Maintain or Improve Your Weight During the Most Wonderful time of the Year
The Holidays are wonderful: family, feasts, friends, and more feasts. The precise number is hard to come by, but the average American gains ~5 pounds over the Holidays. Losing 5+ pounds is much harder than it sounds, and, whatever isn’t lost will be with you this time next year… in other words, maintaining your weight over these holidays will echo every year.
5 Holiday Survival Strategies to Maintain or Improve your Weight
Stroll on: get your average step count to 7,200+ per day. 30 pounds ago Americans got 8-10,000 steps per day, and now we get just 3,000 per day. Nobody can be healthy (in mind or body) at 3,000, and nobody can eat so little as to maintain their weight at 3,000.
Pay attention: weigh yourself regularly so you know what’s happening sooner than later. It’s much easier to lose 3 pounds than 15, but you only know about those 3 pounds if you’ve tracked your weight.
Skip and scrimp: 25 years ago everyone understood that you ate less, or skipped a meal before/after parties and feasts because of common sense. Common sense based on thermodynamics has become controversial without a shred of evidence. We’re told skipping a meal will (1)“slow metabolism,” (2)“destabilize blood sugar,” etc. These claims are pure BS.
- (1) Research shows our resting metabolic rate increases slightly in 72 hours without any food. It takes 60+ hours without food before the body begins looking to muscle for fuel, but even then our body prefers it’s fat to its muscle for many reasons.
- (2) Humans did not evolve with grocery stores or microwaves. In other words, before you could eat, you did a lot of work. Work consumes blood sugar. If humans could not manage blood sugar levels during long hungry stretches then we couldn’t have survived long enough to invent the internet to spread the myth above.
Be strong: Keep up with your workouts. Intense exercise keeps your immune system working, and literally works out the stress of life – if you can avoid getting sick and overwhelmed during the holidays you’re doing good.
Not in my house: The leftovers you bring home will be eaten. You will be one of the eaters, and so will those you live with. Are you doing anyone any favors by giving them more cookies, cakes, etc?
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