I Corinthians 10:23 “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up.” (ESV)
If you believe the statistics, most people gain weight during the holiday season. I believe it because I have done so myself most years of my life. That stopped for me several years ago.
Diet and exercise are words that few people get excited about. Yea celery, yea push-ups…no matter how hard I try, I can’t make that sound enticing. 🙂
So, a gift from me to you, some practical tips to avoid a seasonal “sizemic” shift without dieting. Today, I will share what I consider the most important short term strategy:
Set a realistic Calorie boundary for yourself.
Without going into more detail than you need at this moment, know this – whether you count Calories or not, your body counts every single one. When you give it too many, it has no choice but to save them for you in places like your waist, your butt cheeks, your thighs, or in my case, my back fat.
Ask yourself – do you want any additional baggage in any of those areas? If the answer is no, then next question: would it be worth it to you to pay a little more attention to how much you eat? If the answer is yes, then I have good news for you.
It is not that hard to track Calories anymore. Phone Apps (applications) like Myfitnesspal not only help you track what you eat, some even have a bar code scanner, which makes it extra easy to tell it what you ate! Scan, and there it is, Peanut M&Ms, 1 serving 250 Calories.
Tracking what you eat is not dieting – it is just deciding to be a grown up about how much you feed yourself, knowing that exceeding a certain upper limit means accumulating extra weight.
Since Calories matter, allow yourself 1500 per day if you are a woman and 1800 if you are a man. This is a guideline to get you through to January 1st. We can refine this a bit more later!
Track everything (every bite of everything) you eat for one day and see where you land. One thing you will notice is how easy it is to rack up over 2000 Calories a day without even trying.
Calories add up faster than you can say…fat pants, so even if you don’t diet, keep your intake in check and adjust to a level you can manage.
The alternative is to skip tracking and continuing to accumulate extra weight gradually. Is that a path that you are happy with? Think about this; for every 3500 extra Calories you accumulate, that means one more pound of fat stored! Most of the weight that people gain every year occurs during the holidays and this is the weight that tends to stay with you over each successive year.
Tracking Calories is of course, just a tip, not a solution for permanent weight loss. Getting your weight under control requires a more complete solution. Click here to request more information about the Stop Dieting For Life System.
Got questions? Ideas? Need help finding an App? Please feel free to e-mail your thoughts about managing Calories to me.
Abundant Blessings!
Coach Laura
P.S. And, don’t forget – if you have not already done so, please join in on my Healthy Holiday Challenge for free tips and support throughout the holiday season! Just visit www.HealthyHolidayChallenge.com for all the details.