The Holidays are wonderful: family, friends, feasts, gifts, and get togethers with people you haven’t seen since 2019. It’s hard to get an exact number, but the average American probably gains 5 pounds during this season. Losing 5+ pounds is much harder than it sounds, and if you have a tough year this may be all you can muster… in other words, maintaining your weight over the holidays this year determines your net change next year. With Thanksgiving 2 weeks away we thought it was time to share….
3 Holiday Survival Strategies
Keep your head out of the sand: weigh yourself regularly, or, at least, keep your tight pants in the rotation. It’s much easier to lose 3 pounds than 15, but if you’ve only gained 3 you don’t necessarily know this without the aid of the scale or your tight pants. Use some kind of an app (such as the new True 180 app on Apple or Google Play) to log it so you can see trends.
Positive power of negativity: It’s trendy to tell people to “never feel guilty or bad about anything,” but that’s how sociopaths live (and why do we read books by sociopaths telling us how to live?!?). When you feel bad about eating the leftover Halloween candy in your house your emotions are trying to help you. Don’t rationalize or excuse your feelings. Don’t suppress them. Put your anxiety, guilt or remorse to work by throwing that shit out. Adults let their negative emotions reveal potential threats, or breaches of integrity so they can address them. The more you run from your feelings the more you’ll want to numb them.
Rocket science: on Facebook I saw an amazing piece of research on something new and exciting. The authors called it “exercise” and they said it was good for you. (Reading my sarcasm I see that we do get cranky with age.) Exercise combats stress, strengthens your immune system, and so much more.
On the topic of weight exercise – hard exercise done for long enough and often enough – also gives you margins. Cookies are my #2 reason to exercise. Yes, you need to exercise a lot more than you’d like to have decent margins, but the pain and sacrifice of making that time is better than high blood pressure, diabetes, impotence, etc… now that I’ve mentioned age and impotence, perhaps cookies get moved to #3, but you get the point.
Bottom Line
Besides the strategies above there’s lots more common sense and logic that will serve you well including If it’s in your house it’s in your mouth, eating less before holiday meals, getting your steps in (maybe with a vest?) and enjoy holidays on the holiday.
It’s not easy, and the world seems to make weight management harder every year, but you and your family are absolutely worth it. You can’t go back in time and make a parent take care of themselves, but you can learn from the painful and stressful warnings you see every day.
Here’s to a wonderful and healthy upcoming holiday season!
