The holidays are upon us (not to mention my birthday was on the 11th!). We all know people tend to put on 5-15 pounds during this season and let’s be real, no one on the wellness path feels good about that. How have you been feeling so far this holiday season. Are you indulging in moderation and sticking with your workouts? Or have you been eating and drinking yourself into oblivion and feeling bad about it?

Look, I’m not going to tell you not to eat, drink or enjoy yourself during this season because that’s just not realistic and I want you to party like a rock star! But what I am going to do is expose some of the rationalizations that have sent my clients down the ugly path over the holiday. (Ugly path = guilt about overconsumption of food or drink, indigestion, diarrhea, hangovers, party clothes that no longer fit, and just feeling plain awful about yourself). Let’s all take a good look at the stories we tell ourselves so we can nip the guilt in the bud and enjoy the rest of this holiday season healthfully. So here they are, my:

TOP TEN FITNESS SABOTAGING HOLIDAY RATIONALIZATIONS

10. “I didn’t eat all day so I could eat whatever I wanted at that party”. . .This system does not work. If you don’t eat all day, by the time you get to the party your blood sugar is going to be so low that you are likely to pounce on any food that you see regardless of what it is. Also by not eating all day you put your body in starvation mode so that when you binge at the party you totally store all those calories as fat (especially if you’re eating lots of carbs and sugar which is highly likely). It’s much better to eat 2 meals with protein and 2 whole food snacks during the day, so that if you have a nighttime party you will be more likely to eat less and indulge in moderation.

9. “I can eat whatever I want during this season and I’ll just do extra cardio to make up for it”. . .There’s a term for this. It’s called exercise bulimia. Eating junkfood frequently and in excess keeps you in fat-storage mode so you can do cardio until you’re blue in the face and it won’t do much good. Not to mention digesting junkfood is extremely stressful on the body. So is overexercising. A stressed body does not burn fat optimally. Plan an appropriate exercise program for your fitness level and stick to it, but don’t think that upping the cardio will make up for eating too much junkfood. It doesn’t.

8. “I don’t want my family/co-workers/friends to think I’m weird if I don’t drink or pig out”. . .How old are you? If the answer is somewhere over the age of 18, you are an adult and it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks! Let’s grow a set here people! If anyone asks why you aren’t gorging yourself on God knows whatever is at your party say it’s because you’re taking care of your health, or that you’re on a new fitness program and you want to stick with it. Anyone who has the nerve to challenge this is a troll and not worth your time. The people that truly care about you will say, “You go!”

7. “I just don’t have any willpower”. . .This is bull. Everytime I hear this I insist on seeing a fod diary from the client and generally what I see is that they’ve eaten cereal, skim milk and coffee for breakfast and that’s it for the rest of the day and then claim the reason they binged at the party is because they have no willpower. This is NOT lack of willpower, it’s low blood sugar and lack of planning. People who eat protein at every meal and eat small, whole food meals 5 times a day generally don’t binge. It’s not because they have more willpower, they are just properly fed and bingeing is unappealing!

The other side of this rationalization is “I’m just not motivated”. . .guess what, NO ONE IS! People are not born motivated. We all have to CREATE our motivation so think about your reason for healthy eating and sticking to your fitness program. I’ll let you in on my motivation: 1) I’m single and I really want a boyfriend and when I eat healthy and exercise I feel sexy, 2) I know how much toxic crap is in junkfood and how the production of it pollutes the Earth and it makes me nauseaus just thinking about it, and 3) I don’t feel authentic when my actions aren’t congruent with what I promote in this blog and overindulgence makes me feel like I’m losing my integrity with myself. Your motivation may be different than mine but the important thing to identify is why you are committed to your health.

6. “Free food is fat-free”. . .If you are gainfully employed right now this does not fly.

5. “I’ll eat whatever I want and just wear Spanx”. . .I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve used this rationalization. And it did work and I’ve got the Facebook pictures to prove it. But this does not work long term ladies (or gentlemen, I guess you never know these days). First of all, Spanx only make you look about 5 lbs thinner so you’ve got to have a good base of fitness to make the illusion really work. And secondly, I’ve heard my male friends tell me how they’ve gone home with girls from a party and when they take off their clothes, these guys are terrified of what’s going to come pouring out of the Spanx! (FYI-ladies please remove your Spanx in the privacy of the bathroom, it’s not cute.) The point is, when the Spanx come off they cannot hide the abdominal distention that results from overconsumption of junk food.

4. “I’m depressed”. . .I understand. I sympathize. I’ve been there and I’ve used this rationalization too. But we all know when you’re depressed and you binge on junk, though it does help you numb out for a few hours you always feel even worse about yourself after. When you’ve got the holiday blues a few things will help:

• Do the things you love. If I’m depressed I won’t stay that way for very long if I go dancing, do karaoke, call my best friend, or dogsit for one of my friends. Identify the activities that pull you out of depression quickly.
• Make a list of everything you have to be grateful for. This will help you shift immediately.
• Step out of your life and offer service to someone else. There are so many less fortunate people in this world and formally or informally volunteering to do something for someone else will always lift you out of depression.

3. “If I don’t eat/drink whatever junk I want I feel deprived”. . .Get real, starving children in Africa are deprived. If you have the money to buy good food for yourself, you are not deprived.

Along with this is, “it’s not fair, that person can eat whatever she wants and she’s still thin”. . .Again, children orphaned by AIDS is not fair. If you have to stick with healthy practices to maintain a healthy body composition, I would hardly call this unfair.

2. “I’ll just take it off in January after the holidays”. . .this may or may not be true for you. If you’ve been able to do this in the past, OK, who am I to argue? But if over the years 20 extra pounds have crept on, this is surely a rationalization. There is no better time than now to stand up for your health.

1. “If I ate it when I was drunk it didn’t count”. . .this is actually my favorite rationalization. It’s kind of funny. I’ve had people tell me that instead of waking up to a stranger after a night of drinking, they’ve woken up to strange cartons of food and said, “did I really eat THAT???” Yes you did, even if you don’t remember. The only way to combat this is to drink in moderation and know when to say when. Because just like the drunk calls and text messages that count the next day, so does the drunk calorie intake.

Ok so what do we do now that we’ve exposed the rationalizations. Here are just a few things that have worked for me and my clients:

1. Know yourself. Are you the type of person that can have one small cookie and not touch anymore junkfood for 3 days. Then you probably don’t need my help. Or are you the type of person that has the innocent brownie at the hair salon which then opens the flood gates and turns into a donut at the office, a cookie at Starbucks, linguine at the work dinner and eggnog at the holiday party? Because junk is available almost everywhere during this season my suggestion is just don’t start the downward spiral. If you don’t have that first goodie, it won’t spiral into a diet day that has totally gone down the toilet.
2. Choose in advance when you are going to cheat. It’s better to save your cheating for one event than have small cheats all week long (by way of the fact that you spike your insulin only once rather than many times over the week). If you know there’s going to be a great food party then eat clean up to it so that you can cheat without guilt. The self-flagellation that results from overeating is actually energetically way worse than eating the junk food. Planning is key!
3. Focus on eating mostly proteins (meat, poultry, fish and eggs), vegetables, and fruit. It’s impossible to get into trouble that way.
4. Drink water or sparkling water all night. I do. Really. And I feel so much better the next morning when I wake up.
5. A note about getting sick during the holidays: if you are sick and you keep eating sugar and refined foods, you will stay sick. Sugar suppressed your immune system for 6 hours everytime you eat it so you must stop NOW. In fact, limit all dairy, gluten, sugar and alcohol until you are better and make sure you eat some garlic, ginger and/or coconut oil.

Have a most happy holiday season. I’m sending everyone that reads this prayers for love, health and happiness. Enjoy!

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