Minimizing Holiday Damage

Here are three areas on which to focus throughout the holiday season to help you keep the progress for which you’ve worked so hard:

• Eat a healthy breakfast
• Pre-carbload-workouts
• Drink responsibly

With Thanksgiving here and the holiday season upon us, this is the time of year where many people find themselves backsliding and “bulking up” (to put it nicely).

While the holidays ought to be joyous, there’s no reason you can’t maintain your health and stay fit through the festivities.  Knowing that there will probably be lots of parties, family get together, and excess “cheat meals,” I want to share these three tips with you to help minimize the damage!

1. Eat a healthy breakfast – the old adage that breakfast is the most important meal of the day is true!  Research has shown that overall caloric consumption is linked with protein intake at breakfast.  That means eating a breakfast comprised of protein and healthy fats will help control your appetite later in the day to keep you from going overboard at your dinner parties.
2. Pre-carbload-workout – if your schedule allows, you should try and get a workout in during the day before the “diet debauchery” begins.  Muscular contractions help activate cell receptors, which allows the body to temporarily be more sensitive to insulin.  This means your body will be able to handle the carbs you eat more effectively.  At Stark, we offer a Thanksgiving Day workout to all clients, friends, and family to help prime the body to handle the carbs!
3. Drink responsibly – obviously I hope no one drinks and drives over the holidays, but what I’m referring to is drinking responsibly for your health!  Before consuming any alcohol, try drinking green tea and cinnamon.  The green tea has liver support to help process the alcohol, and the cinnamon will help with insulin sensitivity to keep the booze from “trashing” your blood sugar.  Also, alcohol has a significant impact on quality of sleep, so having your drinks early in the evening will minimize the damage.  And last but not least, keep in mind what kind of drinks you are having.  Often alcoholic beverages have mixers with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.  Also, plant based alcohols are less bad (mind you, I said “LESS BAD,” not “better”) than grain based alcohols.  So try to avoid the beers!

But aside from these, the most important tip for the holidays is to relax!

Enjoy being with friends and family, and let’s try and get those stress levels to come down a bit before the start of the New Year!