Every meeting, party, or social gathering I go to this time of year, and I mean EVERY ONE has a “Holiday Spread” of cakes, cookies, and assorted edible things – all designed to add inches to my waist.  How do you ever survive the Holidays and still lose weight?

Portion Control is the Key

The answer to that question is portion control, portion control, portion control.  Yes, I know that’s easy to say but hard to do.  Yes, I know.  I’ve gone through buffet lines and holiday lunches where even though I only took about a teaspoon-ful of several different dishes, there was simply SO MUCH FOOD that I still ended up with an overfilled plate.

You’ve got to fight that.  Here are two things that I do that seem to work for me:

1. Start with a smaller plate.  Grab a dessert plate or a salad plate instead of the over-sized dinner plate.  The smaller your plate, the less likely you’ll feel compelled to fill it to the brim.
2. Second, get a salad and make sure that it fills 1/3 to 1/2 of your plate.  The good part about a salad is that it’s bulky and will automatically fill a big portion of your plate.  Let your salad be your main course.
3. Next, focus on getting some veggies BUT try to say away from casseroles or veggies that are swimming in cream sauce or gravy.  Steamed vegetables are best but may be hard to find on a traditional holiday spread where everything seems to be drowning in some form of thick cheese or butter sauce.
4. Skip the bread.  Period.
5. Last, get a small sliver of meat or fish.  Let this be no more than 1/4 of your total meal AND only stick to one kind of meat.  Many Christmas dinners include several kinds of meats to choose from.  Choose only one kind.

The key to making through a Christmas or Holiday dinner with your waistline intact is to not allow yourself to be overwhelmed by all the choices that are available to you.  There will probably be 5 kinds of vegetables in all kinds of sauces, casseroles of all kinds, 3 kinds of meats, several kinds of breads, biscuits, or rolls, and 10 different kinds of cookies, cakes, and frosted desserts.  It’s so easy for your good judgement to get overwhelmed.

Remember that you DO NOT have to try everything.  If you do, even if you only take just a “little taste,” there’s simply so much food that you’re going to overeat.  Don’t fall victim to this.  Be very selective in your choices – and try to make those choices good ones.

Another thing to remember is not to be bullied.  Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE is going to be shoving food in your face and saying something like, “You’ve just got to try this.”  You DO NOT have to put up with this!  Yes, I know it’s really hard (really, really hard) to turn down your Aunt Bertha’s chili-cheese-fri-casserole that she spent all day cooking but you’ve got to be strong.  It’s perfectly OK to say, “Thank you so much but I’m totally full.”  Take home a foil-wrapped serving that you can dispose of later if you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.  We’re talking about YOUR HEALTH here so don’t allow yourself be bullied.

Increased Activity

In order to balance the increased calories that the Holidays just naturally seem to bring, you’ve got to increase your activity levels.  Go to the gym, take a walk, go shopping, do ANYTHING that will keep you moving.  Increased activity is not something for a New Year’s Resolution.  It’s something that you should build into your Holiday plans and be doing as you enjoy the season.

Watch Your Stress Levels

Lastly, don’t stress.  Yes, I know you have no idea what kind of gift to get that special someone but believe me, anything you get them will be fine.  What’s important is that it’s from you.  So quit stressing about finding the “perfect” gift.

Remember that most stress is self-imposed.  You have control so turn down the dial.  One way to do this is to remember all those less fortunate than you and to try to do something for someone else.  Give to a charity, volunteer, visit, drop off a gift – there are numerous ways to help those who would otherwise not have any Christmas at all.  Keeping things in perspective is a great way to relieve holiday stress.

Keeping all of these thoughts in mind should help you “survive” the holidays with your diet, and your sanity, intact.

I hope you all have a great Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!  Remember the “Reason for the Season” and take the time to give thanks at the house of worship of your choosing.

Certified Fitness Nutrition Coach andPersonal Fitness Trainer (NESTA)

P.S.  Be sure to get my latest Fitness Blueprint called “Little Things That Improve Your Health.”  This ebook is packed with loads of helpful information on how to build a better body and you can get it FREE – no email, no cookies, no catch.  Download and enjoy!

Email Me:  Hiram Perez   

Technorati Tags: Christmas, weight loss, diet, nutrition, holidays, eating, dinner, stress, sanity, exercise, New Year

Related posts:

1. Shaping Up After the Holidays
2. Why It’s So Hard to Lose Weight
3. Want to Lose Weight? Don’t Just Lift Weights.

Here’s a couple of tips from my own experience:

1.  I don’t believe in “overnight transformations” and neither should you. Stay away from “lose 10 pounds overnight” types of diet or exercise plans.  You’ll wreck your health.  Set your goal to lose the extra weight over the next month – just like you put it on.

2.  New Year’s Resolutions suck. They don’t work either.  Reason?  Because even though the year is new, we’re the same person we were last year.  So don’t set yourself up for failure by setting unrealistic resolutions that are forgotten before the end of January.  Accept that you are who you are and find a way to work with that.  That way you’ll avoid feeling like a failure every time you realize that you’ve broken one of your “resolutions.”

3.  Ease it On, Easy it Off. Your extra pounds aren’t the result of  1 or 2 holiday meals.  So maybe you stuffed yourself with turkey on Thanksgiving or with ham on Christmas Day but that’s probably not the real cause of your excess weight.  Your extra pounds were more than likely caused by the constant snacking from the party trays and plates of homemade cookies that seem to be everywhere during the holidays.  This constant snacking was probably the real cause of your spreading waistline.  So now that you know, start cutting back on your snacks.  This might already be happening since the party trays have probably already disappeared from your workplace but make absolutely sure that you haven’t started replacing those snacks with ones you bring from home – or worse, those you get from the vending machine.  You gained that weight one excess calorie at a time.  You can take it off the same way.

4.  Start getting more active. So all the football bowl games, parades, and Christmas TV Specials are over.  Turn off the TV and start getting more active.  There are no more Christmas parties to go to, no more shopping to do, no more school or church programs to prepare for.  You’ve got the time.  Start getting more active.  Take a walk (bundle up if it’s cold), take down the Christmas lights, do anything to get your heart rate up a bit.  You’ll be back into your old exercise routine in no time.

Even the most die-hard exercise fanatics tend to slack off during the holidays.  You can’t help it.  There are just so many demands on your time and energy and attention coming at you from friends, work, school, church, and family.  In addition, there’s temptation to overeat, or to eat the wrong kinds of food, everywhere.   And although most of us try to maintain discipline, few of us do.

But that’s OK.  Don’t beat yourself up over it.  Just acknowledge that you’ve gotten off track and start the New Year by easing yourself back into the routine you know is best for you.   You’ll be back in “fighting form” in no time!

Hiram
Certified Fitness Nutrition Coach and
Personal Fitness Trainer (NESTA)

Technorati Tags: fitness, diet, over eating, nutrition, Christmas, holidays, exercise, tips, resolution, new year

No related posts.

The food was great and there was plenty of it.  Like everybody else, I stuffed myself.  So now I’m sitting at my desk trying to make it through the rest of the afternoon feeling sleepy and miserable from overeating.

So why did I do it?  What is it that makes us stuff food into our bodies until we literally feel sick — and then push in a little more when the dessert tray comes around?  If we knew that, then maybe we’d know what to be on guard against.  We could then figure out a way to prevent ourselves from going too far.

When I was a kid, my mom used to say it’s because my eyes were bigger than my stomach.  That may still be true, but here are a couple more ideas I came up with:

1.  Food is Sensual – and We’re Sensual People.

Think about walking into a room where a feast has been laid out.  Your senses immediately get overwhelmed by all the smells and aromas of the foods.  Your eyes try to take in all the colors and textures.  You can still hear some of the dishes sizzle.  And when you take your first bite, you’re in heaven.  It’s not only a feast for the stomach, it’s a feast for the senses.

Face it.  Eating is a sensual experience, and because it is, we always want more.  We tend to overindulge – and overeat.  For some people, this essentially becomes an addiction.

2.  We Eat Way Too Fast.

I don’t know why it is but in the “land of abundance,” most of us believe that all the good stuff is going to be taken if we don’t hurry.  We rush to the dinner table, we rush to get our food, and we rush to eat it – I guess so we can go back and get some more.  We usually eat so fast that by the time the stomach signals that it’s full and can’t take any more, we still have another serving of mashed potatoes on the way down.

3.  Food is Always Readily Available

No matter where you are, food is always readily available.  Either there’s a snack machine on your office floor or someone has brought in donuts.  No matter what time of the day or night, there’s a restaurant, diner, or fast-food drive through open. Food is everywhere and it’s become commonplace to be constantly eating, munching, or snacking.

I know that there are probably more but these are the only ones I could come up with after eating so much turkey. So how do you protect yourself from these and prevent yourself from overeating?

First, like the drug addict, admit that you have a problem.  Then, get someone to help you beat it.  To prevent the sensual aspects of food from clouding your judgment, have someone else prepare a plate for you.  Why ask someone else to prepare a plat for you?  Because you don’t have the will power – at least not yet.

Second, slow down when you eat.  My mom used to tell us kids to chew our food 20 times before we swollowed it.  Why 20 times?  No reason.  There’s nothing magic about this number.  The point is to take the time to chew each mouthfull thoroughly and completely before swollowing it.  Really taste the food.  Feel its texture.  You’ll not only enjoy the food more, it will be more completely digested – and you’ll eat less of it.

Third, eat only when you’re hungry.  Yes, I know it’s dinner time but if you had a big lunch and aren’t hungry, don’t force yourself to have another meal.  Don’t eat between meals either (no snacking).  In order to eat only when you’re hungry, you obviously need to allow yourself to get hungry – something that won’t happen if you’re constantly snacking.

If All Else Fails

If you still end up overeating, don’t beat yourself up over it.  Hey, I teach this stuff and I STILL overeat at times.  Just resolve to take the tools I’ve given you and do better the next time.

As for me, I’m headed to kickboxing class.  I’ve got a lot of turkey and pecan pie to work off!

Hiram
The Balanced Health Guy

Technorati Tags: eating, diet, nutrition, dinner, overeating, thanksgiving, holidays

No related posts.