So it is that time of year again!! Halloween was just the beginning, now comes all the Thanksgiving Parties, the Christmas Parties, and too top it all off The New Year Parties. It is the Holiday Season, and if you are not equipped with an eating game plan you are going to get blind sided by about 5 to 8 pounds of extra weight. 5-8 pounds is how much weight people usually pack on during this time of the season. That is why you need a game plan to help you through this glutenous season.
Lets face it, parties and family gatherings are fun…well at least parties are. But when you mix fun with delicious food, then you have a recipe for a weight loss disaster. So you need to switch up your game plan a little bit, most the year you are probably focusing on how to lose weight, but during the holiday season you need to focus on how to not gain weight. Weight management! The holidays are way to fun to dismiss, and it will only cause you frustration and disappointment if you decide not to eat these delicious foods. You main goal should be to keep your weight stable through these times.
Don’t get me wrong, if you are strong enough to get through the holiday season and still lose weight, then go for it!! But the average person usually throws all their discipline away during the holiday season, and binges on eggnog, turkey, mash potatoes, and pie. I am trying to give the average person a new way to look at things, a strategy to their Holiday Eating.
Here are a few Holiday Eating tips:
- Continue to workout. Okay, so the first tip has nothing to do with eating, but this is very important, you need to stay active during this time of the season. Resist the urge to go into hibernation.
- Don’t Starve Yourself. What I mean by these is…do not starve yourself before you go to a party or a family dinner. Make sure to eat little snacks before you arrive to the party to help curb your cravings. Eating small snacks can help you from cutting loose.
- Portions. Eat rational portions, you do not need to fill your plate up so full it needs a wide load sign to get through the crowd. Your stomach is not meant to eat that much food.
- Eat Slowly. Allow your body to know it has eaten food. So many times we inhale the first plate of food, and then after the second or third serving our bodies finally catch up, and we feel terrible. Eating slowly will help your body know when it is full and when you need to stop eating.
- Know The Consequences. You know that 5 to 8 pounds you have been working to get off all year, well if you gain it all back, you will have to lose it all over again the next year. It is a terrible cycle to get in.
Hopefully these Holiday Eating Tips can prevent you from gaining weight during the holiday season.
It all starts with your head, if your head is correct it is easier for your body to fall into position. So make sure you are not looking down. I blame treadmills for the bad habit of looking down, because when people run on a treadmill they always tend to look down at the clock, their distance, or maybe they are looking to see how many calories they have burned. For whatever reason it is, it is teaching bad habits. There are even certain treadmills that have TV’s installed that help people get in the bad habit of looking down. We need to look ahead, face forward, look to the horizon. When you keep your eyes ahead it will align your head with your spine, and you will help your body to last longer during the workout.
You cannot target fat loss to one specific area on your body, it is very important to do abdominal workouts (which we will talk about), but it cannot be the only thing you do. You need to incorporate cardiovascular training, weight lifting, and interval training. You need to turn your body into a fat burning machine, and you do that by raising your lean muscle mass, because muscles burns fat. You also need to have a healthy diet, there are certain foods that can help you get your sexy flat abs, like foods with protein, and foods that are either whole grain or whole wheat. But let get to some of the reasons why strong flat abs are important, other than just looking good.
Yes, great looking abs go further than just skin deep, it’s not all about looking good. There are many health benefits to strengthening your core that will help you live a long and healthy life. If you are experiencing back pain, most the time it is because of the baggage you are carrying up front. Your back is supporting all that weight called your belly, or beer belly. Strengthening your abs will also help you with everyday activities. Just think about all the movements we do, twisting, bending, pushing, and pulling, we engage our core far more than we realize, and if we had a strong core than we would be less likely to injure ourselves. Belly fat has also been related to heart disease, the fat that surrounds our midsections is said to be the most dangerous fat for our hearts.
So now you have no excuse on why you should ever make these mistakes again! Now you know, and like the old G.I. Joe public announcements used to say “Knowing is half the battle.”
Lets say you have a cold, you might have a mild sore throat, a stuffy or runny nose, maybe even some sneezing. You will probably be okay to workout. Now, you might not be able to exercise hard like you usually do, but you will be able to do some moderate workouts. Working out when you have the common cold might actually give you some temporary relief, because your nasal passage can open up, and help you breathe. If you do decide to workout with a congested nose, be careful when taking any mucus relief medication, because you might feel queasy in the middle of your workout and possibly vomit. Another thing to keep in mind, if you feel like your cold could be contagious, you should stay home and workout instead of going to the gym in the risk of causing other people to get sick. But you should be fine to exercise.
These are just five more reasons why we need to have healthy sleep; our lives could be at stake. What are some of the reasons why people are not getting enough sleep? Unless you have a physical condition, most people do not get healthy sleep because they are stress or have a lot on the mind. Its kind of a catch 22, because your day is filled with stress from your job, paying bills, sitting in traffic, your mother in law, which are causing you to not get any sleep. But at the same time the lack of sleep is causing your stress to elevate. So it is important to settle yourself down before you head off to bed, maybe do an activity to get your mind off of the daily grind.
If you have a wall at your house (which you should!), do wall squats. Remember when you did wall squats in P.E. in elementary and high school, and how much you hated them. Well learn to love them! Hold out the wall squats for 30 seconds and then have a 10 second break, do this 3 times to start off. Make sure you are near a 90-degree angle and try to improve your time.
I want to talk to you about Interval Training. Interval Training contains both high bursts of energy and recovery times. There are many different ways people use interval training, some people do long bursts of energy and short recovery times, some people do shorter bursts of energy and longer recovery times, both are affective. No matter which form of interval training you chose, the goal is always to get your heart rate up with high bursts of energy and then bring your heart rate down with the recovery time, do it over and over again for around 20-30 minutes.
Which brings us to our second way to burn fat quickly. Muscle training! I am not talking about getting huge and bulky, so if your a woman or a man afraid to bulk up? Do not worry. Resistance training is a very important key to burning fat, because building lean muscle is the fastest way to burn fat. You do not have to use heavy weight or even use weights at all. Resistance training involves chin-ups, push-ups, lunges and squats; all those exercises can be done without weights. If you do end up using weights, you do not have to pick heavy weights. Chose weights that you can control, many people try to whip out reps like they were in a race…but slow and steady wins this race. For example, going down with a bicep curl is just as important as going up with a curl. There are times for pumping out reps, but slow and controlled repetitions will help your body burn more fat during and even after the workout is finished.
