If you're caught amid the holidays while you're on a weight loss plan, keeping focused and motivated is certainly challenging. With so many goodies hovering about, it's so hard to resist - but resist you must in order to keep losing those unwanted pounds.

Take special note that individuals who are on a weight loss plan generally toss the plan to the wind until after the holidays - during which they regain any lost weight plus additional pounds. As time marches forward, the New Year eventually arrives along with the scary 'weigh in' before the new diet commences.

So please, pay special attention and if you're in this holiday-dieting situation, stay true to your plan and when the New Year arrives, you'll be so glad that you did. So will your happy bath scales.

If just the holiday meal was involved, that wouldn't be so tough. One meal might have the power to generate a pound or two. The body requires 3,500 calories for that pound of weight to be generated, and because Thanksgiving and other holiday oriented foods tend to be mined with sugar and fat content, they can be extreme in caloric values - making a weight gain of a pound or two quite achievable. However, it's certainly nothing to cheer about, right? In fact, the common reaction to weight gain is either a shrill scream or a shuttering gasp.

Because the stretch of holidays typically last from October 31 until January 1, that's a long stretch to run through while dieting.

Those restricted calorie diets can indeed be even more maddening during the season where others are stuffing their faces with more comfort and joy that the dieter cares to think about while they're feasting on that wedge of lettuce, that little round pimento-stuffed olive and that wee stalk of celery.

One of your best solutions for getting through the holidays, Thanksgiving included, is to embrace your traditional recipes with lower calorie ingredients. For example if Aunt Martha's locally notorious pumpkin pie recipe contains ingredients which can be exchanged with lighter versions of the same product - then go for it!

If the recipe calls for cream, opt for light or reduced fat cream. Butter - try some low fat margarine OR use mashed or pureed fruit in the recipe instead of fat or recommended amounts of oil.

As for the Thanksgiving meal itself, concentrate on the roasted turkey as it's lean and light in caloric content. The protein can assist in making you feel full for a long time after the meal.

Avoid the candied sweet potatoes.

Limit the hot rolls to one.

Bring along your own stash of reduced fat margarine if necessary.

And that cranberry sauce; it contains six servings at 100 calories each for the medium can. That tiny can - 600 calories. Limit wisely.

Because mashed potatoes are generally plied with butter and at times, real cream cheese or sour cream, limit those too. And the stuffing - it's about 600 calories a cup too, so choose wisely.

When it comes to dessert, this is perhaps the most trying part of the meal, as well as the entire holiday season. We hope that you'll enjoy the following easy Thanksgiving recipe; it's low in caloric content and so tasty. It will definitely satisfy a nagging Sweet Tooth or two.

Strawberry Shortcut the Calories, a low calorie Thanksgiving Recipe

The Recipe Ingredients & How to Prepare

1 sponge cake dessert shell (100 calories)
1/2 cup of sliced strawberries and you can add any other berries that you like
Splenda (optional)
1 serving of light, fat reduced whipped cream (15 calories) or whipped toping [optional]
for a light glaze, heat up a bit of strawberry jam