The holiday pound exchange. The Christmas cookie layer. The Santa belly. The holiday bonus. Call it what you like, but gaining a few pounds (or more) over the holiday season is as much a tradition as throwing away fruitcake or crowded mall parking lots. Keep a few things in mind to avoid adding “sled handles” to your winter physique
Only eat the REALLY good stuff
This means politely passing or discretely trashing many home baked treats or party options. Remember calories you don’t enjoy are just as potent as those you do.
Get Fierce
During the holidays you’re not likely to have more time to workout, so the best way to keep the calorie balance in your favor is to ramp up the intensity. Add hills and/or sprint intervals to your cardio routine. Try jumping rope or mountain climbers between strength sets. Do power yoga moves instead of your usual static stretches.
Weigh yourself
Even if you usually don’t keep track of your poundage, it’s a good idea to weigh yourself at least once a week during the holiday season. The scale is an early warning device and will let you know if you have been enjoying a little too much cheer. Get a baseline, aim to stay within two to four pounds of that weight and make changes if you get too far off track.
Add nightly walks
Get out and enjoy all the lights, holly and inflatable Santa’s your neighbors went to so much trouble to put up. Even if you’re a scrooge at heart, it’s difficult not to enjoy the magical holiday transformation of your hood (while you burn a few extra calories along the way).
Ask Santa for a fitness treat
Stylish new gear or cutting edge equipment will get you excited to get started on your fittest year ever. Bring on the Champagne flavored Gatorade!
The holidays can be tough on your health and fitness life. Cookies fall like rain, parties like scary clowns lurk around every corner and your to-do lists stretches out like a roll of toilet paper heading down hill. Even people with solid time management skills struggle to get in enough exercise, stress relief and nutritious food during this time of year. Add to the situation, shorter days and inclement weather and you have the potential for feeling pudgy and grumpy underneath your reindeer sweater.I dare you to imagine a different kind of Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanza morning, one where you can’t wait to open a very special present. This wonder gift has the power to boost your mood, health esteem and give you a compelling outlook for the coming year. And it is not available from Macy’s.What you need:
A scrap of paper and pen
A box (small or large)
Wrapping supplies (festive if possible)
A few uninterrupted minutes to think
Use your thinking minutes to come up with one or two goals that you can achieve between now and the holiday. Remember the best goals are achievable but challenging, meaningful to you and measureable. “Looking sexy” in only a Santa hat may be meaningful, but it is difficult to measure. Fitting into a smaller Santa suit may be meaningful and measurable, but only if you are in the ballpark already, since you only have a six weeks or so to improve your dimensions. Doing ten full push-ups, achieving 2,000 minutes of cardio, keeping a food journal everyday or running a mile in under 9 minutes are better ideas.
Once you’ve got your goals, write them down twice. One version is going to go up in a place you will see everyday like a computer screen or bathroom mirror. The second goal goes into the box, which is wrapped up all festive like, made out to you from you and put with the other gifts.
Now you start moving toward that goal. Read it every morning and decide what steps you will take to achieve it that day. If you need help breaking it down, find someone who can assist. For extra accountability email your goal to a friend and ask them to hold you accountable. Keep your goal in mind as you face the holiday obstacle course; remember it as the cookies fly by and the invites roll in. Your goals and self-care is as important as any other part of the season, so learn to say no and keep your holiday dream close to your heart.
Fast forward to the big day, when it’s time to open your special present.
If you have achieved your goals, or even made significant progress toward them, opening that gift is going to be a delight. No material item will feel as good as knowing you followed through and didn’t give in to the holiday stress parade. When you open your “self-present” instead of feeling stressed, out of shape and out of control (like many of us do as the holidays culminate) you will feel calm and proud. Feel free to use this opportunity to flex newly strengthened muscles, give yourself a high five or start thinking about your next goal.
Use this technique to keep your health at the top of your to-do list even when things get hectic and you will be guaranteed the best gift of all.
If you don’t want your hair pulled, eyes’ poked or favorite socks thrown out the window then don’t pull anyone else’s hair, poke anyone else’s eyes or pull any monkey business with someone else’s socks. This is the Golden Rule and it is a very effective tool for keeping things civilized in most communal venues.
But did you know that this magical rule also works in reverse? Instead of “do onto others as you would have done onto you” try, “do on to yourself as you would do on to others”. This is especially important for women and anyone with over powering caretaking instincts, with a tendency to treat others way better than they treat themselves. Would you tell a friend to work long hours, skip exercise and eat pre-packaged cheese slices for dinner? Would you advise Uncle Jimbo to do a workout that he hates, is bored by or that just isn’t effective? How about giving the thumbs up and high sign to skipping flexibility training or doing movements without proper technique or purpose? Yet you might be doing some of these no-no’s yourself without thinking twice about it.
Take a quick inventory of your health and fitness life and jot down anything that you wouldn’t recommend to a friend, family member or well-behaved stranger. Another good way to approach this is to imagine that a friend (with remarkably similar strengths and limitations) came to you asking for health and fitness advice. How would you advise them? Most likely you would be encouraging, enthusiastic and eager to help them find creative solutions to any potential problems.
It’s seems a law of human nature that we give better, more thoughtful advice to others than we give ourselves. So how about treating yourself as well as you would a friend for once? If your friend was nervous and lacking direction in the gym you would tell them to hire a trainer for a few sessions. Of course they and their priceless health are worth the investment. And if someone told you they not excited about exercising anymore you would suggest that they try a new class or sport, pick up some fitness magazines for fresh ideas or find a buddy to workout with.
Try approaching your struggles as if they belonged to a good looking stranger instead of little ol’ you and discover just the kick in your workout shorts that you need.
Since becoming a trainer I’ve come to hate the word “just.” I hear it used constantly by clients describing their workouts as in, “I just did 30 minutes of cardio,” or “I just did a yoga class on Tuesday and a few weights on Wednesday.” People use the word to let me, and themselves, know that no matter what was accomplished, they feel they should have done more and are appropriately shameful.
Though I’m sure men occasionally use terms of self-degradation, I find that it is mostly a vice of women. And I don’t think it’s the fitness equivalent of “does this make my butt look big?” Women who use this term aren’t usually looking to be told that their workouts were worthwhile and that they should be proud of themselves. I know this, because I try to tell them and they don’t want to hear me.
So if you suspect that you may be doing a fitness downer on yourself, it’s time to take a step back and start to listen to how you talk about your own habits. Do you degrade your workouts, downplay your accomplishments and focus all your attention on your shortcomings? Do you beat yourself up about missing a workout or two, and forget about all the workouts that you did show up for? How do you describe your workouts to yourself (most importantly) and others (important as well)? Do you use words like the dreaded “just”, “only”, or “weak” or do you use actual descriptors such as 20 minutes or 3 miles?
Since it can be difficult to hear our own well ingrained verbal habits, it is a good idea to enlist a friend or trainer to help you catch yourself in the act. Ask them to let you know when you try to make mole hills out of whatever size mountains that you climb. You probably don’t even realize all the wretched things you are saying about yourself, but those words have the power to slowly crush your enthusiasm for getting and staying in shape. Because if no workout is ever enough, why workout at all? And if you’re going to feel bad about yourself no matter what you do, why not sit on a block of cheese instead of a bike?
Now go get sweaty and talk nice about it (and your butt looks great in those jeans).
Though the 1980’s comedy classic Ruthless People is not often thought of as fitness movie, it can be argued that the physical transformation of Barbara Stone, played with diabolical hilarity by Bette Milder, is the catalyst for her moral transformation from bitchy, over-privileged snot to cool, down to earth accomplice in a modern day Robinhood scam against her evil husband (Danny Devito).
For those of you who haven’t enjoyed the ab workout that is Ruthless People, the basic plot starts with Sam Stone marrying Barbara for her father’s money and eventually getting frustrated when the old man refuses to die. He decides to kill the wife he never wanted anyway, so that he can score her fortune and marry his mistress. Before Sam gets the chance to chase his darling bride around the house with a rag of chloroform, she is kidnapped by a cute and bumbling couple, who Sam has screwed out of a small fortune.
Barbara is locked in their basement for most of the film. To keep busy she inflicts mental terror on her captors and begins following along with the exercise programs showing on the television set her humane kidnappers have provided. Because her husband Sam doesn’t want her back alive she’s is chained to that bed for quite a while and starts getting pretty serious about her routines, culminating with an inspiring montage showing her doing pull-ups on her bed frame and using her chain as a jump rope.
For the first time in Barbara’s indulgent, corpulent life she is losing weight, getting fit and feeling great; despite the fact that she is chained to a bed in the basement of a rundown house. I think there are a lot of useful lessons here.
1. We should all be really glad that it’s not considered cool to workout in G-string leotards anymore.
2. In the film Barbara Stone has tried every faddish way to lose weight including enduring injections of the urine of pregnant women. Fads and “get fit quick schemes” almost never work.
3. Breaking out of your routine is one way to make rapid progress. In this case Barbara went from being an uber-rich heiress who could have anything she wanted to a captive. Your change doesn’t need to be quite so dramatic, but a shakeup can be helpful.
4. Sometimes it’s good not to have options. In the film Barbara is chained to a bed and doesn’t have anything better to do then workout. What kind of “chain” can help you get fit? Is it canceling cable so that you have to walk to get a movie? Putting away your credit card so that you’re not tempted to eat out? Telling your spouse not to let you in the house unless you have gone to the gym for the day?
5. Give your goals the time they deserve. In the film Barbara has all day and night to workout and fitness is her main focus. If losing weight or getting fit is the top priority in your life then plan your time accordingly (using chains when necessary).
6. Simplify. For Barbara losing her freedom is the best thing that has ever happened to her. Turns out when she doesn’t have very many options, she is able to make better choices. What tempting options can you eliminate from your life so that a healthy diet and exercise become the obvious choices?
7. You don’t need fancy equipment to get fit, just determination and imagination. I don’t recommend jump roping a chain, but you certainly don’t need a fancy gym membership or thousand dollar piece of equipment.
I’m always on the lookout for something fresh and different for my morning’s nutritional amusement. We all agree that breakfast is the nutritional launch pad for the rest of the day, but it’s so easy to get bored and fall back into naughty habits like skipping it altogether or grabbing a carb bomb muffin.
Many of us grew up on the televised brain washing of children’s cereal commercials. If you hear 10,000 times before the age of 10, that “this is part of a nutritionally balanced breakfast,” it makes an impression, especially if you are told by an animated elf or animal. Turns out like so many other things we were told as children that was a big fat, sugary lie. We have since learned that the processed cereals that we ate as kids were a very, very small part of a nutritionally balanced breakfast. Eating the box might have been a more natural, higher fiber experience. Perhaps taking nutritional suggestions from Tony the Tiger and The Fruit Loop Toucan wasn’t such a great idea.
But just when you thought you had to settle for a sad, adult life of bran branches and whole grain gruel, Annie’s steps into save the day. Our favorite food superhero has already wowed us with organic mac’ and cheese and lots of other wholesome snacks shaped like bunnies. Cocoa and vanilla bunny cereal is another welcome edition to their line of healthy, comfort food. The cereal is as adorable as a breakfast food can be and boasts of “no icky additives or pesky preservatives.” Amazingly the white bunnies are created using real vanilla and the brown bunnies are made from authentic cocoa. There is no dreadful partial hydrogenated corn oil or high fructose corn syrup to toxify your bodily temple. In fact there are only ten total ingredients, none of which could be mistaken for chemical reactions.
Try a bowl of bunnies and your favorite milk product to start the day or as an afternoon pick me up. Who can be sad with all those bunnies around?
In the name of full disclosure it must be said that a bunny based breakfast doesn’t have the fiber kick of oatmeal or much protein, but its way better then the many other sweet cereal alternatives. Cocoa and Vanilla Bunny Cereal is delightfully crunchy and not too sweet. Give it a try if you are trying to find a fun way to ease into morning healthiness. Try pairing it with sliced bananas or strawberries to give your bunnies something to play with.
