How to Survive the Holidays Without Abandoning Your Weight Loss Plans

By Algernon Goode


The holidays are by far the hardest time for most people to keep up with their weight loss goals. There are just so many office parties, family visits, holiday feasts and so forth. Whether your weakness is sweets or fattening appetizers and dips you find at parties, the temptations are all around you. Many people just shrug their shoulders and decide it's too much work to even think about dieting during the holidays. They just put their diets on hold until after the new year. Fortunately, this isn't your only or your best choice. If you take the advice that follows, you'll find it's not as hard as you thought to get through the holidays without adding any extra pounds or inches to your waistline.

Make sure you keep up with your exercise program, and even throw it into overdrive. This can help counteract the additional calories that you are taking in. You may as well just accept the fact that you'll be taking in more calories for the next few weeks or so. Rather than depriving yourself of all the things you enjoy this time of year, simply resolve to spend enough time exercising that you'll be able to get away with it. There are all sorts of ways that you can increase the amount of working out you do every day without having to severely cut into your schedule. You may want to look into trying some different kinds of workouts that can accommodate your schedule.

Write down everything that you are eating, good and bad. This will inform you of how much work you need to do when you exercise. You'll gain a much more precise notion of what you eat every day. One advantage to doing this method is that you'll often find that you haven't cheated on your diet as much as you thought. What may have just been one cookie will start to feel like a few later on in the day and the guilt from exaggerating your misstep can send you straight to more snacking. A written journal, however, will help you realize that the occasional odd cookie or french fry isn't the end of the world -or your diet.

At a holiday party, rather than reaching for more food, talk to someone nearby. Start a conversation or focus your attention on the conversation you are having. The idea is to shift your basic focal point at holiday events -make your main goal to talk to people and push eating into a secondary role. Besides, isn't that why you went to the party in the first place -to see your friends and family? So don't give the food more attention than it deserves!

One of the hardest things to do when you want to lose weight during the holidays is to avoid all of the snacks and treats that suddenly start turning up everywhere you go. The holiday season is a time when lots of people do their own baking, and those who don't bake tend to buy holiday treats from the bakery or store. Resisting the offer of someone's cookies or a piece of chocolate isn't easy for most of us. It's not easy to say "no," but it's not impossible either! Be gracious about it, but just tell the person that you're on a diet and that you want to stick to it. Just keep your goals in mind, and make sure you're friendly and humble about it. If you find the treat too tempting to resist, try not to beat yourself up about it. Everyone needs to treat themselves every so often. As we've seen, you don't have to abandon your diet and gain lots of weight just because it's the holiday season. The whole notion of overeating throughout the holidays and then making a New Year's resolution to lose it all is not very productive, and has you starting off the year with an uphill battle to fight. You can do things right now to make it easier to have a good holiday season, stick to your goals and make it to the new year without having to feel guilty.




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