It’s dreaded by every woman on a diet—the holidays! Holidays are filled with tons of food, the nemesis of every dieter on the planet. If you’re worried about how your diet will suffer during the holidays, try these tips for coping:

• Get Active. Just because it’s cold outside doesn’t mean you can’t be active. Organize a group and go on a winter hike or ice skating. Even caroling can help take the focus off food while giving you some mild exercise too. Or go for a long walk to look at the Christmas lights. Think of small ways to stay active rather than vegging out indoors.

• Snack Light. Don’t be afraid to have a few snacks at a party. But beware of snacking during the entire 3-5 hours! Allow yourself a small plate of snacks and stop there.

• Eat before you leave. If you’re really worried about eating too much at a party, have a light, healthy meal before you leave. Eat something nutritious and filling, but leave enough room for a light dessert.

•  Watch the Alcohol – With all those parties those few drinks can really add up. Take it easy on the alcohol as it has tons of calories. A good trick is to have a wine spritzer, mix a little wine with some club soda and sip slowly throughout the night; this could cut down your alcohol intake nearly by half.

• Forget about the Diet. Well don’t dump your diet altogether or you may regret in the New Year, just don’t focus on it. If you constantly worry about your diet or how many pounds you might gain during the holidays, you’ll be likely to eat more. Instead, concentrate on the wonderful company you are sharing and stop worrying so much about overeating.

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The less sugar you use, the greater the flavor impact of the fruit. If honey is used, there will be a flavor change and the jellies/jams must be cooked longer. If you use artificial sweeteners, use only the Cyclamate type to avoid bitterness and follow the manufacturer's instructions. Cooked down jellies in which the juice is extracted by the open kettle method contain 60% fruit versus commercial products with only 45%.

Jelly: has great clarity from dripping the cooked fruit through a cloth before adding sugar and finishing.

Jams, Butter and Pastes: are whole fruit purees of increasing density.

Marmalades, Preserves and Conserves: are bits of fruit in a heavy syrup.

High Pectin Fruits: Apples, Crabapples, Quinces, Red Currants, Gooseberries, Plums and Cranberries. These need no additional pectin. If you get syrupy jelly you used too much sugar or did not cook the juice long enough after adding the sugar.

Low Pectin Fruits: Strawberries, Blueberries, Peaches, Apricots, Cherries, Pears, Blackberries, Raspberries, Grapes, Pineapple and Rhubarb. These require combining with high pectin fruits or adding a commercial pectin.

To Test Pectin Content: Put 1 tablespoon cooled fruit juice in a glass. Add an equal amount of grain alcohol and shake gently. The alcohol will bring the pectin together in a gel. If a large amount of pectin is present, it will appear in a single mass or clot when poured from the glass. Use equal amounts of juice and sugar. If the pectin collects in several small particles, use have as much sugar as juice.

To sterilize jelly glasses: Fill jars 3/4 full of water and place them in a shallow pan partly filled with water. Simmer 15 min and then keep hot until filled. If the lids are placed on the steaming jars, they will be sterilized simultaneously.

Tips:

• Use enamel or stainless steel pots not aluminum or copper.
• On average, use 3/4 c sugar to 1 c fruit or juice depending on pectin content[see above].
• Very acid fruits can tolerate a whole c of sugar.
• Sterilize jars and seal tightly.
• For fruit that tends to discolor add lemon juice or Ascorbic acid.
• Keep in a cool dark place but do not refrigerate.

Making Jam: is easiest and most economical as it needs only one cooking step and uses the pulp. Measure the fruit. In putting it in the pan, crush the lower layers to provide moisture until more is drawn out by cooking or add a little water. Simmer the fruit until it is soft. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Bring to a boil, stirring to avoid sticking. Reduce heat and cook until thickened- up to 1/2 hr.

Making Preserves and Conserves: Place fruit in a pot with an equal amount of sugar in layers ending with sugar on top and allow to rest overnight. Bring slowly to a boil and simmer until fruit is translucent. Drain fruit and put in sterile jars. Simmer syrup longer if necessary to thicken it and pour over fruit. Seal and store.

Making juice for jelly: Wash and drain fruit. Prick or crush the fruit. Add water if fruit is not juicy enough eg. apples. Add enough to the kettle that you can see it through the fruit but the fruit is not floating. Cook uncovered until the fruit is soft and loosing its color. Have ready a jelly bag [several layers of cheese cloth] . Wet it, wring it out and line a strainer with it. Let the juice drip through without squeezing it as this muddies and flavors the jelly.

*This juice can be kept up to 6 months before proceeding by freezing or canning it.

Making jelly: Measure the strained juice and put it in an enamel or stainless steel pan. Simmer 5 min. Skim off froth. Measure and warm sugar in a pan in the oven and add it. Stir until dissolved. Cook at a gentle simmer until the point of jelling. To test, place a small amount of jelly on a spoon, cool it slightly and let it drop back into the pot from the side of the spoon. As the syrup thickens, 2 large drops will form along the edge of the spoon. when these two drops run together and fall as a single drop the “sheeting” stage has been reached- 220 to 222 deg F and the jelly will be firm when cooled. It can take anywhere from 10 to 30 min for jelly to reach this stage depending on the fruit and the amount of sugar. Take the jars from the sterilizing bath and invert on a cake cooler. They should be hot but dry when filled. Fill to 1/4″ from the top. Cover with melted paraffin 1/8″ deep.

Loss of weight indicates, almost guarantees, that detoxification and healing is occurring. I can”t stress this too much. I find some patients seem to misunderstand or forget after being told. It is that they can't heal in a rapid manner without getting smaller.

This reality is especially hard for the family and friends of someone who is fasting, who will say, “you”re looking terrible dear, so thin. Your skin is hanging on your bones. You”re not eating enough protein or nutrient food to be healthy and you must eat more or you”re going to develop serious deficiencies. You don”t have any energy, you must be getting sicker. You”re doing the wrong thing, obviously. You have less energy and look worse every day. Go and see a doctor before it is too late.” To succeed with friends like this, a faster has to be a mighty self-determined person with a powerful ability to disagree with others.

Medical personnel claim that rapid weight loss often causes dangerous deficiencies; these deficiencies force the person to overeat and regain even more weight afterward. This is largely untrue, though there is one true aspect to it: a fasted, detoxified body becomes a much more efficient digester and assimilator, extracting a lot more nutrition from the same amount food is used to eat. If, after extended fasting a person returns to eating the same number of calories as they did before; they will gain weight even more rapidly than before they stated fasting.

When fasting for weight loss, the only way to keep the weight off is to greatly reform the diet; to go on, and stay on, a diet made up largely of non starchy,watery fruits and vegetables, limited quantities of cooked food, and very limited amounts of highly concentrated food sources like cereals and cooked legumes. Unless, of course, after fasting, one”s lifestyle involves much very hard physical labor or exercise. I've had a few obese fasters become quite angry with me for this reason; they hoped to get thin through fasting and after the fast, to resume overeating with complete irresponsibility as before, without weight gain.

People also fear weight loss during fasting because they fear becoming anorexic or bulimic. They won’t! A person who abstains from eating for the purpose of improving their health, in order to prevent or treat illness, or even one who fasts for weight loss will not develop an eating disorder. Eating disorders mean eating compulsively because of a distorted body image. Anorexics and bulimics have obsessions with the thinner-is-better school of thought. The anorexic looks at their emaciated frame in the mirror and thinks they are fat! This is the distorted perception of a very insecure person badly in need of therapy. A bulimic, on the other hand stuffs themselves, usually with bad food, and then purges it by vomiting, or with laxatives. Anorexics and bulimics are not accelerating the healing potential of their bodies; these are life threatening conditions.

Fasters are genuinely trying to enhance their survival potential. Occasionally a neurotic individual with a pre-existing eating disorder will become obsessed with fasting and colon cleansing as a justification to legitimize their compulsion. During my career while monitoring hundreds of fasters, I've known two of these. I discourage them from fasting or colon cleansing, and refuse to assist them, because they carry the practices to absurd extremes, and contribute to bad press about natural medicine by ending up in the emergency ward of a hospital with an intravenous feeding tube in their arm.

• A smoothie is basically a blended fruit drink. The best-tasting smoothies are made from fruit that is fresh or frozen, and not canned.

• All smoothies begin with a liquid base. This can be orange juice, milk or another liquid.

• You can make a frostier drink by freezing fresh fruit before making a smoothie.

• Smoothies are best when they're fresh out of the blender, but they can be frozen the night before, as well – just remove the smoothie from the freezer about an hour before drinking.

• You can replace a meal with a smoothie or shake by adding a scoop of high-quality protein powder and a tbsp. of high-quality olive or flax oil.

1. Put the fruit in the blender first. Make sure that the items are smaller than a golf ball so they will blend completely. Add the liquid ingredients next.

2. Fasten the lid and press the start button. Use high speed for about 20- 30 seconds.

3. Stop the blender and check to see if the ingredients are well blended. Sometimes the frozen fruit will jam under the blade. If there is jammed fruit, use a spatula to unjam the fruit, and blend again.

4. Once the mixture is evenly blended, slowly add two ice cubes through the opening of the blender lid. Keep adding one or two ice cubes at a time until the blender sounds smooth. If your blender is not strong enough to blend ice cubes, omit the ice and substitute just enough cold water so that the shake will have a milk shake consistency.

5. If the shake/smoothie is too thin, add more fruit or ice. If it’s too thick, add more liquid.