The 7 Step Guide To Avoiding Festive Fat Gain

Disclaimer

This article is for you if you want the best of both worlds:

You want to enjoy the holiday season in all its glory but also want to keep an eye on the great physical changes you’ve achieved and worked hard for throughout the year.

This is for the guys and girls who want to maintain their health and physique (hey – even maintaining is an awesome achievement during this time) or those of you looking to progress even further

So before you think things like ‘live a little’ and ‘don’t be so up tight its Christmas etc. etc.’ this isn’t written to scare you off from enjoying yourself. The last thing I would want to do is cause you to become a recluse and not enjoy this amazing time with your friends and loved ones.

I absolutely love Christmas myself and I always enjoy this period.

If you want to go ahead, gorge and binge on everything in sight over the next few weeks reversing months of progress, that’s fine. If that makes you happy with no regrets then I am honestly not telling you to do otherwise … in fact, you don’t need to read any further.

That said, if you’re like me, and want to indulge in turkey with all the trimmings, mince pies, trifle and huge Christmas leftover sandwiches, while staying in great shape, then read on.

Overview

You’ve trained hard and your nutrition has been on point for the last few months giving you some great results.

You haven’t had many distractions in your way as far as nights out and social events are concerned.

There hasn’t been much that could possibly derail your progress and you’re extremely proud of how far you’ve come.

BUT here comes the festive period …

All of a sudden there are meals, invitations out, boozy nights, family days and so on over the course of just a few weeks, there may even be multiple events in the same week which can really put you out of your normal stride.

Some people will either YOLO and reverse weeks’ and sometimes months of progress adding a lot of fat in the process. From my personal coaching experience when January comes around the newly accumulated 5-10kgs of ‘festive fluff’ is never worth it.

The 7 steps found below will guide you and help you see that you can ‘burn the candle at both ends, enjoying the festive holidays without regrets.

Step1: Increase Your Energy Expenditure

Without going to extremes, consider adding some more volume (sets and reps) to your normal strength routine or simply add a couple of extra cardio sessions on top of your normal week's training.

With the added expenditure over the course of the week you could burn a few extra hundred calories more than usual…

Just don’t fall into the trap of ‘I burned off X amount of calories today I can eat X amount of food’…this won’t go down well and isn’t a healthy mindset to have.

Now we aren’t talking about adding hours and hours onto your training plan and DON’T THINK YOU CAN OUT TRAIN 1000s OF EXCESS CALORIES… you won’t… but if you are eating *slightly* more than normal, then doing some more work in the gym can certainly help level out the excess that you have consumed

Step 2: Plan Your Meals in Advance

If you know you're eating out then you can plan ahead. You may not know exactly what food will be on offer or where you will be eating ... BUT you can still do the best you can in whatever situation you come across.

Don’t think "F*** it" and lose what could be an awesome week's progress… even in the festive period

How to do it?

I’m sure most of you will use a calorie tracker like my fitness pal, and on this you will have your own calorie, protein, carbs, fat and fibre targets over the course of each day and week.

When eating out you can plan your food in advance using your chosen calorie app.

During the day of the meal, plan to eat low calorie - consuming lean meat and fibrous veggies only, this will be substantial enough to fill you up and keep hunger at bay

Planning in advance and eating low calorie satiating foods throughout the day will result in you being able to enjoy your meal out and allow you to keep close to your normal calorie target

If you know where you will be eating then look at the menu and pick what meal you want to have. Once you have chosen it you can add it to My fitness pal by searching for something similar (you may not find the exact option but be as close as you can) and adding it to your food diary keeping calories close to your target.

If you don’t know what you will be eating or where you will be going make sensible choices on the menu and you can always add it to your calorie app later that day, the most important fact is to be mindful and try not to over indulge.

If you end up consuming slightly more than you aimed for but still recorded it then you can reduce your calorie target a day or 2 after the event in order to make sure your weekly calorie average still levels out and resulting in a great weeks progress.

Don’t ruin your fat loss by having 1000s of excess calories in one day. Plan ahead and you can enjoy your time as well as improve your health, physique and fitness.

Step 3: Fill up on Vegetables and Protein

30 minutes prior to eating out or having a festive meal with the family, consume a large serving of lean protein and veg

This will have a small amount of calories and should fill you up slightly before to your meal

Even with the best of intentions sometimes hunger can sneak in and cause people to easily over-indulge, so having something prior can help keep you in the zone

At the end of the day, eating out and the holiday season should be about the people you are with and not about how much food you can eat in one sitting.

If you are prone to overeating then try this tip before hand...it certainly helps me

Step 4: You Don't Need to Finish Your Plate

We aren't always able to control portion sizes when we aren't serving ourselves

With that being said just because we have a mountain of food in front of us we don’t need to finish our plate.

Fill up on the meat first, then the veg and then have a little bit of the extras.

Be mindful as to what you're eating and drinking, taste your food and make sure you enjoy it and savor it.

It should be about the enjoyment of the taste not how much of it you can wolf down

It used to be deemed rude / a waste not to eat everything in sight... it isn't!

Eat slow, enjoy your food and you will be much more satisfied

Step 5: Work Out at Home

Gym closed?

Weather too bad to get there?

No time?

No problemo and no excuses!!!

There is nothing to stop you doing a 30minute bodyweight routine or using some free weights in your house for an effective workout

You can use chairs, stairs, resistance bands, and super slow reps in order to get your muscles working and heart rate up...

An example circuit may be:

Push ups x failure

Chair step ups x 15 each leg

Single leg glute bridge x 10 each leg

Tricep press ups x failure

Alternated leg lunges x 15 each leg

Resistance band bent over row x 10

Resistance band lat raises x 10

Rest 3 mins and repeat x 4 rounds

There are always things you can be doing at home in order to keep your fitness and strength up with the bonus of burning some calories too.

You can even do it in your onesie... Bonus!!

Step 6: Don't Leave Sweets / Nuts / Bowls of Crisps Lying Around the House

Yeah, sure, ‘flexible dieting’ and all that...!! but having convenient high calorie snacks scattered around the house can be detrimental to your physique over the festive period.

Snacking on a few sweets and crisps throughout the day may not seem like you’re taking in much but due to the calorie density of those foods you can easily be adding 100’s of calories to what would be a normal day's eating... add that to the extra meals out you will most likely be having and it will make a BIG difference to your physique and health.

**Top Tips!!**

-Put the food away - out of sight and out of mind… not seeing the tasty treats lying out in the open will stop you mindfully grabbing at them during the day and night.

-If you physically have to go into a cupboard to get your snack then it adds an extra ‘barrier’ into the equation. The barrier can be enough to counter act the mindless eating that can happen.

-If you can’t even keep your hands out of the cupboards take leftover goodies into work, give them away to friends and family or even to the local food bins at the supermarket.

There is nothing wrong with fitting treats into your day's eating but it can be very hard to control what you're taking in when your favourite festive offerings are lying in-front of you. Try some of the tips above and the main take home point should be to be mindful and careful about overindulging.

Step 7: Plan ‘Blowout Days’

Plan your "blowout days" in advance (i.e. schedule in a couple of days where you know you won't be tracking).

I won’t track on Christmas day, maybe boxing day too… I will probably consume 2-3000 more calories on both those days than I would normally eat from day to day.

Theoretically in just 2 days I may add 2lbs of fat.

Those 2 lbs may have taken me 2 weeks to burn off!

What should you do?

If you really don’t want to ruin 2 weeks of progress then try planning those days in advance, and make a promise to yourself that they will only be those 2 days that aren’t tracked at all.

Put other measures in place in order to make sure you mindfully try to balance out the week's calories as best you can. Take a couple of hundred calories from your fat and carb targets a few days previous to the ‘blowout’ and this can take a bit of an ‘edge off’ excess you will be eating that week resulting in a lower weekly calorie average.

On the day of the blowout you may even want to consider eating very light in the morning or even fasting before the meal…even though you will still be eating quite a bit at the dinner reducing what you would normally eat that morning can also ‘damage limit’ the amount of calories consumed that day.

Obviously this is always your choice, you have most likely came so far with your own health and body composition goals and I have seen people wipe 5-6 weeks of progress in 1-2 weeks of constant blowouts.

Summing It Up

As I said in the disclaimer the tips in this article can really help you keep control of your physique and health over the festive period…If you don’t want the holiday season to destroy your hard earned progress you don’t have to. I hope you’ll take away at least a couple of tips that you can apply over the next few weeks.

What are you planning to do with your training and nutrition over Christmas?

Drop a comment and let me know.

#christmas #holidays #flexibledieting #macro #homeroutine #tips