3 Tips to Avoid Weight Gain During the Holidays

3 Tips to Avoid Weight Gain During the Holidays

Ah, the holidays are upon us.

You know what that means.

Spending quality time with family and friends.

Giving gifts to our loved ones.

Indulging in some treats and holiday food.

The last one usually gets most people.

While it’s fun to have turkey, mashed potatoes and other treats for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and other holidays, it’s important to have a plan going into the holiday season so you avoid gaining unnecessary weight.

Here are three tips to help you keep your waistline in check over the holidays.

It’s the most important step that no one talks about.

While it’s easy to go into “holiday mode” and use the holidays as an excuse to indulge, you need to assume responsibility for your results this time of year.

“Oh, but I have have so many things coming up. It’s just so hard to keep up with my nutrition and workouts.”

If you keep telling yourself that story, you’re going to believe it and start blaming other things for why you’re not getting results.

I get it – I’ve been there.

I’ve blamed other people and things for why I didn’t have the results in my life.

In reality, once I realized I’m powerful to create any result I want in my life, I started having far better results.

You have just a few holiday parties and meals over the course of the 40 days from Thanksgiving to the end of December. You also have tons of meals that aren’t at parties over those 40 days. Make the most of them.

Plan ahead. If you know you’ve got a party on Saturday night and you’re going to want to have some treats, don’t have treats and eat everything in sight the rest of the week.

If you get invited to more parties than that, you don’t have to eat like crap at those parties. You don’t have to eat at all at those parties. No one is holding a gun to your head.

The reason you go to those parties in the first place is so you enjoy time with friends and families.

Eating like garbage doesn’t need to be part of it.

Who cares what others are doing? If others are eating poorly, that doesn’t mean you need to eat poorly.

Have one treat, enjoy it and move on.

Be unreasonable. Be the person who turns down treats that aren’t serving you and your health. Be a leader for others.

Who cares about the opinions of others? If others are pressuring you to eat food, they do so only to justify eating those foods themselves.

Once you assume control of your situation and your results, you become an unstoppable force.

If you eat three meals per day over the 40 days from Thanksgiving to the end of December, you’ll eat 120 meals over that period.

If you eat two meals for Thanksgiving, two meals for Christmas or another holiday and four other meals along the way, you’ll have eaten eight holiday meals.

If you do the math, eight divided by 120 is 0.067.

That means only 6.7 percent of the meals you eat during this time period will be holiday meals.

So if your other 92.3 percent of meals are compliant, you have nothing to worry about.

You can have some turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pie and be absolutely fine. One hundred percent compliance isn’t necessary to make a change in your body.

The reason some people struggle during the holidays is they go into “holiday mode.” They use one treat-filled meal as justification to have another treat-filled meal. And another. And then another.

Pretty soon they’ve had two weeks straight of eating treats and leftovers. No wonder they gain weight and don’t see results with their bodies.

So take a look at your calendar. Determine when you’ll have holiday events. Then, plan ahead each week and figure out what you’re going to have for the rest of your meals.

If you know you have a party on a Friday night, you need to eat your normal fat-loss portions the other days.

At the meal, follow these three simple steps:

1. Eat protein first (meat, fish, etc.)

2. Eat slowly

3. Stop eating when you’re satisfied

If you follow these steps, you’ll avoid over-eating, and the protein being eaten first will fill you up so you won’t indulge in as many treats and sides.

Then, when the party is over, go back to eating your normal fat-loss portions on Saturday. Make sure you’ve already planned your meals that day so you don’t fall to victim to eating leftovers and going out to eat even more meals.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Planning to succeed will lead to success.

In case you haven’t already noticed, you’re not going to find much in terms of nutrition strategy right here.

What you really need is a bulletproof mindset.

Many people think “The holidays are going to be hard. I’ll just wait to start on my weight-loss journey after the holidays are over.”

That mindset is exactly why many people never see the results they want.

When you put something off until “later,” it almost always means “never.”

And there’s a reason why “New Year’s Resolution” folks are the butt of everyone’s jokes in January.

People know most of them are going to inevitably fall off. That’s because they go too hard too soon and they go “on” a program. Whenever you wait to go “on” something, you’re almost inevitably going to go “off” that thing.

Hey, I’ve been there, gone in with this mindset and failed many times.

So waiting until “later” isn’t the answer.

Start now. Think about it – how often has putting something important off until “later” actually worked for you?

Probably not very often.

And if put your weight-loss journey off until the new year, you’re going to be even further behind once January rolls around and have even more ground to make up.

That’s going to make things even harder for you.

So stop thinking of making changes to your body as an “all-or-nothing” thing and get to work right now. Think of it as a “lifestyle,” not a “diet.”

And besides, when you take action during the holidays, which is arguably the hardest time of the year to make changes to your body, you’re going to find January a heck of a lot easier.

And then you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else.

So start your healthy lifestyle right now, and you’ll thank yourself later!