How much do you ACTUALLY eat?

How many calories is the average Thanksgiving meal? The New York Times Tara Parker-Pope looked into that because there’s a figure from the Calorie Control Council which I find incredible — that the average Thanksgiving meal can hit 4500 Calories. That includes 229 grams of fat.

That’s just the one meal — doesn’t count breakfast or leftovers. You might as well just sit down to three sticks of butter.

So Tara decided to check the figures… and the good news is, that to get to that level, you would have to be pathologically gluttonous.

Here’s what she came up with: four ounces of dark meat, two ounces of white WITH the skin, stuffing with not just bread but with SAUSAGE, dinner roll with butter, a half cup of the traditional mashed potatoes, PLUS butter-enhanced sweet potato casserole with brown sugar and marshmallows, PLUS gravy, plus 2/3rds of a cup of the green bean casserole, plus cranberry sauce, Brussels sprouts, a piece of pumpkin pie, a piece of pecan pie which at 500 calories is the most caloric single serving on the menu, and with all that the total calorie count came NOWHERE NEAR 4500.

It came to 2,486.

And yes, that’s a lot, but compared to 4500, doesn’t seem like that much at all.

So there you have the key to a guilt-free feast. Just tell yourself, whatever I eat, there’s probably someone who ate more. And there’s no law that says you need to wipe the fog off the bathroom mirror. Or even have a bathroom mirror at all.