Staying focused on raw food during the holidays can be challenging. Thanksgiving is only a day away and in my world, it signals the start of the holiday season. Parties, entertaining, and food, food, food! It is the time of year that we tend to throw our healthy eating habits to the wind and declare a ban on broccoli. Holidays mean food, but they don’t mean you have to completely abandon the progress you have been making towards healthy eating and incorporating raw food into your diet.

We have a little time left to make an eating game plan. A little advanced planning can help you make better choices and not descend in to holiday eating hell. I will give you some of my best suggestions to keep you on the straight and narrow! Or curvy and fun, but healthy.

Offer to Bring a Raw Food Dish People are quite interested in raw food these days. What better way to show people how good healthy food can be than to offer to bring a dish. Make something simple but company worthy. There are quite a few recipes here that would travel easily and not be too time consuming to make. Try the cheesecake, or the cinnamon ginger truffles. They are easy and will be sure to please.

Eat Before You Go One of my best tricks is to eat something very healthy before I go to the party. Even drinking a green drink will give you great clean energy and fill you up a bit so you won’t be as tempted to indulge in the not-so-healthy stuff. I find that if I get  clean, green food in my stomach, it helps me tremendously.

Scout Out the Good Stuff Before you just get in line for that buffet, take a minute to see what is on the table and make a game plan. Look for the healthiest foods and load your plate up with those. Make sure you eat the good stuff before you even think about anything else. Many tables will have a lot of veggies, fruits and nuts on them. Easy and raw.

Really, what is required is just a little advanced planning and being present when you make your choices. If you make your plan before hand, it will be much easier to stick to the healthy foods.

I will be focusing on raw food recipes that feature holiday food through the end of the year. I already have friends asking me to make raw versions of their favorite foods. This should be fun!