Nov 30 2008
Oh, you crazy holiday calories!
Let’s face it, people. It’s not only normal to gain weight over the holidays, it’s expected. According to a report from CNN.com, the normal weight gain over the holiday period (from Thanksgiving through Christmas) is about ten pounds! For those of us trying to watch our weight, that’s a considerable addition to our bellies, butts, and thighs.
Yet all is not lost, if you follow a few simple guidelines.
1. Drink LOTS of water–clear water. Not only is staying hydrated of immense importance to your internal biochemistry, it also flushes fats and helps your kidneys to filter out wastes.
2. Don’t stop exercising! If you don’t exercise regularly, get a jump start on it! Just because this is the holiday season doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to put off the treadmill until after the New Year. Even if you just decide to go for a brisk walk after having a piece of pie, you could burn a few calories that might otherwise be stored as unsightly belly jiggle. Not only that, keeping to an exercise routine helps to keep your metabolism ramped up so that you burn more calories while you’re doing nothing at all.
3. Tell yourself ahead of time what you want to eat, and stick to it. When you do eat, sit down, chew slowly, and enjoy every bite. It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain it’s full, and if you’re stuffing sugary or fatty snacks in your face like a certain famous comic cat, you might give yourself a belly ache. Plan ahead of time, and you’ll be saving yourself hundreds of calories that your body has no immediate use for. You know where those calories go.
3. If you must overeat, restrict overeating to just the holiday days, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. You’ll do a lot less damage to yourself if you don’t fill every day from now until January 1st with foods you wouldn’t otherwise eat the rest of the year.
4. Don’t feel guilty! If you fall off the wagon, just climb right back on. You are worth the extra care you give yourself.
The holidays don’t have to be a time of deep depression, weight-wise. By making sensible choices, you can get through with hardly a dent to your feeling of self-worth. Let’s do this together!
