I’m certainly the type to say “screw healthy eating” on this day and often do. However, I do like to throw in a few dishes that are a little lighter and just as delicious.

So, here for your viewing and cooking pleasure, are Thanksgiving recipes from sparkpeople.com to help you create a delicious and healthy Turkey Day meal for you and your family.

I have to say the Harvest Apple Bread looks particularly amazing!

Bon Appetite!

This daily lunch date soon turned into a regular dinner habit as well. My guy and I get our dinner ready, and set up our spread on the coffee table for an hour or so of dinner theater ala television. We’ve never felt bad about it because these are the only times we watch television, but little did we know the habits we were creating.

On a particularly weirdly scheduled day, neither of us were able to eat lunch until later so by the time dinner rolled around we weren’t really hungry but we had planned to sit down to watch a show on regularly scheduled programming and as we did so it wasn’t long before we found ourselves twitching and distracted and ultimately talking about what to eat for dinner.

Neither of us were hungry but somehow we couldn’t stand just sitting and watching TV. Our bodies had become accustomed to eating during our nightly ritual and were making us think they wanted to eat when actually we didn’t want anything. However, we didn’t realize this until the pizza had been delivered and we were both full halfway through our second slice.

The point is, keep your eating habits on their toes or develop healthy eating habits. Eating while watchign television is bad for you anyway. It keeps your mind distracted so it doesn’t notice when it’s full thus allowing you to overeat. Eat at the table, focus on each bite and how it tastes and likely you’ll have a more savory eating experience that fills you up before you know it. Pretty soon, this will be your habit and your body will be happier and healthier for it.

Many brides are worried about how their pictures will look or how their family or friends will see them. My opinion? If you’re asking a friend or sister to change for your wedding, are they really your friend? Do you want a bridesmaid or a personal doll? Why not just line up your Barbie Dolls next to you for pictures?
Friends and family are there because you ideally accept them for who they are, so why ask someone to be a bridesmaid if they are not going to be who you want them to be?

It’s a great way to lose friends or start eating disorders or create much more turmoil in your already stressful wedding planning.

People need to lose weight on their own terms, in their own time and for their own health reasons. NOT because you want them to look good in your pictures. Hire models instead.

You and Your Wedding Magazine surveyed 1000 people and 1 in 5 reported a contract was a good idea. While there are some things that would certainly make me feel better if my bridesmaids refrained from them (hitting on inappropriate males at the reception, or getting rip-roaring plastered and removing their clothing) I’m not interested in making them sign a contract over it and I don’t feel I’m in any danger of anything happening anyway.

Here is the site and a downloadable contract if you are curious (or think this is a good idea).

Some things have not found that place yet and have never really had their own place in my other houses. I’m talking about my workout and yoga clothes. In my bedroom there are 2 possible places for these…the bureau or the closet. The bureau is where I keep my pajamas and such and although my workout clothes are often more comfortable than even pajamas it just doesn’t seem right and plus I can’t easily see the clothes to choose what I’d like to wear to yoga. Yet yoga digs just don’t seem quite nice enough to hang up in the closet and not easily “hang-able” at times.
So I compromised and got this. One Shelf for tops, one shelf for pants, one shelf for capris.

Perfect! They get hung in the closet but are folded and I can easily see what I want.

And at Stacks and Stacks it’s only $12.99. So if you are as neurotic about this sort of thing as I am then you may really like this idea of separating your fitness wear from all of your other clothing.

[Note to maintain some dignity: I am not this neurotic about anything beyond having a logical place for things to go and organized by some related property. If you see me organizing the sugar packets in a restaurant to make sure they are all turned and facing the same way...it's not me]

For instance:

Last December, a guy in Philadelphia started a fitness regime with the oh-so-popular Nintendo gaming system, Wii. He played Wii Sports every day, 30 minutes per day for 6 weeks, did not change any other aspect of his life, including eating habits and lost a total of 9 pounds in that time. He even claims to have burned 125 calories every 15 minutes while playing Wii Boxing, one of the more active games.

Read about how he did it here.

To further your motivation to buy a Wii, as of May 19th Nintendo released the Wii Fit. The Wii Fit comes with a Balance Board and an array of fitness-related games like yoga, balance games, strength training and aerobics. You create a “mii” which is a little Nintendo version of yourself and it keeps track of all your stats and your progress (weight loss, BMI, etc) which you can compare with friends or family. You can even get your Wii Fit Age! This game is suitable (and fun) for both adults and kids and can provide some great family nights. The only caveat: you may want to buy two Wii systems because you will undoubtedly be fighting your kids for it.

THE FRIDGE WAS DEVOID OF ANY VITAMIN WATERS and I stood and stared into the yellow-lighted-time-continuum for a moment. I wasn’t overly panicked, there was just a 20 oz shaped hole in my heart but I just figured I’d drive through the Starbucks by my house and rekindle my love affair with my daily coffee stop and that would carry me through lunch. Until now I had yet to go a day without a Vitamin Water for the past month. Before Vitamin Water I stopped at Starbucks everyday for a brew then one day I took a Vitamin Water instead with the intention of stopping the war on my calcium deficient bones that caffeine had religiously sucked the life out of. From there, I began taking one to work everyday instead of my beloved coffee. Admittedly I still drink coffee in the morning when i get up but ‘they’ say it’s good for the heart to have a cup or two every day.

So back to today…I stopped at Starbucks, have been nursing my Venti brew all morning and I am TIRED. Tired in a restless, can’t think, can’t focus kind of way. The annoying tired. The tired that makes the clock stop wherever you are while the rest of the world rushes past you. Additionally, I have an awesome headache and I’m irritable…and thinking back I realized that this is how I used to be every day. But it had become a part of life and I knew the probable reason but had tucked it somewhere in the back of my mind in the rationalization section between “why i shouldn’t date an ex-boyfriend” and “why I shouldn’t eat a pound of chocolate-covered strawberries.”

So…after today I am back to my Vitamin Water. You may ask why I don’t just take vitamins. I hate taking pills, I don’t really know how to do it and I end up gagging every time no matter what I do…it took me many years to learn how to even get one of those plastic-like Tylenol down so forget about the ugly, stick-to-your-tonsils horse pill vitamins that taste like dead grass.

My point is, try Vitamin Water. It tastes awesome, doesn’t leave you with a coating of sugar or aspartame in your mouth and it makes you feel great every day. I NEVER knew I felt so bad every day until I replaced some of my coffee intake with a Vitamin Water and my cash flow loves me more too since a bottle of vitamin water will typically go for $1.39 for 20oz. while my daily black coffee at Starbucks would cost me $2.00/day. Want my advice? Get the dragonfruit flavor.