3 Ways to Have a Health Conscious Christmas

Aside from the obvious joy of being around our favourite people and getting some time away from the normal day-to-day, two of the best things about the Holiday Season are eating and relaxing. For many, Christmas would not be Christmas without all of the meals and vegging that go with it. But, when you put all of sitting around together with the indulging it is not a great recipe for staying on track with your fitness goals. Not to worry, you can get the best of both worlds. That’s right, you can have a guilt free Christmas of eating and relaxing and still stay on course with your fitness. Here are 3 tips to get you through the Holiday Season:

1. Plan Ahead

Just like most other things in life, if you plan for it your chances of succeeding are better. If you know you have a big day of eating coming up, manage your nutrition appropriately in the days leading up to it. There is no need to step too far outside of your normal routine, just have an outline of what your food intake should look like on a daily basis and stick to it. If you keep your over-consumption and questionable choices to the times you have planned for, you will help keep your overall consumption down.

2. Microdose Your Day with Activity

Add exercise into your day wherever you can to help manage the side-effects of the extra consumption you will enjoy throughout your break. This may be scheduled walks, reaching a certain daily step-count, a daily workout, a set number of squats or burpees throughout the day, etc. Adding a constant drip of activity makes the thought of ‘exercising’ a less daunting task. Here is more incentive, when you exercise you increase the delivery and storage of calories to your muscles for use, which helps keep the extra calories consumed going to energy production in your body rather than being stored as fat. So if you get the burpee train rolling before you stuff your face with turkey and it just may help.

3. Manage Your Portions

If you are going for seconds regardless, manage the amount of food you put on your plate the first time around. Now, one way to do this is by grabbing a smaller plate, but at the risk of being the only one with a salad plate at a table full of people using plates that look like they were made for Andre the Giant, you could just exercise a bit of discipline and put a little less food on your over-sized plate.

We would like to wish all of you a safe and festive holiday season! Enjoy your break and we will see you in the New Year.