Top Tips for a Nourishing Thanksgiving

One thing we believe deeply here at Live Nourished is that one of the most important aspects of food is CONNECTION. We believe food falls into 4 categories: energy (calories), information (your body’s chemical response to food), connection (connection to family, friends, tradition, culture and ourselves) and medicine. 

This time of year as we prepare for Thanksgiving, the connection aspect of food is that much more important. So instead of all the normal holiday tips everyone hates like “don’t over do it” and “skip the seconds” we wanted to give you the following tips:

1. Thoroughly enjoy the connection through food this Thanksgiving and

2. Give you some ideas to feel that connection to tradition while upping the quality of the information, medicine and energy of the food you’re eating.

How’s that sound?

Photo Credit: Priscilla Du Preez

Here are a few ideas to keep the same delicious flavor of your holiday favorites while nourishing your body as well:

1. Sneak some cauliflower into your potatoes. Cooked and pureed cauliflower blends perfectly into your classic mashed potatoes, and most people probably won’t be able to tell the difference (especially once it’s doused in gravy). The benefit is that cauliflower is lower in starch and calories than potatoes.

2. Speaking of potatoes … let’s talk about butter. It’s common to stir butter, heavy cream, and sour cream into mashed potatoes, but high-fat dairy can cause inflammation in your body and lead to elevated cholesterol (plus dairy is higher in calories).You can leave out the dairy without sacrificing any flavor by using low-sodium broth, roasted garlic, or fresh herbs (like rosemary, parsley, or chives).

3. Stuff veggies in your stuffing. The beautiful thing about the classic Thanksgiving stuffing is that there are hundreds of varieties and many of them include fruits and vegetables. Non-starchy vegetables like mushrooms, artichokes, and leeks are popular additions to Thanksgiving stuffing, as are fruit like apple, cranberries, and pears. You can also add fiber by using whole-wheat bread instead of white bread.

4. Cut the sugar by ⅓ to ½. In ANY of your dessert recipes (or that classic sweet potato dish), you can simply reduce the sugar by ½ and you won’t change the flavor one tiny bit. Seriously! Even the biggest sweet tooth in your group won’t notice. This is SUCH an easy hack. Just cut the sugar.

Photo Credit: Timothy Eberly

Live Nourished Coaching is working on creating our own Thanksgiving recipes and will have our own book by this time next year. But for now, we want to shout out a couple great books you could order on Amazon, get tomorrow, and use to tweak your holiday favorites: 

For $8 this has all the classic favorites and is delicious!

Click here for link!

All Thanksgiving recipes gluten free!

Click here for link!

This one isn’t all Thanksgiving foods but the recipes are to die for, free of gluten, diary and sugar and definitely have some holiday favorites in there!

Click here for the link!

Stay tuned! Next week we will shoot you another email with tips to enjoy your holiday, savor every bite and feel great at the end of the day. 🦃