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For nearly 25 years, researchers from the University of Michigan have followed the lifestyle habits of a group of 3,000 Generation X adults — men and women born between the years 1961 and 1981. The latest report [PDF] based on the ongoing study focused on Gen Xers and food, and found that this generation is a lot more conscious about food — especially the men — than their predecessors were.

The data collected as part of the Longitudinal Study of American Youth found that Generation X adults spend more time shopping and cooking food, watching cooking shows on TV and talking to their friends about food or cooking.

“Generation X adults view life as a smorgasbord and have a little bit of everything in terms of food,” says study author Jon Miller, the director of the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

(MORE: Working Moms Multitask More Than Dads — and Like It Less)

Gen X men are more involved in all aspects of meal preparation — from grocery shopping to cooking — than their fathers were. These men spend more time in the kitchen than their dads did, cooking about eight meals a week and buying groceries more than one a week.

“Men have fun in the kitchen,” says Miller. “I was surprised by how often they shop and cook. If men just happened to wander into the kitchen and make something, that makes more sense, but when you buy into the whole process, then you’re into it. Clearly they are into it.”

Gen X men also watch cooking shows and read magazine articles on cooking just as much as women do. “Males overall get something different out of watching cooking shows than women because I don’t think men have as many cooking skills acquired young at their parents arm. My guess is young men are still learning basic skills. They are still learning how to boil water,” says Miller.

(MORE: Why Families Who Eat Together Are Healthier)

The shifting roles in the kitchen is also likely a sign of modern household dynamics. In many Gen X couples, both partners have full-time jobs outside the home and share household responsibilities. “In previous generations, there was often a disparity, and the husband’s job brought in more money or was more time consuming. That’s not the case anymore,” says Miller. “Now there is much more parity between genders and in many cases, the woman makes more. That means there is a reallocation of time and duties for these people.”

Dr. John Ardizzone, the director of assessment services program at the Family Institute at Northwestern University who is unaffiliated with the study, says he also sees more professional men taking on domestic duties than he did in the past. “The men in this age group definitely do more work in the home, and more cooking for sure,” says Dr. Ardizzone. “They also help out more with their kids than you would stereotypically expect of men. They are putting their kids to bed and giving them baths. They share in chores and responsibilities.”

Again, their motivation has a lot to do with the fact that their partners and spouses are working full-time too, says Dr. Ardizzone, and the household tasks need to be divided. “These women are well-educated, are working more or also have more interests outside the house that take up time,” says Dr. Ardizzone.

“It’s ‘have to’ and ‘want to,'” says Ellen Galinsky, the president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute in New York. The Institute released a national study of the changing workforce in 2008. “These men can have to do more cooking and want to at the same time. We find that women are changing too. Younger women are just as ambitious as men. Men are becoming more family involved and women are becoming more work and career involved.”

(MORE: Why Fathers Have Lower Levels of Testosterone)

The Gen X report revealed a few surprises: for instance, only 9% of the surveyed adults said they preferred to buy organic foods when available. About half said they buy organic “some of the time,” but the other half almost never purchase organic. “There is this perception that Generation X people are passionate organic buyers and it is not necessarily true,” says Miller. “I think they also take into account price, availability and other factors and don’t feel the need to always buy organic. Those who are really devoted are a much smaller group than we would’ve guessed.”

Here are some other key eating habit findings in the study:

• On average, Generation Xers cook meals for guests about once a month and talk to friends about food or cooking about six times a month.
• Married women cook the most and prepare about 12 meals a week. Single women cook about 10 meals a week and both married and single men cook about eight meals weekly.
• Generation Xers have a low level of genetically modified food knowledge. “Generally speaking they know more about genes and biology than their parents did, but genetically modified food is not something they think about often,” says Miller. “Those who are scientifically literate still monitor food news about food safety.”

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People following a Mediterranean-style diet may have the best chance of keeping weight off — and doing it without causing negative side effects — according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers led by Cara Ebbeling at Boston Children’s Hospital compared three different diets in people who had already lost weight. Knowing that dieters often struggle to maintain their slimmer bodies, the researchers sought to study the impact of the diets on energy expenditure — that is, which diet helps people burn the most calories a day and would, therefore, help keep them from regaining the weight. The researchers measured the participants’ levels of hormones, enzymes, blood fats and insulin sensitivity, and other markers of heart health and diabetes risk.

(MORE: Why Dieters Can’t Keep the Weight Off)

The study included 21 overweight and obese adults, aged 18 to 40, who first followed a three-month diet plan (containing 45% of total calories from carbohydrates, 30% from fat and 25% from protein) and lost 10% to 15% of their body weight. A month later, participants were randomly rotated through the three test diets, each for one month at a time:

• Low-fat: about 20% of total calories from fat, 60% from carbohydrates and 20% from protein. The diet focuses on whole-grain foods and fruits and vegetables, and reduces intake of fatty meats, oils, nuts and other high-fat products
• Low-carb: modeled after the Atkins diet, with 10% of total calories from carbs, 30% from protein and 60% from fat. The diet minimizes intake of carbohydrates, including bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, baked goods and starchy vegetables, while upping consumption of beef, fish, chicken, eggs, cheese and some fruits and veggies
• Low-glycemic index: similar to the Mediterranean diet, with 40% of total calories from carbs, 40% from fat and 20% from protein. The diet emphasizes whole grains like oatmeal and brown rice, low-fat meats like fish, fruits and vegetables, beans and healthy fats from olive oil and nuts. It avoids highly processed, sugary carbs and snack foods.

Participants on the low-carb diet burned the most calories — on average 325 calories more a day compared with the low-fat group — but there was a side effect. These dieters also saw increases in the stress hormone cortisol and CRP, a marker of inflammation and a risk factor for heart disease. (In another, unrelated study published in BMJ on Tuesday, researchers confirmed that Swedish women on a low-carbohydrate diet such as Atkins increased their risk of heart disease by 28% compared to women not on such diets.)

(MORE: For Successful Weight Loss, Forget Fad Diets and Pills)

People on the low-glycemic index diet burned about 150 calories more each day than the low-fat group, about the equivalent of an hour of moderate exercise, but without the harmful heart effects. The low-fat dieters burned the fewest calories a day, and they also showed increases in triglycerides and lower levels of good cholesterol.

“For weight loss and heart disease prevention, avoid diets that severely restrict any major nutrient, either fat or carbohydrate,” study author Dr. David Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, told Bloomberg News. “Instead focus on reducing the highly processed carbohydrates that cause surges and crashes in blood sugar like white bread, white rice, prepared breakfast cereals, those low-fat snack foods and concentrated sugars.”

Those surges and crashes may trigger increases in hunger and appetite, by prompting the brain to seek out calories to make up for the loss it senses. If the body thinks it’s not getting enough calories, it also dials down metabolism to conserve energy — and that could lead people to regain lost weight.

(MORE: Study: Does Eating White Rice Raise Your Risk of Diabetes?)

What the study suggests is that a calorie isn’t just a calorie. “It says that from a metabolic perspective all calories are not alike,” Ludwig told the Boston Globe. “The quality of the calories going in affects the number of calories going out.”

Ludwig says the low-glycemic index diet represents a good “middle ground” — it doesn’t drastically reduce any major nutrient, and instead focuses on including a wide variety of foods with high-quality nutrients — for maintaining weight loss.

Some nutrition and weight loss researchers commenting on the new study qualified its results. In an interview with USA Today, Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University and author of Why Calories Count, noted, for example, that longer-term studies of people dieting in the real world (in contrast, the current study gave participants prepared food, much of which they ate at the hospital) showed little difference between different types of diets on weight loss and maintenance. The key is simply to eat less, she said.

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Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Decades ago, in the 1930s, researchers working with lab rats made an interesting discovery. Animals that had been deprived of food seemed to live longer than rodents that were fed to satisfaction, raising the intriguing idea that maybe near-starvation was a good, rather than bad thing, for health.

Follow up studies, particularly in yeast, confirmed the trend and some forward-thinking scientists even began restricting their caloric intake in the hopes of seeing some extra years. But the latest research conducted on close human cousins, rhesus monkeys, shows that the connection may not be as solid as once hoped.

Published in the journal Nature, the results suggest that dramatically cutting back on daily calories — by 30% — does not help monkeys to live longer than those who ate normally. The restriction did help older monkeys to lower their levels of triglycerides, a risk factor for heart disease, but otherwise conferred no significant health or longevity benefit.

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Caloric restriction may have its evolutionary roots as a survival mechanism, allowing species to survive on scraps when food is scarce in order to continue to reproduce. But that restriction only has lasting positive effects if the overall diet is a balanced one, which may not always be the case in conditions of famine. (That also explains why anorexia is so unhealthy:  people who starve themselves become malnourished). It’s possible the strategy developed as a way to protect species from consuming toxic plants or foods, when it wasn’t always obvious which sources were verboten.

The study, begun in 1987 and one of the longest running trials to investigate the effects of caloric restriction, contradicts the only prior research conducted with rhesus monkeys, which found the opposite effect, highlighting the complex relationship between caloric processing and metabolic functions that contribute to aging and health.

For example, the study’s lead author, Rafael de Cabo of the National Institute on Aging, notes that the effects of caloric restriction on the immune system may not be all good: some studies show slower wound healing and increased risk for infectious disease. In young animals, restricting calories also reduces fertility.

(MORE: How to Live 100 Years – Health Checkup: How to Live 100 Years)

It’s not entirely clear why the two monkey studies had such varying results. Ricki Colman, a co-author of the first monkey study and an associate scientist at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, believes that the differences may reflect variance in the diets given to the animals in the two studies. “They may be modeling different things,” she says, explaining that in her study, the control animals were allowed to eat freely while in the new research, both controls and those on the restricted diet were limited to specific maximum amounts. Her control animals, she says, may reflect more of a typical American diet, while the controls in the new research are more like people who already eat healthy amounts. Colman’s Wisconsin study diet also contained far more sugar— 29% of calories, compared to 4% in the NIA trial. In fact, 40% of control animals in the Wisconsin study developed diabetes, but none of the restricted monkeys did, despite their sugary meals.

“If I told you that eating less would prevent diabetes, I don’t think you’d be surprised,” says Dr. Steven Austad of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, who wrote a commentary on the new study for Nature.  He’s spoken to groups of people who have already put themselves on caloric restriction, hoping for longer life.  Rodents on such diets live to the human equivalent of 120-130. But this research suggests “you’re not going to live to 130,” he concludes.

MORE: Too Good To Be True? Anti-Aging Proteins Not So Potent After All

Indeed, the NIA study implies that the benefits of simply eating a balanced, healthy diet may provide as much life extension as dietary restrictions  can produce. The meals received by both groups of animals in the study were carefully balanced for nutrient content and even shifted with the seasons  as the monkeys’ natural diet in the wild would.

Even with the findings, however, some experts are still holing out hope that restricting calories may prove beneficial for certain health outcomes, specifically in combating cancer and heart disease. The question, of course, is how much restriction can you get away with in order to still get these benefits — and whether a drug could replicate caloric restriction without the self-discipline needed to enforce it. One such possibility, based on a compound found in red wine called resveratrol, is already being tested but its safety and effectiveness in humans has not yet been demonstrated. Austad himself is studying another drug that has shown life extension benefits in rodents called rapamycin, which is already approved to suppress immune rejection in patients receiving organ transplants.

To understand why the NIA and Wisconsin groups got such different results, they plan to collaborate to fully analyze the data generated by the two trials. “We consider our two studies to be complementary, not competitive,” says Colman,  “We have plans to work together to directly compare information from our two studies.” The result, they hope, may be some version of the Fountain of Youth.

(MORE: Sweet! A Little Chocolate a Day May Help Lower Blood Pressure)
Maia Szalavitz is a health writer at TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

A daily multivitamin doesn’t protect against heart attack, stroke or heart-related death, according to a new large-scale study among men.

It’s the first large trial in which men were randomly assigned to either take a multivitamin or a placebo and then followed to see if the vitamins had any effect on their rate of heart disease. But after 10 years, researchers found no difference in heart-disease rates between the two groups.

Previous studies on the topic have been both conflicting and confusing, with some showing a higher risk of early death, including from cancer, among those taking multivitamins or supplements, and others showing a benefit in avoiding death from cancer among men. But most of those trials followed people who chose to take multivitamins and compared them with people who did not, setting up a potential bias since it’s hard to determine if multivitamin users are more health conscious and therefore do other things to protect their health, including taking a multivitamin, that may account for their lower risk of heart problems.

(MORE: The Truth About Vitamin D)

For this latest study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers led by Howard Sesso of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School studied a group of almost 15,000 male physicians age 50 or older in the Physicians’ Health Study, a long-term trial begun in 1997 that analyzes a number of different health outcomes. The researchers randomly selected half of the physicians to take a daily multivitamin while the other half took a placebo. None of the study participants knew whether they were receiving the real vitamin supplements or an inactive stand-in.

Over 11 years of follow up, the physician participants recorded 652 heart attacks and 643 strokes, and 829 men died from a cardiovascular-related cause. But there was no significant difference in the rates of these events between the men who took the multivitamins and the men who did not. The multivitamins didn’t seem to make any difference at all.

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More than half of American adults take some form of dietary supplement, and roughly 40% take a multivitamin, according to an editorial accompanying the new research. Vitamin supplements are supposed to guard against nutritional deficiencies. But the people most likely to take them every day — not unlike the doctors enrolled in this new study — tend to be wealthier, healthier and more educated than average. These people are the least likely to be poorly nourished or have dietary deficiencies that vitamins would correct. So as the study results show, they may also be the least likely to benefit from supplements.

However, Sesso and his colleagues say their study looks only at the effects of multivitamins on heart-disease outcomes. It does not consider cancers, osteoporosis or any other conditions, some of which could be affected by the use of nutritional supplements. And the trial did not find any evidence that multivitamins are harmful to heart health.

(MORE: CDC: More than Half of Americans Take Vitamins or Supplements)

Still, some experts hope that the results lead the public, and their doctors, to question multivitamins and what role they play in their health. Many people, for example, overestimate the benefits of nutritional supplements like multivitamins and rely on them as cure-alls or worthy substitutes for a healthy diet. According to Dr. Eva Lonn, a cardiology professor at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, who wrote the editorial:

[M]any people with heart disease risk factors or previous [cardiovascular disease (CVD)] events lead sedentary lifestyles, eat processed or fast foods, continue to smoke, and stop taking lifesaving prescribed medications, but purchase and regularly use vitamins and other dietary supplements, in the hope that this approach will prevent a future [heart attack] or stroke. This distraction from effective CVD prevention is the main hazard of using vitamins and other unproven supplements. The message needs to remain simple and focused: CVD is largely preventable, and this can be achieved by eating healthy foods, exercising regularly, avoiding tobacco products, and, for those with high risk factor levels or previous CVD events, taking proven, safe, and effective medications.

Supplements are often marketed to look like over-the-counter medications. But they are not regulated like medications. While drugs are rigorously tested before they can be sold in stores, supplements can hint at health benefits without strong evidence. Supplement packaging will usually carry a disclaimer like: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.” But that may not be enough to remind people that they aren’t designed to replace a healthy lifestyle. As tempting as they are, multivitamins may not be the panacea that many think they are; and, as the latest research shows, they can’t replace a diet low in salt and fat and regular exercise for keeping the heart healthy.

The good news: we’re eating fewer calories. The bad news: that’s not translating into lower obesity rates.

Two federal studies on the amount of calories Americans eat show that we are eating less than we did about a decade ago, and that we’re also limiting the amount of fast food we consume.

Between 2007 to 2010, about 11.3% of daily calories came from from fast food, down from 12.8% reported between 2003 to 2006, according to data collected by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Fast food consumption decreased with age, with adults aged 60 and older eating the least of this type of food. For younger adults, non-Hispanic black adults reporting eating the most fast food, with more than one-fifth of their daily calories coming from fast food chains.

(MORE: U.S. Obesity Rates Remain Stubbornly High)

Not surprisingly, those who took in the most calories from fast food favorites also weighed the most. “The good news from this study is that as we get older, perhaps we do get wiser and eat less fast food,” Samantha Heller, a clinical nutritionist at the NYU Center for Musculoskeletal Care in New York City told HealthDay. “However, a take-home message is that the study suggests that the more fast food you eat, the fatter you get.”

The second study, also conducted by the CDC, looked at American kids aged 2 to 19 and found that boys were eating fewer calories, dropping from an average of 2,258 calories a day in 1999-2000 to approximately 2,100 calories in 2009-2010. The trend also applied to girls, who ate 76 fewer calories on average in the same time period. Most of this decline came in the form of carbohydrates; children continued to eat about the same amount of fats while increasing the protein they consumed.

“The children had a decrease in carbohydrates, and one of the carbohydrates is added sugars,” says CDC researcher Cynthia L. Ogden, who oversaw the research. “There is evidence showing that added sugars have decreased in general,  and that these things are related to obesity. I think it will be interesting to continue to watch these trends and see what happens nationally.” Ogden says a major source of added sugar in diets comes from sugar-sweetened beverages, and as research shows limiting this sweet drinks can curb weight gain, parents may be curbing the amount of sweetened sodas children drink.

(MORE: Childhood Obesity Rates Drop Slightly In Some Cities: What Are They Doing Right?)

But if Americans are eating less fast food overall, why are obesity rates still so high? As encouraging as the calorie data are, the decreases aren’t significant enough to make a dent in upward trend of obesity. “To reverse the current prevalence of obesity, these numbers have to be a lot bigger,” Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University told the New York Times. “But they are trending in the right direction, and that’s good news.”

It may depend on how you look at the data. According to Ogden, while obesity rates may be high, the latest statistics show they may be stable, and not continuing to climb upward. “The rate of obesity has been flat recently in both children and in adults and some studies have come out recently that have found a decrease in obesity or childhood obesity in some cities. Still, a third of U.S. adults are obese and 17% of children are obese, but given this relatively stability, I think that these two studies show very interesting results,” says Ogden.

(MORE: Cutting Out Soda Curbs Children’s Weight Gain, Studies Show)

“I think [these findings] are a great start. I am happy to see there is a slight decrease. It still shows that for as much effort that has been put into messaging and positive nutrition promotion, we still have a lot of work to do. There are a lot of people who still need to be touched,” says Laura Jeffers, a registered dietitian at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Refining that message may require delving deeper in what Americans are eating, and addressing the balance between the amount of calories that we eat and the amount we burn off daily through physical activity. Jeffers speculates that even though fast food consumption is down, Americans may be eating unhealthy calories elsewhere. “I think that overall, people are not consuming the majority of their meals at fast food. Even-though maybe fast food has decreased, the majority of calorie consumption is not from the fast food restaurants. Looking at portion sizes and what people are getting in the home and the nutrition and health from those foods, should be another focus as to why the obesity rate is continuing to climb,” she says.

And while eating less is a good way to start addressing the obesity epidemic, it may be that slimming the national waistline means we also have to boost the amount of exercise we get every day.

The largest study to date on the effects of eating omega-3 fatty acids confirm that foods high in the fats can preserve memory and cognitive functions only in people without diabetes.

Health experts hold up the Mediterranean diet as likely the best way to eat to stay healthy into old age. High in fruits and vegetables, as well as grains and oils low in saturated fats, the diet is linked to lower risk of heart attacks, stroke, childhood asthma and cancer.

(MORE: It’s the Olive Oil: Mediterranean Diet Lowers Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke)

A study from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Athens, Greece now shows that people around age 64 who primarily ate a Mediterranean diet, which is high in omega-3 fatty acids, may also have a lower risk of memory loss.

Because there are no pharmaceutical cures or treatments for memory loss or dementia, the researchers say such lifestyle behaviors that can slow or prevent cognitive decline are important strategies for keeping the brain sharp.

The 17,478 African-American and Caucasian men and women were part of the REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study, and they answered questions about their dietary habits, including how well they stuck to the principles of the Mediterranean diet and avoided red meats and dairy products. The volunteers also agreed to take tests to measure their memory and cognitive abilities over an average of four years.

Seven percent of the study participants developed cognitive impairments during the study period of about four years. Among the healthy participants, those who most consistently ate a Mediterranean diet were 13% less likely to develop memory and thinking problems.

(MORE: Mediterranean Diet Linked to Lower Child-Asthma Risk)

The same benefit did not apply, however, to the 17% of people with diabetes; among those with diabetes, people who followed the Mediterranean diet were 30% more likely to show signs of cognitive impairments during the study than those who didn’t follow the diet. Among non-diabetics, the participants who ate more olive oil, omega-3 fatty acids and avoided red meats, dairy and cheese were 19% less likely to have cognitive problems by the end of the study than those who ate more of these foods. That suggests that diabetes may affect brain function via different routes not influenced by omega-3 fatty acids or other dietary nutrients.

“Diet is an important modifiable activity that could help in preserving cognitive functioning in late life,” said study author Dr. Georgios Tsivgoulis, with the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Athens, Greece in a statement. “However, it is only one of several important lifestyle activities that might play a role in late-life mental functioning. Exercise, avoiding obesity, not smoking cigarettes and taking medications for conditions like diabetes and hypertension are also important.”

The results showed no significant difference in rates of cognitive decline between African-Americans and Caucasians, although the researchers had hypothesized that African-Americans might benefit more from omega-3 fatty acids since they have a higher overall rates of hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and stroke, all of which are risk factors that should put them at greater risk of developing dementia and memory problems.

It’s possible, however, that the scientists did not see any benefits from the Mediterranean diet by race because the effects of dietary habits, such as the fact that certain populations eat fewer fruits and vegetables overall, might override any potential benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Rates of diabetes also tend to be higher in African-American groups, and that could also negate any positive influences the Mediterranean diet had in protecting cognitive functions.

The study is published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

This Thanksgiving, have your mashed potatoes and eat them too.

That advice, surprisingly, doesn’t come from you grandmother but from more dieticians and nutritionists who are actually helping people to maintain healthy weights. Yes, in addition to the usual roll-out of “How to Slim-down Your Thanksgiving” and tips on how to avoid packing on the pounds, some health experts are advising that we go a little easier on ourselves over the holidays. They’re certainly not recommending that you scarf up everything you see, but the key to keeping cravings and temptations in check may be to give in to some — in moderation.

That advice is based on some solid research. Studies show, for example, that when you put certain foods on a do-not-eat list, people end up wanting, and eating them more, and actually gaining weight. A 2012 study by researchers at Tel Aviv University found that dieters who ate a pastry every day lost more weight than dieters who avoided them completely. While both groups of dieters were on a low-calorie diet, the pastry group ate a cookie, slice of cake, doughnut or piece of chocolate every morning. Although by the end of the 16 week study, both groups had lost an average of 33 lbs, the group who treated themselves to dessert every morning went on to lose another 15 lbs on average, and reported feeling less hunger and cravings during that time. And researchers from the University of British Columbia reported that when people are told certain foods or objects are forbidden, the brain concentrates on them more than usual.

Other studies in mice have found that when the animals were only enticed with the occasional bit of sugar, then deprived of it, they were more likely to overindulge in sugar once it was brought back into their diet.

“Holiday asceticism makes no sense, because it ruins the holiday and is too little, too late anyway,” says Dr. David Katz, the director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center and author of the new book Disease Proof: The Remarkable Truth About What Makes Us Well. Watching everyone else dig into the feast is going to be tough if you insist on sitting it out. “The problem is when we deprive ourselves of foods that we love, it makes us want them more. Then, when we finally do have them, we overeat them. We lose the ability to control how much we eat of those foods,” says Keri Gans, a registered dietitian and author of The Small Change Diet.

But the key to this approach is maintaining a balance between what you eat with physical activity to burn off the added calories. “I, for one, will be enjoying a feast on Thanksgiving,” says Katz. “Of course, I will also spend a lot of time hiking, biking and playing football with my family and friends over the holiday weekend.”

So go ahead and substitute the sour cream with fat-free Greek yogurt if you like, or skip the mashed potatoes. But don’t feel so bad if you don’t. If you’re watching your portions, and not overloading your plate with gravy, it’s okay to have the higher calorie staples over the holidays.

“My whole thing about the holidays is that I am not big on making every dish a low-calorie dish. I’m not against it, but I feel like people should really look at a holiday as just a day. They should be able to enjoy the foods that are served. And just not over do it,” says Gans. “What I always encourage is that people enjoy the foods that they love and they learn to watch the portion size. I find if they don’t eliminate it, and still include it, when they do it eat it, they can be satisfied with the smaller portion.”

Katz says that overeating high calorie, fatty or sugary foods consistently makes the body only want more. So dipping into them every once in a while may actually help to minimize cravings and release you from a dependence on decadence. “The real defense of health resides with taking good care of yourself routinely, year round. If you do that, you can certainly afford a bit of indulgence at holiday time and,  it’s likely even your indulgence will be fairly salutary,” says Katz.

And if you do overdo it this holiday season, just start fresh the next day. “I recommend, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. [People] should forget about feeling guilty and they should get right back on track. That is the most important thing they should do. They should not all of a sudden get a diet mentality because that won’t work. They need to leave it behind,” says Gans.

Not worrying about what you can eat, and what you shouldn’t eat can also divert your attention away from food, and that can lead to a healthier relationship with your diet as well. The holidays are about spending time with friends and family, and food is part of that enjoyment — not obsessing about what’s on the table.