Holiday Weight Gain – is it inevitable?
It’s that time of year again – the HEAVY end of the year!
- Halloween Candy
- Thanksgiving Turkey and gravy and stuffing (the verb!)
- Christmas Parties every week
- Christmas candy and baking
- New Year’s Party
I have always gone into the Holiday Party season with mixed emotions – I love the parties, but I dread the feeling of getting on the scale on January 1st!
This time last year, I didn’t know about the Body by Vi Challenge, but I was starting on my own commitment to lose weight … right at the toughest time of the year!
Read my Body by Vi 90 Day Challenge success story to find out what didn’t work for me during the heavy part of the year … and what finally DID work!
7 Tips – Avoid the Weight Gain!
- Don’t go to parties ravenously hungry – eat a healthy snack before you get there and you won’t be tempted to eat as much
- Make yourself the designated driver so you limit or eliminate the empty calories from alcoholic drinks
- Buy candy you don’t like at Halloween … so you give it all away
- White Space – leave some empty space on your plate – works for parties, family meals, any time
- Park at the back of the lot, when shopping or going to the mall, and force yourself to walk a little more each day
- Pick high protein and high fiber foods – lean meats, beans, whole grains, veggies – instead of carbs and sugars – candies, cookies, cakes, pies
- OK, that last one is tough, so here’s another tip – the Team Approach: ’Split’ with someone else (or 2 people!) so you can ‘try’ more kinds of pie. Sample 1/3 of three kinds of pie or cake instead of taking 3 pieces.
Ideal Snacking
It may sound counter-intuitive to recommend snacking during the holidays – isn’t the idea to ‘avoid’ food. Not really. Ideal snacks can be a big help!
Ideal snacks = healthy snacks. Nutra-Cookies are my favorite example because they are so easy to carry with me, they are individually wrapped, and I can reach for one any time I am hungry. It’s the ideal mini meal.
Pack your snacks for the day – Nutra-Cookies, fruit, veggies, nuts – to make sure they are nearby when you need them. A healthy snacking habit can lower your total calorie intake, especially during the holidays, because you are not as ravenously hungry at meal time (or Party Time!).
Body by Vi Holiday Solution
I’m using the Body by Vi 90 Day Challenge for my holiday solution this year. I’m committed to not only avoid the Holiday weight gain, but actually lose a few pounds and build muscle tone this year.
Vi-Shape shakes in the morning – high protein to get my engine going. Nutra-Cookies for my ideal snacks. Neuro for my healthy energy drink in the afternoon.
Check out the Body by Vi 90 Day Challenge for yourself. Maybe you should add it to your list of Tips to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain. It’s definitely a “gift that keeps on giving” – build lean muscle and the benefits last all year!
More Tips to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain
I asked some friends and colleagues for their tips on how to avoid holiday weight gain … and I got a huge response. Lots of great ideas about how to manage the eating, the parties, and the calories part of the challenge, but also lots of ideas on exercise and the burning calories part of it to. I’ll share some more ideas soon.
What do you find is effective for Avoiding Holiday Weight Gain?
Leave me your ideas on the comments below!
Happy (and Healthy) Holidays!
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
White space – that is easy enough.
At family gatherings, we always leave some time between each of the meal courses. We get time to talk and also we get time to feel more full. It takes about 20 minutes for our bodies to signal our mind to stop eating!
Sara,
Amazing how much difference it makes if we just east slower … and give our stomach enough time to tell our brain that it is full. 20 minutes is a long time!
Michael
At Halloween, we either hand out sugar free candy or something we made (or baked) – it’s healthier for the kids. Even if I eat some, it’s not high calorie.
Charlie,
Baked goods are a good idea at Halloween! You can make them healthy and the kids still like to get it.
Michael
thanks Michael!
those are some really great tips, some of which I had never thought of before. this few month stretch is brutal on our waist lines with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa etc. So easy to overate and eat unhealthy things.
Good luck with your Body by Vi challenge. I look forward to seeing the results
Pat,
Thanks for the encouragement!
Check out the results of my first Body by Vi 90 Day Challenge at this link: Body by Vi – 90 Days Done!
Michael
Great ideas, Mike! I’ll be using some of these this year.
Another tip is if you are going to a holiday party make a healthy dish to take with you. That way when everyone is snacking on appetizers you will know that there will at least be one healthy snack on the menu.
Jessica,
Great idea!
Michael
We don’t go to every Christmas part. That is the 1st tip.
Also, we try to get to the party fashionably late – a lot of people have already eaten – or even later when the eating is mostly over so it’s not really a option to eat much. That is tip number two
Adam,
Good tips – thanks!
Michael
I love the idea about sharing because that does give you the ability to try more stuff and not get as many calories as you normally would. They way I usually avoid the empty calorie items is I make a desert and main dish that I know I can eat and I take it to the party so that I know there will be something there that I can eat if that is the only thing. I don’t like standing around at a Christmas party not eating anything while everybody else is eating because it makes me feel weird and I would imagine it makes the people that brought something feel like their stuff isn’t good enough for me so if I take what I can eat at least I have something on my plate like the rest of them. I do thank you for the tips that you gave here though the one about eating something healthy before you go so you aren’t so hungry is a tip I use for everything anymore even just a dinner out at a restaurant. I am going to look into this 90 day challenge though because I think that would help me lose the last few pounds I have been struggling with for six months now.
I don’t think I could ever make myself the designated driver, but I do think it is a good suggestion to fill your stomach with healthy foods or snacks before going off to a holiday party or festive family get together. Snacking on healthy things which have protein is one of the keys to burning fat because of the positive effects foods like nuts, grains, fruits and vegetables have on the body’s hormones and blood sugar levels, both of which prevent the body’s production of insulin and the storing of fat reserves.
Ronald,
good points about insulin and fat reserves – many people don’t understand the connection
Michael
These are some very good tid bits to keep in mind during what is a socially eventful time of the year for those who are family and / or company oriented and who revel in all the various holiday festivities. Some of the tips like snacking on something healthy will certainly help in a similar way that going grocery shopping on a full stomach is better than going shopping when you are hungry because if you go with an empty stomach, your brain might signal sugar cravings and you will inevitably succumb to the temptations to buy desserts and candy and other sugary snacks. You could also buy too much food as your eyes become bigger than your stomach – as the Italians say. In similar fashion, when I was younger, I used to eat breads and pasta before going out to a dance club so that I wouldn’t get too drunk, too fast.