Diet and Health Tips this Festive Season the holiday season is upon us. While this season is full of joy and happiness, this tends to be the season that people simultaneously forget about fitness but at the same time feel guilty about fitness and health. Usually, our healthy habits tend to disintegrate during this season, and this can often lead to a little bit of weight gain or developing unhealthy habits that can, down the line, snowball into weight gain. So, we have brought you this article that will focus on avoiding either the weight gain itself or at least the guilt when it comes to fitness around the holiday season.
- Reverse Dieting
This might be a little bit late to implement for this year, but it ought to be helpful for next year. If you take a couple of months to speed up your diet and speed up your metabolism by 500 or 1000 calories, however most calories you need to speed it up by to get to the point where you are eating as much as you want and still maintaining weight. Then you can go into the holiday season without worrying about any weight gain because you are going to be able to eat anything you want and not gain weight.
- Heavy Training
When it comes to exercise and holidays the number one thing that we recommend prioritizing is lifting heavy. Training somewhere in the strength to hypertrophy range, so two to twelve reps and three to six sets, in that range heavyweight. Turn the holiday season into the bulking season. This is the time when you can use those extra calories that you may be consuming in the next couple of months and turn them into progress.
- Schedule
There is another tip when it comes to exercise and that is to find a routine that works with your schedule based on whatever you know it is going to be in the holiday season. Holidays are stressful not only because there is a ton of extra food and extra sugar but also because they are just busy times. So, it is easier to get side-tracked and not work and not work out as much. If you know that that is the case, instead of trying to work out 5 days a week, scale that to three days a week and make that intentional shift so that you can be consistent.
- Gut Health
Our number one tip for the above-mentioned steps is to prioritize gut health. We say this because gut health is the number one thing that goes out the window when you start eating more sugar, start eating more processed food, and consuming massive amounts of alcohol. Your heart is partially responsible for how your body recovers from exercise or breaks down, adjusts, and absorbs nutrients from foods. It affects your mood and sleep as well.
- Nutrition
When it comes to nutrition it is key to focus on balanced meals. On the days you decide you want to indulge, we recommend getting your veggies, getting in your protein first, and then going all out. This will help balance your blood sugar levels so you do not end up on a glucose roller coaster and feel horrible.
- Sleep
The better you sleep, the better balanced your blood sugar is going to be, the fewer cravings you are going to have and the more self-control you are going to have. The less your body will be driving you to seek energy in the quickest form possible, which oftentimes tends to be sugar.
An important thing which evaluates that if you feel so restricted during the rest of the year that you feel the need to binge on all the delicious foods during the holidays, you need to think about the rest of the year and not the holidays themselves. This just means that you are not finding balance in your day-to-day life outside of the holiday season. When you have balance, when you have a good relationship with food, then when these foods present themselves in increased frequency during the holiday season, they are nowhere near as tempting.
