You know what I’m talking about: artful photos of smartly portioned plates that promise to shave a couple hundred calories off your turkey dinner; a chart that tells you which pie is the least bad (pumpkin—it’s a veggie, after all!) and which one is totally off limits (pecan—SO MUCH FAT); and dietician-approved tips on the best breakfast and snacks to keep you from obliterating your calorie bank before the main event. And if you want to make yourself feel like a puppy staring longingly at the table when his family decides he isn’t allowed to have people food, you can go ahead and follow all that advice. MORE: 5 Incredible Superfood Sides to Add to Your Thanksgiving Lineup But Thanksgiving only happens one measly time a year. And instead of measuring your gravy by the teaspoon or forgoing your mom’s famous Thanksgiving Morning Cinnamon Buns for a sad bowl of oat bran, you might be better off just eating whatever the hell you want. Really. Because despite what all those articles are telling you, a single day of gluttony isn’t going to make you gain a bunch of weight. Even though it seems like you’re stuffing yourself silly (especially if you’re used to eating salmon and quinoa for dinner), you’re still probably eating less than you think. In fact, a generous Thanksgiving dinner—including two slices of pie for dessert—will run you about 2,500 calories, New York Times health writer Tara Parker Pope estimated back in 2012. “Throw in a few glasses of wine, breakfast, and some snacks, and it’s certainly possible to binge your way to 4,500 calories,” she added. Which is obviously a lot for one day. But if you eat like a sane person for the rest of the week, it probably isn’t enough to do any lasting damage. This isn’t to say that the scale won’t read a little higher than usual the next morning: You’ve got a ton of food working its way through your digestive tract, and you’re probably crazy-bloated from all that extra sugar, salt, and alcohol. But once you go back to eating your normal, clean stuff, it’ll only take a few days for all that crap to work its way out of your system. You’ll be back at your regular weight, and your jeans will no longer feel like a boa constrictor around your waist. MORE: This Is the Cleanest Type of Thanksgiving Turkey You Can Buy But the weight thing is just a small part of it. The real reason why you should throw caution to the wind is that diets and Thanksgiving are fundamentally at odds with each other. Diets are about limits and deprivation. Thanksgiving is about celebrating abundance. Not just abundance in food, of course, but that’s certainly part of it. If you wake up on the fourth Thursday in November with a carefully crafted plan to control your calorie intake, you’re missing the entire point. Some researchers even argue that the reason we end up overeating is because we’ve deprived ourselves of delicious food. Think about it—watching everyone else in your family devour buttery stuffing, crispy turkey skin, velvety mashed potatoes, and way too much booze while you pick at your palm-size portion of white meat and half-cup of green beans is guaranteed to send you marching downstairs at midnight to mindlessly scarf down the rest of the corn pudding that you told yourself you couldn’t have at dinner. MORE: The New Reason You Should Stop Counting Calories to Lose Weight Of course, no one is saying that you should indeed gorge yourself. But parsing the nutritional difference between two types of sugar- and butter-laden pies or passing on the stuffing because OMG, carbs! isn’t just a buzzkill, it’s absurd. So when Thursday rolls around, please go ahead and eat whatever your heart desires. Pile up your plate once, twice, or however many times you want. And have some kale on hand. Come Friday morning, you’re probably gonna want a green smoothie.
