple/muffin/brownie legend. If you can find any legitimate record of such a thing actually ever happening, hats off to you; other researchers have tried and failed.

For that matter, since we know that 90 percent of Halloween candy is composed of empty high-density calories in the form of tooth-rotting sugars and saturated fats that help set our kids up for weight problems and possible juvenile diabetes, the word “suspicious” seems rather superfluous. This stuff long ago confirmed all our suspicions.

Tomorrow: Picking the Least Unhealthy Halloween Candies

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

The Government’s “Safe Halloween” Tips, with Rebuttal is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News