With the holidays fast approaching, now is the time to make yourself aware of the foods that will be available to you and avoid pigging out on the bad stuff.

The average person will gain about 2-3 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Years’. It’s not just the actual holiday meals that will be the problem. It will be the other invites from friends, relatives, gym dinners, work holiday parties, etc. There may be half a dozen or more parties in between the above two holidays.

Use a small plate

If your plate real estate is too small to fit all the appetizers and dinners, you’ll limit yourself with the amount of food you eat.

The Journal of the American Medical Association printed a study done by Brian Wansink, PhD from Cornell University and Matthew M. Cheney, MS from the University of Illinois showed the participants ate 146 more calories when using larger bowls than the ones’ using the smaller bowls. May not sound like much, but if you did that for every dinner for a year, you would pack on an additional 15 pounds.

So, go for the smaller plate.

Too many choices

Going to those catered holiday parties can surely pack on the weight as well. The buffet table seems like a mile long with dozens of different foods. Many people will try a little bit of everything and maybe go back for some more of the foods they really enjoyed. Refrain from trying everything and only take one or every other one of each appetizer. Remember, there’s usually dinner right after.

The empty calories of alcohol

The calories of an alcoholic drink do nothing for your nutritional intake. Those calories are called empty calories because they contain zero protein, carbohydrate or fat content. Nonetheless, alcohol still has 7 calories per gram of alcohol.

Next to not drinking alcohol, the next best thing is to drink a glass of water in between each drink. It will fill you up faster and slow down your alcoholic intake.

Eat more vegetables

You’ve seen those platters. The broccoli, carrots, celery and cauliflower with the big bowl of creamy dip in the middle. This should be your best choice of the party, but without the dip. Those raw vegetables will fill you up nicely without many calories as long as you don’t consume too much of the fatty dip in the middle.

Weigh yourself on the November 26th, follow the above tips and then weigh yourself on January 2nd. If you weigh the same or less, you’ve done a good job!