5 tips on weight management during the holidays:

Surviving the holidays:
5 tips on weight management during the holidays:

Let me start by saying the average holiday turkey dinner with all the trimmings weighs in at about 3,000 calories. And the average person should consume between 2000 to 2500 per day. And it’s reported that 50% of all people gain weight over the holidays, so I want to encourage you to not only avoid weight gain during the next two months, but actually loose weight from now to New Years.

On average it takes a person 6 months (sometimes more) to burn off just what they ate during the previous holiday season. So, if you can learn to manage and restrict weight gain these two months, you have already done 6 months (or more) worth of work for 08! You can learn to manage your weight, even during the holidays. Managing weight during the holidays will take forethought and implementing good planning…

So, without further jargon, here at the 5:

1. Change your thinking for this holiday season.

The typical thinking is that “heck yeah I am gonna eat! That’s what the holidays are made for”. Okay, why? Let me challenge that, you don’t really have to gorge yourself. It’s just our Americanized culture that has put that ideology in us. We have to retrain our thinking before our waistlines are affected. All that “good stuff” will taste good, but put it in terms of how it will make you look and feel. Picture as you eat that pecan pie with ice cream and whip topping, picture that going straight to your love handles. Call it “love handle food”. A good idea is to shift your focus. Instead of the focus being on eating, let it be on a project, giving, volunteering, weekly nature walks, etc.

2. Identify your high risk days and plan to do something active on those specific days.

For example, run the Peachtree marathon in Atlanta on Thanksgiving Day. Don’t just live by default and be a part of the over-eating, bloated, watching football all weekend, non-active lifestyle this week. I have such fond memories of playing flag football with my cousins every Thanksgiving at my grandparent’s house. Create some active memories like that. Find ways to get your kids active also. Take a walk before and after you eat that thanksgiving meal. Plan activities during Christmas week. Trade in your cookies and whole milk for skim milk and a protein bar. By a WII Nintendo, those things are fun and you have to get off the couch to play it. You have to plan ahead if you are going to survive the holiday calories.

3. Find healthier recipes for your favorites

Switch to smart balance instead of butter when cooking, move to light beer,

wheat bread and whole grains instead of traditional white rolls, sugar free or organic deserts. Yup, every little bit helps. If you plan to cook with someone, talk to them about how you guys can cook healthier.

4. Avoid starvation before the celebration

Eat something in the morning on your high risk days, get a good healthy breakfast. It will help curb hunger all day long. For example: omelets and English muffins, something light but with good protein and fiber. Most people don’t eat for say… two days before thanksgiving meal to “save up”. The issue is that staving produces binge eating. When you deprive yourself of food, you just wanna eat everything in site. Hence, the 3,000 calories kick in. My mom and my aunts would always smack our hands out of the dinner trays when we tried to sneak some bites, but that is a smart way to go. Eat low fat, low sugar foods before the big meal. Bites of ham, or turkey, low fat yogurt, low fat cheese an hour before will curb the binge eating. Just have to be sneaky when snagging those bites!

5. Get accountable to yourself and another person.

Find somebody that you can talk with and own up to during this season. Those people who usually help you cook, get together before hand and determine that this will be a year of healthy eating. Come up with alternatives. Get accountable to yourself by writing down everything that you eat, keep a daily journal, esp. on your high risk days. Touch base with your accountability partner daily.

There you have it, 5 things to do to not just survive the holiday pounds, but erase some of the ones you may have now!

Good luck! Gobble Gobble…

Change the way you think...

1. Change the Way You Think-

Before you change who you are or who you want to become, you must change the way the way you think. "What was that?" Yeah, you gotta change your mind. "I do that already, too much." Well, I am not talking about being indecisive, I am talking about something a little deeper. Read on.

BRING OUT THE SHOVEL, I WANT TO DIG DEEP INTO YOUR MIND.

First thing that needs changing is not that belly flab, or those thigh's, or pecs, biceps, but's rather that thing between your ears.

The way you think. think about this: the thoughts that are in your head now, how did they get there? We are all conditioned by our environment and our own internal devices to think a certain way. For instance, way too many times, and in too many aspects of the life of the average American, we live by default not be design. We just eat fast food and sugary stuff because it's there and it takes good. But that is a default setting, design would say plan your meals out ahead of time- save money and calories- and feel better.

Fast foods are so prevelant that the culture at large just accepted that is the way you are suppose to eat. Now, if you visit the Hymilaya;s you will find the people who live there live off of rice, beans and fruit. Longest live span of anyone on the planet. So, challenge the process, challenge your thought patterns and your habits when it comes to how you eat. The reason your family eats fried chicken all the time is because they just are conditioned that way. Grandmomma made it, mom made it, so I make it; and now I am teaching my daughter to make it...

Let's train our mind to cancel out false ideas that we have just accepted. Tell yourself:

No, I really don't have to eat fast food.

No, I will not quit working out this time.

No. I don't have to have another cigarette.

Yes, I can stick it out.

No, it's not too hard to quit eating sweets.

Yes, I do have time to work out because I will make time. Whatever is most important to you, that is what you will do.

I wrote a book for young adults called stop and think, the premise of the book is that if we can just stop ourselves and think, before we act, before we dive in, before we just go with societal norms, if we stop and think about our lives our values, where we want to be and who we want to be, then life will be much more productive for us and the ones around us.

Whether you think you can or you think you can't; either way- you are right!

The most simple definition of the mind is "one's thinking processes". So, your thought processes, how did they get there? What people and events have shaped the way you think?

Think about that. Why? Because it is important for who you become now!

Check this out, your emotions and will will follow your mind.

We think of the mind for thoughts and the heart for feelings. The acient Greece and ancient Hebrew philosophy was that the mind and the heart were the same thing. It stands to reason you can't really separate your mind and your heart, not for very long.

Ever had your mind in something but your heart wasn't in it? Or vise versa. My main point with number one is that your everything will follow your mind, It starts in your brain, then it translates into action. You think before you are. A conviction happens in the mind, then a determination happens when your mind and your heart line up.

Your actions come from the inclinations of your mind. you think before you are.

Start to more and more have fitness and nutrition on your mind, put that on the forefront.

One of the greatest boxing trainers Cus D'Amoto said that "emotions are like fire, they can cook your food and keep your house warm or they can burn your house down."

So first things first, work on changing the way we think, then our bodies will change as our mindset changes.