Tips to Handle Gifts of Holiday Treats

It’s the time of year when your clients, co-workers, friends and relatives start sending you chocolates, cookies and other tempting treats for the holidays. For those of you with a sweet tooth, this can be quite problematic. Once you start, the box can be gone in a matter of days (or hours!) Check two problem scenarios along with my tips on how to handle gifts of food.

Food gifts from your family
Example: Your mother-in-law brings a jumbo tin of homemade cookies
to your holiday family get together. Actually she brings them every time she visits your home. (pic credit: dreamstime.com)

My Proposed Solutions: 
This is a tough one as you do NOT want to insult your mother-in-law … so be careful!

1. If you already have enough other desserts at your party, you can “save” them for another time. Thank her profusely – but get rid of them when she leaves. She’ll never know! You could “re-gift” it. A handy gift for your manicurist or mailman … and you save some money. A win win solution.

2. Or if you feel you need to open them at the party, put them out of your reach and pack them up right after the party so you can’t get to them. Let your husband take them to work the next day or give them immediately to your doorman as soon as the party ends. Enlist the support of your spouse. After all, I’m sure he/she doesn’t want you to gain weight!

3. As far as her habit of bringing sweets into your home, it may help if your spouse speaks to her. It sometimes helps to bring health into the picture. Perhaps your spouse (or you) have elevated cholesterol, blood pressure or blood sugar. I would bet the mother-in-law would take the request to cut back on baking more seriously if she knew her son-in-law’s health was at stake.

Gifts at work from clients
Wouldn’t it be great if your clients could send healthy gifts like a nice fruit basket from Harry & David rather than candy, cookies and fruit cake! But since it’s unlikely that will happen, here are some tips:

My proposed solutions
1. In your office, if possible, keep the treats in another room out of your sight. Try to avoid the room where they are kept as much as possible. The more you see them, the more you will want to eat them! I actually had to leave the room as I was losing control.

2. Allow yourself 1-2 of your favorite holiday goodies a day (maybe 150 calories). Choose what you really want, eat it slow and enjoy it. Then stop!

3. If eating these goodies opens the floodgates and leads to uncontrolled eating, then you will really need to avoid them. Check out my interview with Christy the Sugar Addict. Don’t even start with foods that get you going. Bring in healthy snacks from home to have when everyone else is munching on fattening cookies.  (pic credit: ign.com)

4. If you do overindulge, get back on track at the next meal or next day. Don’t beat yourself up or let the overindulgence fuel thoughts of “Well, I blew it, so I might as well keep on eating”.

5. As per the first example, if you get a gift tempting gift of food, consider giving it away. Better to have the calories on someone else’s hips!  I’ve been given holiday gifts of cookies and chocolate and have learned the hard way that I’m not very good at controlling my intake of these foods, so I now know to give them away before I even open the package.  Check out my previous post called “Can Nutritionists Control Their Intake of Sweets?” to get ideas of how other nutritionists deal with problem foods.