Eat, drink and be merry, and lose a few pounds

A guaranteed plan for enjoying your holiday meals without gaining weight

Approaching the holidays I always like to come up with helpful strategies that can benefit myself and others to avoid putting on extra pounds. As you know from previous holiday blogs, I am not a fan of trying to come up with low fat holiday meals. This is because some of the best memories of my life are from the fantastic meals my mother prepared for Thanksgiving and Christmas each year, and trust me, they were anything but low fat! These wonderful family events were a time to put eating inhibitions aside and indulge… and did we ever!

In my opinion, changes can be made as one approaches these big eating events that can more than compensate for the extra calories one consumes on that special day. With that in mind, I would like to introduce you to our new partner at America’s Fitness Coach® and Your Best Asset; Good Measure Meals™.

Following a talk I had given for the Buckhead Rotary Club, I was introduced to Good Measure Meals by Matt Pieper who is the Senior Director of Resource Development at Open Hand. Open Hand is a fascinating nonprofit organization that prepares and delivers over 4,500 meals a day to those in need. They help people prevent or better manage chronic disease through home-delivered meals and nutrition education. Matt invited me to tour their facility in Atlanta. I did, and wow what an operation!

I then spent some time with their associated company Good Measure Meals™, whose facility exists within the same city block. Good Measure Meals is a fresh, local alternative to the frozen or dehydrated meals you get from the national “diet” plans. What’s unique is that 100% of the profits of Good Measure Meals goes to Open Hand.

The meals from Good Measure Meals are perfect for weight loss, healthy eating or management of diabetes. They really make healthy eating convenient, affordable and delicious.

All Good Measure Meals menus are designed with precise adherence to the dietary guidelines of The American Diabetes Association, The American Dietetic Association and The American Heart Association. Their chefs and staff culinary dietitian work together to create a satisfying five week menu that is updated twice a year to include seasonal foods.

With Good Measure Meals you are really eating healthy gourmet food. They offer four menus. All are on a 5 week rotation, ensuring lots of variety, and adhere to a healthy balance of 22-25% protein, 27-30% healthy fat and 45-48% consistent health promoting carbohydrates. Every meal is prepared fresh in their Midtown (Atlanta) commercial kitchen, from fresh produce purchased daily from local vendors, specifying the highest quality meats and bakery goods for use in each meal.

So how do you get the meal(s) you order? They have over 80 pickup locations in the metro Atlanta area, Athens and Savannah. Since all of their meals are delivered as fresh food you pick up your meals twice each week ─ on Monday and Thursday. Each of their convenient pickup locations has set times for meal pick up. You select the location most convenient for you during the order process.

Now that I’ve brought you up to speed with our exciting new partner, Good Measure Meals, let me circle back to the main point I wanted to make concerning how you can relax and enjoy all of the great food on Thanksgiving and Christmas (typically high in calories, and fat), without ending up 5-10 pounds heavier on January 1, 2011.

Here’s the plan: Starting a full week before both each upcoming big holiday meal, order a week’s worth of meals from Good Measure Meals™. You can do anything from one meal a day to three. Since they give you the option of choosing how many calories you wish to consume for that meal, or the meals of that day. You can easily select a calorie total that is well below what you normally eat. With this plan you are guaranteed to lose weight! This way, when you settle down for your BIG holiday meal, you can relax and feast, knowing that it will all balance out to a zero net weight gain, or you might possibly even lose weight.

The other advantage of this plan is that if you are the one preparing and cooking the big holiday meals, you will not have to do any cooking or meal preparation for one full week before the big day! Now that’s what I call a great plan.

To order, call 404-815-7695 or click here. Use Promo Code “DH10” and save 10% off your first order of Good Measure Meals™.

Here’s wishing you all the best for both your Thanksgiving, Christmas and/or Hanukkah holidays. Enjoy!