Tips for How to Avoid Holiday Weight Gains

Here are some of my favorite tips for avoiding holiday weight gain:

1. Make sure to always have well balanced meals and snacks readily available so that you can avoid the need for last minute fast food stops or the temptation to binge on junk food. Some quick, easy ideas for meals are homemade soups and stews, sandwiches (watch the fatty dressings), fruits, veggies, salads (watch the amount of dressing you use).

2. Allow yourself one small treat per day and only let yourself eat it AFTER you've eaten a well balanced meal. Small is the key word here.

3. Cut junk food portions in halves or quarters. People tend to make HUGE treats. Enormous cookies piled high with frosting, gargantuan brownies, monstrous cupcakes, etc. Split huge treats into more manageable portion sizes.

4. WORKOUT! WORKOUT! WORKOUT! The first two things to go out the window during the holidays are exercise and a balanced diet. The added bonus to working out is that you don't tend to eat when you exercise.

5. When you eat, start with small portion sizes and avoid going back for seconds.

6. Try to limit the amount of high fat, empty calorie foods you choose.

7. Try to limit your alcohol, soda and eggnog consumption because of the empty calories.

8. If you're going to a party with lots of food, eat a salad or have a bowl of soup before you go so that you're not starving when you get there. It'll reduce how much you eat by about 10%.

9. Check out a new fitness class at a local gym.

10. Make sure to get 8 hours of sleep per night. If you're having trouble falling asleep, try taking a hot bath and reading before bed.

11. Give high calorie, high fat leftovers away because if you don't and they're in the house, you're gonna eat them.

12. Skip the hors d'ouvres.

A Holiday Stress Busting Workout

It's that time of year when our food intake spikes and our activity level drops. Stress levels rise and sleep falls. So what's the best way to manage the stress and additional calories? Do your body a favor and take some time out to workout.

Try this:

Rather than sitting down to watch TV or a movie or read a book or magazine, try putting your bicycle on an indoor bike trainer and pedaling through your shows/book/magazine. (We absolutely love our Cyclops Fluid Trainers).

When the movie/TV show gets exciting, pedal faster. When the show's pace slows down, you should slow your pace too, but switch to a higher gear and push those pedals as hard as you can. Try standing up for added intensity. Make it a goal to ride for the entire length of the show or movie, even if you have to switch to a lower gear and pedal a bit slower.

When you're finished on the bike, perform 3 sets of 20 lunges (each leg).
Do 3 sets of 20 pushups.
Do 3 sets of Ab crunches.

Spend at least ten minutes stretching.

I guarantee that this will melt away both stress and holiday calories.