How to Not Gain 3,000 Pounds Over the Holidays
The holidays are a time to decompress, enjoy those closest to us, and celebrate, and a big part of this celebration involves food. With this comes lots of treats, large family dinners with irresistible food, and drinking–for those 21 and over. All this drinking and eating can easily sabotage your health and fitness goals if you’re not careful, but it doesn’t have to.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
I used to always be one of those people who would eat non-stop over holidays, and I would let a single meal dictate that I would no longer pursue my health and fitness goals. I would have four slices of pumpkin pie and think that it’s all over, that officially I’m obese and should abandon any goals I had.
In that moment, I may have thought this was true, but it wasn’t really all that serious.
One pound is 3,500 calories. That’s a lot of food for the average person to eat in a single day, let alone a single meal. Those four slices of pumpkin pie were realistically probably only 1,200 calories.
As such, I eventually got into the mindset that one bad diet day out of 365 is not the end of the world and that everything will be okay.
Following a holiday where I ate a lot of junk food, I always make sure that I go right back to eating how I did before and maybe even more strictly, possibly even cutting back 100 or so calories the following day.
In terms of losing weight, exercise is about one-quarter the battle and diet is the three-fourths. You can’t outrun a bad diet and you’ll see the most progress in the kitchen than in the gym. It’s not to say you shouldn’t exercise at all because there are dozens of benefits to exercising that go beyond aesthetics.
Remember–one day of bad eating is not going to ruin your entire life and you’re not going to sabotage everything you’ve worked for.
Have that slice–or two or seven– of apple pie, eat three plates of mac and cheese, eat the whole turkey if you want. The next day is a new day and a day to get back on track.