How to Make the Holidays Work for Your Fitness Goals

Forget the diet stress and food guilt. This year, make the holidays work for your fitness goals!

Remember when you were 7 and the holidays were about time off from school, all of your cousins in one house, the magic of snow in the morning and having seconds of everything?

What happened to that? When did that excitement and magic turn into stress and guilt and worrying about how many calories are in a glass of Champagne?

It doesn’t matter what happened. What matters is that this year, you’re going to do something about it!

How to Make the Holidays Work for Your Fitness Goals

When my clients ask me for tips to not let the holidays ruin their progress my answer is always two-fold:

First, it’s the holidays. You are meant to enjoy these moments. Don’t let calorie counting and food-guilt get in the way of enjoying every moment of the season. One or two days of indulgence this winter is not going to ruin your progress!

Second, you already know what to do. You’ve been working on building a foundation of healthy habits. Those won’t just disappear because it’s the holiday season.

Stick to the basics, indulge when it counts and enjoy every moment of it!

That said, here are my top 4 tips to make the holidays work for your fitness goals.

Switch to a Build Mindset

The fact is, most women spend most of their adult lives thinking they needs to be on some sort of weight loss diet. That’s changing…slowly. But most of the time when we think about health we think “lose weight”, “shed inches off your waist”, “cut calories”. I’m guilty of it myself!

Fitness is a year-round endeavor. But that doesn’t mean that cutting calories is. It means that you should always care about what you are putting in your body. You should always exercise. You should always strive to make healthy choices.

And sometimes…

Sometimes that means focusing on increasing calories and building muscle and strength.

For me, the change of the seasons and the approaching holidays present an opportunity to switch mindsets. I spend a lot of my summer focusing on staying lean. Come winter? It’s time to build, baby!

Which means: eat more food. Lift more weights.

This isn’t a pass to eat whatever you want all the time. Quality still trumps quantity. That said, this isn’t the time to torture yourself with food decisions. Don’t skip all of the appetizers, just choose wisely. Don’t leave before dessert comes out, but use discretion and if you do decide to have a slice, let yourself enjoy it!

Full disclosure: I know how hard it is to convince yourself that eating more is in your physiques favor. Believe me, after years of disordered eating it takes me a lot of trial and error, and a lot of support, to switch to a build mindset. Remember, there are so many benefits to this switch!

Give your mind and body a break

Long-term, calorie restrictive diets are stressful! Not just mentally and emotionally, but physiologically too.

While a caloric deficit is necessary to loose weight, chronic dieting, long-term restriction and yo-yo dieting can be more harmful than helpful. This kind of restriction can lead to a slower metabolism, a reduction in muscle mass, a reduction in bone density, off balance hormones and nutrient deficiencies.

Mentally – well we’ve all been there. Sometimes you just reach a point when you need a break. And rather than wait until you can’t take it anymore and binge/over indulge to the point where you feel sick and bloated, why not schedule it in?

Build metabolically active muscle (so you might actually decrease your body fat percentage!)

If you wanted to build a house (or a dog house), you’d have to increase the amount of material you have to work with, correct? Building, by definition, means that you are adding something on.

In this case, you are adding on lean, beautiful, metabolically active muscle tissue.

Building muscle requires you to eat enough calories. That means rather than calculating how many calories your body needs in a day and deleting 250 calories from that number, you add 250 calories.

Instead of worrying about how you are going to restrain yourself from going over your calorie limit, think about how you can make use of that fuel.

Make the holiday season less stressful (mind boggling, I know).

The holidays can be stressful enough. Travel plans. Keeping the house clean for guests. End of year deadlines. Buying the perfect present. Cooking for a crown. What if you could take away one big stressor this year and instead, have more time to enjoy?

It’s stressful to worry so much about calories. And while I’m not saying you should go overboard and consume everything insight, a little less food guilt can go a long way in feeling good about the holiday season.

Reset your metabolism.

Your metabolism is responsive. It fluctuates depending on an number of factors including what you eat, how much you exercise, body composition and more.

Body size affects metabolism. Larger people have more body mass and therefore more basic energy needs. That means that as you get smaller (lose body mass), your metabolism slows because it just doesn’t have as much to take care of.

What you eat, and how much you eat, also affects metabolism. Digestion takes work – and your digestive system is one part of your basic metabolic and energy needs. If you’ve been on a restrictived diet for a very long time, your metabolism has probably adjusted to the point where it’s not revving on high. In fact, it’s probably revving on low in order to conserve energy for your basic needs.

Reverse dieting, or slowing adding in more calories for a few months, can do wonders with your metabolism, especially is you’re also lifting weights to build muscle and strength.

If You do Gifts, Ask for Fitness Gear

One of the best ways to make the holiday season work for you is to ask for fitness and health related gifts (if you give/receive gifts). When someone asks what you want for Christmas or Hannukah, don’t just brush it off…tell them!

Receiving new fitness gear is a wonderful way to increase your motivation going into the new year. Imagine starting 2022 off with some new shoes and workout clothes, a new kettlebell or pair of dumbbells or even new headphones!

Here are a couple of ideas if you’re wondering what to ask for (or planning on buying me a Christmas present, lol):

• Bluetooth headphones $$$
• New running or lifting shoes $$
• Glute bands or exercise bands $
• Yoga matt $
• Set of dumbbells or a new kettlebell $-$$$
• Gift cards to your favorite supplement company
• New workout clothes
• Compression socks

The list goes on!

Make it a Group Effort

There’s no time like the holidays – when families are forced to gather under one roof – to push for a group workout!

Turkey Trots are practically a national Thanksgiving past time at this point, but group workouts don’t have to be that organized. Everyone could stand for a walk around the neighborhood, a family football game or even some sledding around the holidays. It’s a great way to work up an appetite, work off the last feast and bond with your loved ones.

You can also use this time to enlist support for your New Year’s Resolutions. Ask a friend or family member with similar goals, or motivation levels, to join you in hitting the ground running come January 1st. Planning ahead is the best way to set yourself up for fitness and health success!

Challenge Yourself to Decide What is Really Worth Indulging In

All lasting change starts with awareness. That’s why food journals and workout logs exist. It’s why practicing gratitude and reflecting on the day before you go to bed is so healthy and relaxing. The more time you spend getting to know what actually drives your emotions, the better able you are to create and environment and make decisions that support your goals.

Too often we reach for certain foods not because we actually enjoy them but because it’s a habit. Slowing down and building awareness allows you to make choices that will bring you actual joy and satisfaction.

That second helping of dessert is never as enjoyable as the first one is. Heaping on the mashed potatoes and stuffing might not actually make you feel good, you just feel like you’re supposed to do it (or that this is your only opportunity all year to eat it). Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean you have to eat it.

This year, challenge yourself to make conscious choices in regards to what kind of foods, and in what quantities, are actually going to satisfy your hunger and make you feel good. Remind yourself that if you say “no thanks” now, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a bite later. This actually goes a long way in relieving any pressure you might feel to indulge/not indulge.

The more time you spend getting to know what actually drives [you]…the better able you are to create and environment and make decisions that support your goals.

Julia

This year, make the holidays work for your fitness (and happiness) goals.