5 steps to stay on track with your goals over the holidays

It’s about to be the most wonderful time of the year. Fresh off Thanksgiving and quickly making our way towards the holiday season this month, we wanted to provide you all with a holiday nutrition survival guide in this month’s blog to be best prepared for the holiday season ahead.

A major challenge in maintaining good nutrition and progress towards our health and fitness goals this time of the year is that the holiday season is typically not confined to just the days we get together with friends and family to celebrate. It includes work holiday parties, happy hours and treats in the office, as well.

However, a challenge can be a good thing. With a good plan and the right mindset, you can stay on track and not miss a beat when it comes to maintaining progress towards your health, fitness, and nutrition goals this time of the year. Let’s face the challenge head-on and make this an enjoyable time of the year with friends and family, without the need to do damage control come January 1st.

Let’s cover 5 ways and strategies we can use to survive and thrive with our nutrition over the holidays.

#1: Fail to plan, plan to fail

The first step to success in our holiday nutrition approach is to formulate a game plan AHEAD of time when it comes to holiday events and get togethers. You very well may have weeks coming up where there will be multiple holiday events to attend. It’s best to pick and choose leading in to each what your strategy will be for each one. For some, you may want to take full advantage of the holiday offerings, and Grandmom’s cookies are the one thing you dream about all year. But, if you’re going to have Grandmom’s cookies, you can’t also have Susie from accountings cheesecake at the holiday staff party. The holiday staff party might have to be a no dessert event. If your goal is to maintain weight and progress towards your goals, you will need to make sacrifices and say no to some things. Look at the week ahead and formulate your strategy – at one get together you are going to try to stick to as much meat and vegetables as possible and just enjoy the time to socialize without putting so much emphasis on food, at one event you really do want to enjoy a special dessert you don’t usually get to enjoy, at another event you are going to commit to no alcohol, etc. Plan ahead of time and choose wisely and then commit to sticking to the game plan that you have put together that you know will give you the best chance for staying successful.

#2: Take a weekly perspective

Think about your calorie intake from a weekly perspective. For example, you may know that a 2,000-calorie daily intake has been allowing weight loss to occur and that 2,300 calories daily allows you to maintain your body weight (not losing and not gaining). If the goal for the holidays is to remain healthy, remain in good shape, and maintain the bodyweight and body composition that you have achieved to this point in time – then that 2,300-calorie allotment means you get 16,100 calories for the week. So now, you can strategize around how to split up those calories. Based off our last point in formulating a game plan – you can account for higher calories days when holiday get togethers are happening but know that you will need to make up for it with lower calories days at other times of the week. Another strategy here for controlling calories can be to use intermittent fasting strategically at certain times of the week to reduce overall calories being eaten for the day. This is also a great time of the year to commit a month or 2 to tracking your nutrition intake on an app such as MyFitnessPal or our very own Outlast Health and Performance app, which includes a food logging feature, to truly know how many calories you are eating in a day. Once you know the number of calories you are eating per day, then you can quickly adjust that number based on what you are seeing in your results. If you are beginning to see the scale creep up, you can quickly get ahead of it and begin to reduce your daily calories to levels necessary not to gain additional weight.  

#3: Stay active

Body weight maintenance is all about energy input versus energy output, or calories in versus calories out. This piggy backs off point #2 above – to maintain our body weight we must be taking in the same amount of energy or calories that we are burning. If the holiday season is going to mean potentially bringing more calories in from holiday eating, one of our best ways to ensure that we are maximizing how many calories we are burning, is to remain physically active. It can be difficult with holiday travel, busy schedules, and the multitude of family get togethers. But, again, we have decided to take on the challenge of maintaining our health, nutrition, and fitness through the holiday season. Find a way. Get creative and get to work – maybe it’s committing to maintaining your same gym schedule that you have had in terms of days per week, maybe it’s committing to a specific step count goal to hit every day, maybe it is signing up for several holiday 5Ks throughout the season, or maybe it is committing to a 30-minute bodyweight workout every day when traveling. Whatever you can commit to that allows you to maintain your physical activity and keeps you exercising regularly throughout the holidays is going to be a major help in maintaining your body weight and not taking steps backwards in your goals for your health and fitness this time of year.

#4: 1 plate filled mainly with protein and vegetables

Ok, you have committed to a game plan for the holidays. There will be some events you go to that you have already planned and account for some additional treats and enjoying some things that only come around once per year. But what should your plate look like at the get togethers that you are trying to minimize overeating and keep calorie intake under control?

One approach you can take in these situations is committing to only 1 plate of food for the outing. And on that plate, your first priorities are to load up on protein and vegetable offerings. If 2/3’s of the plate is filled with turkey and green beans, only so much room is left for the mac and cheese, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, etc.

Another strategy that can be used once eating the plate that you have made is to eat slowly and to only eat to the point of being satisfied not to the point of being stuffed. Eating food more slowly has been shown to improve digestion and lead to less calories being consumed. For a deep dive on the benefits of slowing down your eating speed, check out this article from Precision Nutrition.  

#5: Control your environment

The final piece to your holiday eating strategy is to maintain control over your environment. It is much easier to stick to our healthy eating habits when our kitchen is only stocked with foods that support our healthy eating.

Once again, we will need to use our discipline and commitment to the goals that are important to us, as this will require some sacrifice. This means limiting the number of leftovers that are brought home from holiday celebrations, or avoiding bringing home left-overs altogether when possible. It means only bringing 1 can of cookies to the holiday cookie exchange and not making an extra to have around the house. It means not having holiday chocolates on the kitchen counter.

It will also mean making disciplined decisions at work as well. Not being the desk that has the holiday candy out. It may also mean avoiding eating lunch in the kitchen or cafeteria for a few weeks if you know all the holiday baked goods on the table will be too much to resist.

Out of sight, out of mind is the idea here. Keep your environment controlled and set up in the best way possible to support your success in making good food choices and continuing to eat healthily even as the holiday season rolls along.

Wrap-Up

The holidays can be a challenging time of year to maintain healthy eating habits and progress towards our nutrition and health and fitness goals. However, it doesn’t have to mean loss of progress or reverting to bad habits. With the right mindset, plan, and strategies, you can absolutely get through the holiday season without sabotaging your goals and gaining unwanted weight on the scale. Will it take hard work, yes. Will it take making sacrifices, yes. Will it be worth it when you are successful and show yourself what you can achieve through doing things that are hard, yes. Let’s get to work and make it a great holiday season!

Chris Stires, PT, DPT, PN1