During the holidays there are tons of temptations all around us. Office parties, the actual holiday like Thanksgiving Day, but then there is the day after Thanksgiving, when we love to eat all the leftovers, maybe even having pie for breakfast. Nutritious right? A client reminded me recently of a strategy to help you enjoy the holidays by having some splurges here and there, but without it leading to a 5 pound weight gain. Which by the way is the average gain, and it’s usually all fat. Depressing, right?
This is a strategy to use that will allow you to visually see that you will be having some fun splurges, and that will also let you focus on eating clean and not feeling so deprived on all the other days.
Here’s what you do: print out a calendar for the holiday period. Halloween to New Year’s day is a good span. Its 9 weeks long. Ideally, you need to figure out how many splurges a week you can eat while maintaining your weight. Its usually around 2-4 meals/week, if you eat about 5x per day. Or 10% of the number of meals you eat in a week. Eat 3x/day, you have 21 meals in a week, then its 2 splurges a week. This is also assuming, that all the rest of your meals consist of the correct portions, lean proteins, healthy fats, lots of veggies, and fruits, with starches only post workout.
By the way, splurges are NOT stuffing yourself sick meals. They include: a meal with larger than normal portions, pie for dessert after an otherwise compliant meal, your favorite sugar laden Starbucks holiday drink, starches not after a workout, etc.
Here’s a blank calendar showing 5 weeks. You will want to print out a custom number of weeks for yourself.
Go ahead now and mark on the calendar the meals on the days you know for sure you will be splurging. Examples could be, Thanksgiving Day dinner, the day after thanksgiving lunch, Christmas eve dinner, Christmas day lunch, New Years eve, the holiday office party. You get the point right?
Here is a 5 week sample calendar to see what it looks like filled in.
Decide where to keep your calendar. In your purse, on the fridge, your bathroom mirror, etc. Then keep track on your calendar as you go through the holidays and make sure you stay under your total goal number!
PS: if you are already doing a great job tracking your food on a daily basis, consider adding this calendar to your tracking. It really is quite powerful to see the monthly view. Plus, you aren’t locked in to any certain amount of splurges for the week, its for the whole time period. That flexibility helps us feel not so ridiculously deprived!