How Not to Plump-Up This Holiday Season

How Not to Plump-Up This Holiday Season
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Thanksgiving leftovers are still in the fridge and your arms are filled with black Friday gifts, so it is official, the holiday season has begun. “This year will be different,” you say, “This year I will ‘be good’ and not eat those cookies, drink that nog or strip the chocolate from an advent calendar by December 5th.” Well, the hard truth is you may gain some weight this season but one or two pounds is a long way from ten or twenty. So, after accepting that we may have ups-and-downs, lets focus on three things you can do this year to keep that Santa silhouette out of our full-length mirror:

Reflective eating. Speaking of full-length mirrors buy one ASAP! But this time hang it in your dinning area. If you place a mirror in the area you are eating studies show you tend to curb your calories. Having a view of yourself makes you self-aware and may remind you of how cute you are or to slow your roll if you look up and say who is that fat elf with the chocolate on their face…oh no, it’s me!

Don’t dwell, eat well. Make each meal a fresh start. I always talk about eating in the now and the holidays are no different. If you only worry about making good choices at the meal you are currently eating, believe it or not, you will be eating healthy for the rest of your life. You may have over eaten earlier in the day but don’t just say “the hell with it, I’ll make this my cheat day,” and keep the binge going; give yourself a fresh start with every meal because healthy starts with the meal right in front of you.

Get on Santa’s naughty food list but just a bit. Don’t forget to eat the indulgences. Yes, allowing yourself some treats will tame the inner beast and give you a feeling of freedom—just stick to a few guidelines. Have that eggnog and cookies at a party, but don’t buy it for your home and/or store them in your house. Do stock your fridge even more with healthy-ish versions of your favorite treats like dark chocolate, dried fruit and sugar-free cacao with skim milk. If you are eating a treat, make sure you take the time and enjoy it and are not just mindlessly consuming it—those brown sugar-glazed sweet potatoes with marshmallows sounds amazing but if you’re eating the leftovers in your car during traffic to the mall, it tends to lose its sparkle.

The holiday season flies by with all the Ho-Ho-ing, so enjoy them, but let’s make the only fat thing that enters 2017 is the credit card bill we get the second week of January.

Be Fearless, Be Full.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot