How To Avoid Weight Gain During The Holiday Season

It’s finally that time again. The time of the year where we celebrate with our loved ones and…lie a little bit on our calorie counting app. Where three slices of turkey count as one. Pumpkin pie is the same as broccoli.

And egg nog has the same number of calories as water. If only we can run away from the impending caloric doom we call winter festivities. The harsh reality is that this time of year is a nightmare on gainz street. If you played your cards right, you should be bulking around this time anyway. Unfortunately for the majority of us, timing bulks isn’t in our dictionaries. So, what exactly can you do to avoid gaining weight gain over the holidays? Now, the easy answer is to just stay below your calorie limit during the holidays.But, let’s… be real, that’s not going to happen.

What about using lower-calorie ingredients and recipes for this year’s holiday dinners?

Possible, but not exactly a fun option, for you and everyone else. And… quite honestly, there shouldn’t be any changes whatsoever to your festive dinner plans. After all, the whole point of holiday dinners is to enjoy time with the people you love and enjoy the food you eat. Changing ingredients or the way you eat can make a joyous dinner into a joyless dinner. So, in order to keep holiday dinners intact and still avoid gaining weight, things surrounding it must be adjusted. One of which is your physical activity.

As you draw closer to the holidays, start ramping up your exercises. Add a few more circuits to your MRT workouts, a few more minutes to your runs, or even a few more intervals on your HIIT sessions. The more days you add extra work, the more you can excuse yourself for stuffing your face. But as great as increasing exercise can be, nothing is more effective than controlling the food you eat. And frankly, it’s much easier than exercising more. Knowing that you have a lot of feasting ahead, eating less beforehand can offset the expected extra calories. But, of course, that doesn’t mean to just go on an insane crash diet. The more days you dedicate to eating less beforehand the better. If you estimate that you’ll be eating 5000 more calories throughout the holidays, for example, then offsetting that 5000 calories by eating 250 calories fewer each day for 20 days is better than forcing yourself to eat 1000 calories fewer for 5 days. At the end, really,

it all comes down to eating less and exercising more. OR… and hear me out here, you can just enjoy yourself and not worry about any of this. Quite honestly,
a few pounds gained weight over the holidays is such a minor speck to the priceless time spent with your loved ones. It’s time to celebrate your accomplishments over the year and be proud of how far you’ve come. What’s a pound, two pounds, or even 5 pounds’ matter if it means you can’t enjoy yourself at a time in which it matters the most? Forget eating less than usual and forget working out more! Well, maybe you can use a few more workouts. But forget making your life more difficult and just be happy and enjoy… life.

After all, you can just set it as part of your upcoming New Year’s fitness resolution, right? Well… that is if you finally stick through it this time.

Friday, December 8, 2017