8 Tips for Avoiding the
Holiday Pounds By
Stephanie S. Saunders
It's that time of year. The leaves turn
majestic hues of red and gold. The air becomes fresh and crisp. We can finally
put an extra blanket on the bed and cuddle up with a cup of hot tea. Yes, it's
fall. We just spent 8 months killing ourselves to get into that bathing suit,
but now we've replaced it with a worn pair of jeans and a much more relaxed
attitude towards food. After all, it's the holiday season, and no one'll notice
a few extra pounds under layers of clothes. A little extra weight just gives us
a New Year's resolution to focus on, right?
Wrong. According to a study by researchers
at Sweden's Linköping University, those 4 weeks of celebrating can
actually lead to long-term weight gain.
Essentially, the researchers took a group of
healthy young people, increased their caloric intake by 70 percent, and lowered
their exercise levels. They also had a control group whose diets weren't
altered. At 4 weeks, the participants in the test group had gained an average
of 14 pounds. After 6 months, and no longer on an increased-calorie diet, only
a third of these participants had returned to their original weight. After 1
year, the test group members were each still an average of 3.3 pounds heavier.
After 2 and a half years, the "gluttonous" group continued to gain, while the
control group still maintained a stable weight.
 Now, most of us
don't increase our calories that drastically for 30 days straight. Sure,
there's Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving leftovers, Hanukkah, the work Christmas
party, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's
Day, not to mention the extra sweets, cocktails, and (ahem) fruitcake. But
according to the New England Journal of Medicine, the actual average
weight gain over the holidays is only 1 pound. (They obviously didn't poll my
family or friends.) So what's the big deal? The problem is, a year later, the
vast majority of people have not removed that pound. Continue this pattern over
30 or 40 holiday seasons and the problem becomes—quite
literally—huge.
So how are we supposed to get through the
holidays without gaining weight? Here are eight effective ways to get yourself
ready to beat the holiday bulge.
- Buy clothes that fit right
now. This first tip might be a bit pricy, but it's a great
motivational aid in staving off weight gain. A new addition to your wardrobe in
a size that shows off your summer body can be all you need to prevent those
extra pounds from creeping on. Imagine that beautiful holiday dress or great
pair of pants, then imagine being unable to zip them up thanks to sugar
cookies. Yeah, no one wants that. So before you begin the festivities, go buy
yourself something perfect to wear to your parties and hang it someplace
visible, so it serves as a constant reminder. Perhaps on the TV where you play
your P90X®, INSANITY®, or TurboFire® videos, or in front of that treadmill that
might be starting to collect a little dust in the corner, or on your
refrigerator door . . . that way, if it doesn't fit quite the same way the next
time you try to slip into it, you know it's time to get back to
work.
- Write it down. We try
to write down everything we eat, right? We spend countless hours each month
staring at a food diary, adding up our calories, and seeing if we got the
correct balance of macronutrients. And then the holidays happen, and our little
book ends up in the bottom drawer. It's almost like we're hoping that if we
didn't write it down, it didn't happen. Unfortunately, the scale doesn't fit in
that bottom drawer. The truth is, if we would write down the not-so-perfect
meals and treats, we could find a way to compensate for them, at least a bit.
For example, you have a peppermint brownie in the break room at work, which you
know is carbohydrates and fat. Eat one less portion of carbohydrate and one
less portion of fat for your dinner. It's not ideal, but it'll help. Or perhaps
you couldn't resist Mom's homemade scones for breakfast. You could plan on an
extra 20 or 30 minutes of your workout tonight. The point is, if we write it
down, and do the math, we can lessen the damage. It isn't a good long-term
plan, but to help compensate for a few slip-ups, it can help.
 Keep
exercising. Most fitness trainers will tell you the slowest point of
their year is between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Sure, their clients schedule
workouts with the best of intentions, but then they cancel them for parties and
gift shopping. It's hard to remain balanced when you have a million things to
do and gifts to buy. Yet the greatest gift you can give yourself is to stay
focused on your fitness goals and get your workout in. Shopping getting in the
way? Do it online and save some time. Parties getting in the way? Just show up
later. Who cares if everyone else is a couple of cocktails ahead of you? You'll
be healthier, and you won't have to worry about the embarrassing YouTube® videos in the morning. Just stay consistent,
even if it's inconvenient. You'll be much less likely to look like Santa (both
belly-wise and red-nose-wise) at the end of the month.- Eat before parties.
Most holiday parties don't focus on low-fat, low-calorie refreshments, so
unless you're organizing the event, the best damage control is to show up with
a full tummy. Make sure you eat your meals and snacks throughout the day, and
try to eat a healthy meal before attending any party. If you're going straight
from work, prepare a healthy and filling snack to eat on the way. You'll be a
lot less likely to swim in mayonnaise dips and pigs in blankets if you're
full.
- Get junk out of the house.
The majority of people don't get into their car at midnight, drive to the
store, buy the ingredients for cookies, bake them, and then stay up to eat
them. But if those homemade cookies that Linda in accounting made for you are
already on your kitchen counter, you better believe you'll find a way to
justify it. Frankly, at 12:30 AM, after a rotten day, for most of us there's
nothing like a few cookies to drown our sorrows. The secret is to get the
garbage out of the house. Send it to work with your significant other, donate
it to a bake sale, re-gift it to your 100-pound friend with the perfect
metabolism, or just dump it in the trash. Linda will never know. If you have
holiday dinner leftovers, box them up for your guests individually and send
them home with them. If your family still sends you that Pepperidge Farm® cookie assortment, invite a bunch of people
over for a pre-party party and serve 'em up before the drinks. Try not to be
wasteful, but get the less-than-healthy temptations out of your
reach.
 Offer to prepare healthy fare. This suggestion won't
be well received by those of us who'd rather spend Thanksgiving sitting around
watching football than toiling in the kitchen, but if you do the cooking, you
have the control. Your family could have a tasty and satisfying meal without
ingesting thousands of calories and fat grams. The way the turkey is prepared,
the type of stuffing, how vegetables are made, whether the cranberries are
real, and countless other things can make or break the healthiness of a meal.
There are tons of cookbooks out there, plus recipes in this and past
newsletters, that can help you out. Yes, it does require a bit of work. But
you're part of the Beachbody community. You can do anything!- Choose wisely and
proportionally. Something occurs during a holiday meal. It's like a
Las Vegas buffet—we feel like we have to eat some of everything. We feel
almost like those foods will never exist again, and this is our last meal on
the planet. This year, why not try to eat only your favorites, as in two or
three items, and keep the portions to the size of your palm? If you're still
hungry, try to fill up on veggies (preferably ones that aren't drowned in
butter or cream-of-mushroom soup). If you want dessert, lean toward a small
slice of pumpkin pie (220 calories) as opposed to pecan (a heftier 543),
leaving out the hydrogenated nondairy whipped topping if possible. If you're
going to have an alcoholic beverage, go with a flute of champagne (100
calories) as opposed to that rum-laced eggnog (with more than four times more
calories, at 420). Just a few wise choices will save you a ton of calories, and
probably a significant amount of heartburn as well.
- Don't beat yourself up.
Quite possibly the worst thing you can do is beat yourself up over a bit
of holiday indulgence. Yes, it does stink to backslide after working your tail
off. But sometimes it doesn't stink as much as dealing with your mother when
you turn down her brisket and potato pancakes. Sometimes, we don't have time to
go to work, buy a Christmas tree, decorate it with our kids, make dinner,
oversee homework, tuck kids in bed, and spend an hour doing our Beachbody
workout of choice. We can only do our very best. Mentally beating yourself up
will only make you feel worse, which never helped anyone get back to their
fitness program. So if you happen to gain that 1 extra pound this holiday
season, be part of the rare group who actually follows through with their New
Year's resolution and manages to shed it again. A week of hard work and a
slight calorie deficit should do the trick. Resolutions don't come easier than
that!
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 A wise person once said, "The toughest part of a diet
isn't watching what you eat. It's watching what other people eat." That really
is the crux of the problem with dining out in public. When you're surrounded by
people who are consuming the equivalent of their body weight in fat grams, it's
really tough to stick to that chicken breast and steamed veggies. But if you
have a game plan, you're more likely to walk out with both a satisfied tummy
and a satisfied mind. So spend a few minutes on researching, on eating, and on
exercising beforehand, and be strong when you get there. The effort will be
worth it, and you might even be an inspiration to your dining partner. What
greater reward is there than that? Oh, yeah—a six-pack.
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