Eating Healthy for Thanksgiving

I had an epiphany that very first Thanksgiving as a conscious eater.  I had joined Weight Watchers six months prior, and had lost 50 pounds and counting.  It was one of those rare, profound "aha" moments that I recall with relief and gratitude.  

In the past, my Thanksgiving had been about food.  It is, after all, a national food holiday...  Even though some of the food choices were low fat, healthy choices - like steamed green beans and homemade, very low sugar cranberry sauce - there was the volume thing.  How much can I eat?  

And, some of the traditional favorites like stuffing and pie are just big trouble, no matter how you slice it.  And, when visiting family in the  mid-west, every food item was just loaded with butter, sausage or marshmallows.  Thanksgiving was a high-octane meal.  And, I ate until I felt like the stuffed turkey itself.

So, the magic happened Thanksgiving 1999.  Having started to change my relationship with food with why I ate and what I ate - I sat down to my first conscious Thanksgiving with trepidation.  How would I handle the holiday favorites?  How would I manage the post-event fall-out on Friday and beyond?  I had no idea how I would manage the holiday challenges.

I sat down to my plate of food - a plate that I served myself - and looked at it for a few seconds.  What?  Really?  Oh my goodness!  For the FIRST time ever, I realized that my plate of Thanksgiving favorites looked like fall.  I mean, that virtually every food on the plate had the vivid color of an autumn leaf.  The cranberry sauce was a vibrant deep red.  The green beans were a brilliant bright green.  The yams were an intensely rich orange.  And the turkey was a subtle brown.  These colors represented a New England forest in autumn.  It was gorgeous, it was amazing and it was an epiphany.  I had never before taken the time to appreciate my plate of food, and what the array of colors represented. Amazing!

We hear a lot about eating locally these days.  We hear about the environmental costs of buying fruit "in season" from Chile or New Zealand.  Any food can be purchased at any time of the year, thanks to the power of air freight.

What that Thanksgiving realization gave me was the reminder that our traditional Thanksgiving favorite foods are seasonal foods.  From the cranberry sauce to the yams, we eat these foods now because that was what was available in late November, years before the jumbo jet.

Ever since this magical Thanksgiving, I eagerly await the shades of autumn leaves on my Thanksgiving plate.  I love cranberries, yams and green beans.  And, I will now always appreciate, not only the delicious taste and the health benefits of those Thanksgiving favorites, but also the beauty of autumn on my plate.

Slow down to enjoy your dinner this Thursday and see if you, too, can find the beauty of New England on your plate.

Have a safe, peaceful and loving Thanksgiving.