Here we are again, the "eating" season. Typically holiday food is rich salty and dense.  So what to do?  Avoid parties? No! Eat before you go to the eating event? No! Or how about this one, fast all day long so you can pack it all in seemingly with impunity? No! No!

I suggest "carbing up" with fruit before the big meal.  Satiating and satisfying ones carbohydrate requirements tames the ravenous beast  Fruit is nature's fast food, easy to digest, readily available carbohydrate (our brains function on glucose) and easy to get in most situations. Fruit should be an appetizer not a desert. If one eat's fruit as a desert after consuming animal products, potatoes, in other words dense cooked food, the fruit "get's stuck" so to speak and causes indigestion and fermentation in the gut.  Fruit is best consumed on an empty stomach or in combination with raw tender greens (spring mix, spinach, celery, cucumber, tomato) . Fill up on fruit and watering vegetables, then progress to more dense choices.

All bodies run on carbohydrate first and foremost.  Low carb diets (like Atkins) required the body, in the absence of carbohydrate, to "break down" fat and sometimes protein into the primary energy source, carbohydrate.  This is not natural and can be effort filled for the body. 

As a former operating room nurse, the first IV bag hung is glucose, not fat, not protein. 

So back to the seasonal food fest, eat fruit first, don't starve yourself ahead of the event and stick with real food. And above all else, have a good time!!!