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…