Like we need encouragement to eat a lot on Thanksgiving.  Bring on the 3500-calorie meal!

But just in case you need a little nudge, one diet expert offers some thoughts to help justify the over-eating.

There's no point in dieting on holidays, right?  One trainer says trying to watch what we eat on Thanksgiving can be torture, and can set us up for weight gain pitfalls down the road.  Awesome!  So we'd better go down that stuff-self-silly road instead.

The Huffington Post talked to Hollywood dieting and fitness expert, Harley Pasternak, and she said it's best to go ahead and embrace the family food traditions that make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  And that just might include gorging on a big slice of pumpkin pie (and then a slice of pecan because it just has to be sampled too), and then going back for another pile of turkey an hour later.  There will be football on.  Must eat.

Thanksgiving is just one meal out of over one thousand meals that we will consume in a year.  Just one!  So surely we can absorb one day of total gluttony.  Or recover from it.

What's your favorite Thanksgiving food?  Mine is that jellied cranberry sauce, and every Thanksgiving I marvel at how awesome it is to be able to slide a cylinder of jellied fruit out of a can and listen to it make that sucking noise, and then carve that mysterious hunk into discs.   Not every fruit can do it.  (Try that pineapple.)  It's amazing, and delicious on top of turkey.

I'm hungry just thinking about it!  Whatever calories we consume on Thursday, we can burn off on Black Friday.  Have a great Thanksgiving.

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