8 Strategies to Completely Avoid Diet Wine This Thanksgiving

The holiday season officially starts next Thursday and, I’ll be honest, unless someone staples my mouth shut before Thanksgiving dinner, I’m going to eat all of the things. Thanksgiving is the one day when I leave MyFitnessPal and macro counts in my suitcase, right beside the pants that don’t have a stretchy elastic waistband. But Weight Watchers, bless its heart, is trying to help its health-conscious members stay accountable during those always-tempting holiday meals by releasing its own line of diet wines.

Weight Watchers’ first wine is a Sauvignon Blanc called Cense that was developed using a complicated-sounding process that eliminates calories by reducing the alcohol content. The end result is a wine that has 85 calories per glass instead of the 120-ish calories in a traditional white. (It also cuts the SmartPoints-per-glass count from 4 to 3).

Ryan Nathan, Weight Watchers’ vice-president of products, licensing, and e-commerce, said that wine is the program’s second most-tracked beverage, right behind coffee, a dataset that prompted the company to expand into branded booze. “We’re not about diet,” he told USA Today. “We’re about living life to the fullest.”

Ryan, my man, I get that. But part of living life to the fullest is getting gently buzzed while you’re shoving your hands into the rear cavity of a frozen turkey. According to Vinepair, Cense’s alcohol by volume has been cut to 9.6%; a traditional Sauvignon Blanc is between 11 and 13% ABV. I mean, is it really worth a drop in ABV (and possibly in quality) to save a whopping 35 calories?

I’m thinking that if you want to trim a few calories without giving up your go-to white wine, here are a few things you can do at Thanksgiving instead.

• Scrape the marshmallow topping off the sweet potatoes that your aunt brought. (The marshmallows were dated 1994 anyway.)

• Don’t ladle the gravy directly into your mouth (this may or may not be a specific reminder to myself).

• Every time your racist uncle says something awful, take a brisk jog to the end of the driveway. Stopping to scream “WHY IS HE ALWAYS LIKE THIS?” at an oak tree burns an additional 5 to 10 calories.

• Go ahead and bite the heads off your baby cousin’s animal crackers, but don’t eat them; stack them beside the table as a warning to the others.

• Wait in your neighbor’s yard until their holiday decorations inflate themselves, then wrestle them into submission. Whisper “Respect Thanksgiving, you ingrates” in the place where a snowman’s ear would be.

• Lock eyes with the Tom Turkey float during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and feel the deep, unshakeable sadness behind his painted-on smile. Stick to vegetables for the rest of the day.

• Don’t eat any of the foods printed on your limited-edition LulaRoe Thanksgiving leggings.

• Or just eat what you want — in moderation — and, when your sister asks you to share something you’re thankful for, say “The fact that we’re not drinking diet wine.”