How to Cook Low Fat Holiday Dinners

With holiday season right around the corner, there's going to be lots of family, lots of presents, and lots of food. If you're on the hook to cook, you need to know how to cook low fat holiday dinners!

Things You'll Need:

• Grocery list
• Appetizers

1. Start out the holiday dinner with light appetizers like nuts, or fruits like dates and raisins, or good raw vegetable snacks like frogs on a log or broccoli with ranch.

   Getting some of the appetite "off the table" before the actual holiday dinner will keep people from overindulging in the really fattening foods.

2. Especially around Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, you can't keep fats and carbohydrates out of the kitchen. However, you can substitute many ingredients to limit the damage. For instance:

   1. Buy lactose fat free milk instead of fat milk. Lactose free is naturally sweeter.
   2. Cheese, butter, and creams all have substitutes that taste just as good.
   3. Sub out egg whites for egg yolks.
   4. Ice cream can easily be replaced with sherbert or frozen yogurt.

3. If you are also serving the holiday dinner, serve smaller portions to those who you deem need it. Part of the reason we overeat is that we supersize our portions, so make sure that the holiday dinner buffet line starts and ends with you.

4. After cooking the holiday dinner, instead of watching football, get in front of the Wii! The Wii specifically is a quite popular family system that promotes fitness and movement. It should be easy to get everyone involved -- remember that holiday dinners are family time.

   Get the kids involved and the adults will follow. They'll have to. Good luck!