5 simple tips to avoid weight gain during the holidays

So the holidays are coming up, and with them, lots of tasty treats and meals. But you don't have to dread stepping on the scale in January, and that's because I'm going to share with you guys my 5 tips for how to avoid gaining weight during the holidays while still enjoying all your seasonal foods that you love. The holidays can be a really lovely and equally stressful time of year, especially if you've been trying to prioritize your health this past year or try to have a goal of weight loss or maintaining weight loss. it can be extra stressful to know that you're about to have a bunch of different events that are basically around food. And mind you, delicious food at that, and lots of booze and parties. Like, if I'm being honest, I'm pretty sure every weekend of mine from now until the end of the year is pretty much booked out with something going on. So I know it is common to have a fear around gaining weight during these times due to all these things combined together. I know I used to personally struggle a lot with this of year and really had a hard time maintaining my body weight during this time of year. I would fluctuate quite a bit more than I would like to see, and I really struggled with that. And look, there's nothing wrong with gaining weight during the holidays. It's a fairly normal thing. But when you go into the holidays and you have the intention of trying to maintain your current weight loss or to continue on your weight loss journey, it can be really hard feeling like you're up against this battle, and you may not be okay with that additional weight gain. So if you fall into that latter camp, then these 5 tips are going to be for you. These are the 5 tips that really, really helped me when I implemented these to maintain my body weight, to not gain extra pounds going into January, and to really feel healthiest at where I'm at. So the first tip I want to share to avoid gaining excess weight during the holidays is to just Eat normally when you have big gatherings that are around food. So if you meet with your family for Thanksgiving or other holidays throughout the season, eat your normal meals as you would in the morning and in the early afternoon before you have that big meal. Or, you know, even if we're talking about holiday parties, you know, in the evening, eat as you normally would. Try not to get trapped into the thinking of, restricting your calories in the name of saving them for a bigger meal later on. When we end up skipping meals or eating less than we normally would to save our, our appetite and save our calories for more indulgent foods later on, what ends up happening is we have, you know, big dips in our blood sugar, our appetite really amps up, and then it creates this like perfect storm where we are primed to overeat too much too quickly. And we're wanting to fill that void very quickly and eat whatever we can get our hands on, and generally Generally speaking, when our blood sugar gets that low, our bodies are kicking in a craving to increase our blood sugar. So we're going to want to go for starchier foods, for higher sugar foods sooner than later. So you might feel a little bit more apt to grab more bread rolls or to grab some sweets, you know, even before the main meal starts, or load up on those on the back end. So it really isn't a great thing to do to try to save your calories because in the end most of the time you end up overeating and overcompensating more that way than you would have if you had just eaten normal meals throughout the day prior to that event or family gathering. So instead, focus on your normal balanced meals throughout the day. If you can prioritize protein, that'll be really great for balancing your blood sugar levels throughout the day so you're not having those big crashes before any kind of big meal later on or event later on. I personally like to carry around these Ripple or OUN protein shakes with me if I feel like there's this like odd spread between lunch and when we're gonna be having like this other event or something later on in the day or a family gathering, and maybe that's when dinner is, but I need something in between too. I'll just have one of these little protein shakes. So that just helps me kind of hold over until a big meal, but I still will eat my normal meals earlier throughout the day too. So tip number 2 to avoid gaining excess weight during the holiday season is to avoid kicking your exercise routine into high gear during this time of year. It has well been studied that we tend to overestimate the amount of calories that we burn through activity and then tend to overcompensate whatever those calories burned were in our food choices and then overeat the actual calories that we burned, therefore actually doing the opposite of what we hope to do in the first place. And of course, exercise is much more than just a means to, you know, amplify a weight loss strategy. It is great for the body overall. So I'm not saying avoid exercise completely. If you already had been like a daily exerciser, had your routines, continue that, you know, as you have been. But don't go ahead and kick it up into this extreme high gear in the name of trying to budget for extra calories in your meal. And if you're somebody that hasn't been part of an exercise routine, maybe not the best thing to just again kick it into this different gear. I'm all for, you know, if you're starting from ground zero, taking it up a notch and maybe doing some daily walks, but you don't really want to increase your activity for creating the sense that you've earned the ability to overeat and overindulge. That ends up being a really unhealthy kind of pattern to get into. Take it from somebody who's been there. I used to try to exercise my food all the time, and it led my body feeling very depleted and had a very unhealthy relationship with food. So that's not a direction you want to go. Okay, so tip number 3 for avoiding gaining excess weight during the holidays is to remind yourself that these foods are available at any time of the year for the most part. Of course, there are certain types of foods like maybe your grandma's special cookies that she only makes this time of the year or your Aunt Diane's, you know, whatever it might be, special stuffing recipe that you only get once a year. I get that. That's different. And to be honest and fair, you can always ask them for their recipes unless they're keeping 'em a secret and you can make it at home. But I always like to say these foods are not scarce. We can have most of these foods any time of the year whenever we want to, typically speaking. So it helps to kind of remind yourself of that and know that this isn't something we need to create a scarcity mindset around. These foods can be available for us, and I find that that can help to calm down the need or that kind of urge to get as much as we can, get as much of our fill in as we can, because we only get this one time of of the year. And I think that that can really be, again, a lie that our minds kind of tell us. It's not true. We can have sugar cookies and Christmas cookies and whatever your, your family makes anytime of the year that we really want to. So hey, you'll probably catch me having pumpkin pie in the middle of July, and I am a-okay with that. I like to remind myself that it is available all year round because otherwise I get super excited when I see it and I will have way too much. So if I spread some of that throughout the year, it kind of takes away some of that like wow factor. And a sub-tip to this is don't forget that there's always leftovers. If you feel like you want more of something, grab some in a container, bring it home. If you were at a family party or even a holiday party, whatever it might be, grab some food home, bring it home, have some later. You don't have to eat it all right now and overstuff yourself and feel sick the next day. Bring some home, eat it throughout the week, find some good moderation with that. Okay, so tip number 4 to avoid gaining excess weight during the holidays is to prioritize sleep. Now I've talked about this in plenty of my other videos, that sleep is so, so important when we're considering weight loss or maintaining weight loss if we've already gotten to a point where we feel comfortable. It's so important, you guys, for several reasons, and I won't do the full deep dive here, but really sleep helps us to regulate a lot of our hunger hormones like ghrelin and peptide YY and all the things that help to regulate when we get hungry and when we get satisfied. And when we don't get enough sleep, basically our hunger hormone tends to get amped up a little bit and it takes a lot more food for us to feel satisfied because our body's trying to crave and make up for this missing energy that it's not getting from a restful recuperative night of sleep, right? So it's really important to prioritize your sleep during the holidays, and I know it can feel difficult because there's all these things going on, but really try to make it a cornerstone of the holiday months coming up to really focus on your sleep hygiene. To prioritize a good bedtime and a set wake time. Set wake times are super important to get your body into a groove and really get set in your own circadian rhythm. I promise if you get better sleep, you're gonna feel much more able to make better decisions around food, and you're not gonna have as intense of cravings for certain types of food during the holidays. All right, so tip number 5, I know a lot of people are probably not gonna like this one because it's kind of like the fun police. But limiting your booze is really important. And I'm not saying you don't have to drink water the whole time, like you can have some alcohol, but be mindful of it because it really does add up calorically. But it also of course lowers our inhibitions and makes us more apt to reach for things that we maybe don't need, and we'll start to mindlessly eat at these parties and gatherings. So just be mindful of it. And if you are going to enjoy some alcohol, you know, consider some lower calorie options if you if you're worried about how many calories are gonna be in that beverage. I'm not a huge eggnog drinker, but I know that thing has a lot of calories in it. You know, you can also just make sure you're being mindful of other liquid calories. If you are like, I don't really wanna cut out my booze, I really like drinking during the holidays, fine, I get it, do you. But maybe consider tailoring it back on some other caloric beverages that you have and kind of evening that out a little bit. So those are my 5 tips for avoiding excess weight gain during the holiday season. Those are all things that I implement personally when I'm coming into these holiday months, and that I share a lot with my clients too that struggle with overeating during the holidays and that really want to continue to maintain their weight loss journey and stick true to their goals. But I do want to mention this: we all do overeat sometimes, and that's okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't mean that you completely failed if you overate during the holiday season. We're human, it's gonna happen. And it certainly doesn't mean that you're going to completely ruin all the effort that you've put in towards maintaining your health or your weight during this past year. Overeating a couple times during the holidays isn't going to pack on 10 pounds. So like I said towards the beginning of this video, gaining weight during the holidays isn't necessarily inherently a bad thing. But where it gets frustrating is if it's not your intention going into the holidays to, you know, pack on a few pounds. It's so important to find a personal balance of your goals for your health and what enjoyment and a lifestyle that you love looks like for you. And sometimes there's gonna be compromises on each of those ends, but you have to find what uniquely works best for you. And of course, if you need more guidance with that process, I'm always here to help. You can find my information down in the description down below if you want to reach out, learn more about my services, my one-on-one coaching. All that's down there. All right, you guys, I hope this video was helpful, and I hope you enjoy your holiday season this year. And as always, guys, if you liked this video, go ahead and give it a thumbs up down below and subscribe to my channel. I greatly appreciate it, and I will see you guys next time. Bye!