Holiday Weight Gain Can Suck It!

How to get through Christmas without growing a food baby

Hello friend,

Let’s talk about the elephant that will be in the room after we eat and eat and eat until next year.

That elephant could be me!

The holiday season makes us flabbier. The struggle is real. Big meals, all of the baking and treats, and for some of us, a lot of adult beverages. Without some serious effort to get rid of it, you’re stuck with that extra weight. We tend to keep that flab forever.

I’ve had this happen to me. I’ve come out of the holidays feeling like a sack stuffed too full of crap. Well, never again. I’m going in prepared.

Who’s with me?

This isn’t about looks. This is about health. This is about avoiding high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. I’m not interested in giving myself a metabolic disease for Christmas.

I’m choosing to have my cake and eat it too.

We can enjoy ourselves without becoming a dumpster fire of regret and shame. We don’t have to let our health slip into the gutter and be dragged down the drain by that creepy clown holding out a plate of Christmas treats.

We might skip a few workouts, eat and drink too much, and snack on baked goods, but we shouldn’t feel guilty about enjoying our lives. Especially when socializing with our family and friends, it’s important to share the good parts of the holidays. Let’s make a few tweaks, and we can sail through the season guilt-free.

Sure, we may have some New Year’s cleanup to do. But minimizing the damage will be so much better! I plan on indulging a bit without giving up on my health. Read on to see how you, too, can avoid becoming that elephant.

---

1. Move More

Think of ways to get some movement throughout the day. We don’t need to run a marathon here. We need small changes that fit in with this busy season. One easy way is by adding more NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). Non-exercise activity thermogenesis is energy expended in activities that aren’t on-purpose workouts, sleeping, or eating. If you missed my article on NEAT, you can find it here:

16 NEAT Ways to Boost Your Metabolism

Start by walking more.

Sitting still all day and not walking — Bad.

Walking to counteract silly sitting — Good.

The easiest way I’ve found to increase my steps is to track them with my phone. I’ve started using an app called Weward to gamify walking and make it more fun. With Weward, you can collect points to trade for money or prizes or support a charity. It reminds me of Pokemon Go, where you can walk to spots on the map and collect cards to increase your points.

---

What about kids, are there going to be any at the party?

Children are a doorway to fitness, so if there are any around at holiday gatherings, then go with it! Horseplay, hide and seek, and tag aren’t just for kids. They love it when adults pay attention to them, too. It makes holiday memories that they will have for their entire lives. So, if you’re blessed with toddlers and small humans, burn some energy and have some fun.

Pets are another kind of fitness equipment. Play fetch or tug-o-war with the dog. Or volunteer to take them for a walk.

Another way to get in some extra movement and exercise is to add short workouts that are easy to fit in and don’t require equipment or traveling to a gym. That way, you don’t abandon your hard-won fitness goals and workouts completely. Holidays can get us off track unless we build some quick and easy routine, especially if we are traveling or have family visiting.

I recently read an excellent article by Kyle Shepard, author of the newsletter Resilient Mental State. About the holidays, he says, “Most days don’t go as scheduled. This is why I love the idea of a brief daily challenge. Less than ten minutes of a specific task that you can progressively make a habit.”

I’m adding Kyle’s Unmodified Ab Stacker and the McGill Big 3 exercises to my morning routine. His post has more details and short videos demonstrating exactly how to do these in about 10 minutes. Here is his December Daily Fitness Challenge:

December Daily Fitness Challenge

2. Prioritize Protein and Veggies

What if we don’t worry about the cookies we know we will be tempted with and prioritize the food we need to get in first?

Forget about the guilt. Don’t take anything out of your diet. Add in the necessary nutrients instead. Aim for one gram of protein daily for each pound of ideal body weight, followed by a serving of vegetables at a minimum daily.

After you hit those targets, give yourself a pass and enjoy the holiday meals. If you make sure you are topped up with healthy food, you will eat less crap.

This is a proven thing. As I wrote about in Cut Cravings and Snacking Up To 60% Without Willpower or Suffering, protein can change your life.

Experts tell us that increasing protein intake can reduce cravings and snacking by up to 60%. So, if you prioritized protein, you would eat fewer cookies and candies.

How to do this?

• A high-protein, low-carb breakfast. Make your first meal high-quality and set yourself up for success. Avoid cereal, bread, and other unneeded foods early in the day. Later, you will get plenty of carbs from the mashed potatoes, cookies, chocolate, etc.

• Don’t skip meals! Instead, fill up with good stuff that your body needs. Otherwise, later on, you’ll be empty and easy prey for that tray of sweets. Then you’ll load up on way more junk than you would have.

  ---

3. Be Aware of the Snacking

We don’t gain 20 pounds over Christmas because of the three or four fancy meals where we ate too much.

We gain twenty pounds because we eat non-stop for days on end, maintaining our blood insulin levels all day long for up to two weeks straight.

With sweet snacks and carb-loaded foods at every turn, we stay in a fat-storing state hour after hour after hour. And that is when we put on the weight.

The solution? Snack a little less, give your stomach a chance to empty fully, and let your insulin levels drop for a while.

If you get enough protein and limit carbs early in the day, this will help with balancing your insulin levels. Another tactic you could use is intermittent fasting, in which you don’t consume any calories for 12 to 16 hours. If you stop eating an hour before bed and wait for your first meal until you’ve been up for a few hours, your system can deal with the food overload and repair itself.

This means no cream, sugar, or booze in the morning coffee. (Okay, maybe break that rule for one special holiday morning.)

4. Drink More Water

If you’re indulging in alcoholic drinks, eggnog, huge suppers, hot cocoa with marshmallows, baking, chocolates, etc., you might get dehydrated. And when you're thirsty, you eat more.

When you're dehydrated, your body’s systems have difficulty coping. The stomach can’t process the overload without liquid to lubricate things. That makes you less effective at breaking down fat and burning calories, and you could end up bloated.

Here’s how to stay on top of it:

• A big glass of water in the morning

• A glass of water before every meal

• For every alcoholic drink, have some water

The more water you drink, the easier it is for your body. It reduces inflammation and helps eliminate toxins, which reduces weight gain.

---

5. Intentional Eating

I plan on enjoying everything I eat. And that means slowing down.

This is from my article Intentional Eating: Pace Yourself! This Isn’t a Race:

The food arrives, and you dig in. You inhale that food like a vacuum cleaner sucking up easily suckable things.

Seven minutes later, you drop your fork. Groaning, you realize that your stomach nearly burst a little because of the speed at which it was forced to expand.

Would you have a better experience if you slowed it down a little?

• Enjoy the food more

• Taste different flavors

• Show appreciation and gratitude to everyone around you

• Be more couth

Fact: It’s impossible to enjoy your food as much if you eat too fast. You’re cheating yourself!

Eat one cookie slowly or three cookies real fast. Do you get anything extra out of shoveling them in like a hog?

Not really. Except you get fatter, quicker…

Eating slower will make you more likely to notice your body signaling that it’s satiated. And you’ll have more fun; notice the flavor for longer. It’s a win-win.

---

6. Get Some Sleep

It’s challenging, especially for those with kids in the house. But it’s more important than you realize to get some rest!

Everything becomes more manageable when you get enough sleep. Being tired means you will eat more. For some of us, a lot more. This is because you instinctively look for more energy through food to keep moving and aware. Your hormones get out of balance, and cortisol levels are high when you aren’t rested. Stress levels rise.

A tired, stressed human is a snack-ie human. A well-rested human can make decisions and doesn’t need to stuff themselves full of mashed potatoes like a starving dude who wandered out of the wastelands.

Make sleep a priority, and you will get more. Even 20 minutes extra can make a difference.

7. Vitamin G

I’ve said a lot about eating too much. Let's stop and be grateful for this first-world problem.

There’s nothing we have to do here.

We GET TO worry about too much food.

We are so, so lucky to live in a time and place where starvation is very unlikely. To be able to choose to eat less if we want.

We get to pick what we put in our bodies. How amazing is that?

This holiday season, I choose to enjoy special treats and fancy dinners. I also choose to live in a healthy body that can do all the activities I love. I will do this by owning and managing it, not hiding from it.

---

How about you? Do you have a plan to deal with the excesses of the holiday season, or you just gonna let ‘er buck? Let me know in the comments!