Ahhhh… the holidays!  It’s that time of year again!  The decorations, the music, the celebrations, vacations, family get-togethers, cards, and FOOD!  SO. MUCH. FOOD!  If you happen to live in a colder climate, like I do, it’s very tempting to look at the piles of snow from the warm side of the window.  I don’t know about you guys, but when I’m home all day, I tend to eat more!

I’ve come up with some tips that I want to share on how to prevent holiday weight gain:

1.  Do not underestimate the power of your own expectations!

This one *might* be the hardest one on the whole list!  If you tell yourself every year that you gain 10 pounds for Christmas and that’s just what happens, guess what?  You’re almost certain to gain 10lbs!  Just because that happened for the last 5 years in a row, don’t get stuck thinking it’s an endless cycle.  Changing habits is one of the most mentally challenging transformations we fight through.  But it is not impossible!  The rest of my tips will hopefully get your creativity flowing so you can have more confidence to believe this year you know how to prevent holiday weight gain.

2.  Prioritize your favorite holiday.

We’re coming up on Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas & Hanukkah, & New Year’s.  That means 4 months of festivities, and 4 months of treats!  It’s perfectly okay to just pick 1 of those as your favorite and indulge in that particular feast on that 1 day.  That doesn’t mean you’re going to be Scrooge for the other holidays of course!  If you love to host, by all means… HOST!  You can plan, cook, bake, sing, decorate…. all of it!  But you don’t have to treat yourself to all of the goodies that go along with every holiday.  One regular sized plate of holiday food is plenty.  You still get to socialize, which I think is the best part of the holiday anyway.  You still get to taste the holiday flavors you’ve waited all year for… but you’re doing it as a regular portion size because you have one specific holiday in mind that you want to indulge in.

Hey… let’s do a little math problem… Because yeah, everybody loves math!  (Seriously, don’t block me!  This will be quick.)

1 pound = 3500 calories.

Let’s say that you have been mindful of your portions, you’ve planned balanced meals, you have your healthy go-to snacks.  You feel GREAT about what you’ve been eating all week.  On the weekends, you started baking for the holidays and because you’ve planned so well all week, you want to have a few treats while you’re baking and maybe indulge a little more on that one day.  It doesn’t have to be much.  Maybe you made brownies for an office Thanksgiving party and then decided to eat a brownie & have a nice cold glass of eggnog that evening.  One brownie is about 200 calories and one 8oz glass of eggnog is 360 calories.

Your snack was a total of 560 calories.  No biggie!  One snack, and it was delicious and worth it!  The trouble comes up though, during the holidays, when people are getting festive frequently, and this becomes an every weekend event.  That 560 calories ends up being an extra pound of weight gain in just 6 weeks.

Ok… end of the math!  I promise….

I just wanted to point out how quickly weight can be gained even when you’re eating well “most of the time.”  So like I mentioned at the top… prioritize your holidays!

3.  Make the celebrations less about the food

I grew up in an Italian family, so I completely understand that people love to share food.  They LOVE IT!  Some people even get offended when you don’t stuff yourself to the point where you need to take a nap!  It’s not always easy to say, “No thank you.”  I’m very familiar with the look you get when food is declined.  But no one else is going to take responsibility for your health but you.  When you’re making changes to prevent holiday weight gain, you have to believe that it’s okay to not indulge just because it’s the norm. You can start new traditions and activities!

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Don’t buy Halloween candy until it’s actually Halloween!  If it’s sitting around the house for 2 weeks, that’s a huge temptation every day.  Or skip the candy altogether & hand out little toys or stickers!
• If you’re hosting on Halloween for a group of kids, plan a dance party or have games and movies planned to keep busy.  Make the candy part be a very small portion of the evening.  There are 2 recipes in this Halloween article that might be good to try out this year!
• When you’re hosting holidays for the family, get the games out!  Cards, Apples to Apples, Pictionary… etc.  When large groups of people are sitting around chatting, we tend to want to break out some munchie food to have something to do while we’re talking.  Games are so much fun and a great way to keep busy and avoid the extra snacks.
• Decorate!  Instead of having the desserts taking over, cover your dining room table with crafty items like markers, construction paper, glitter, etc…. I know people usually have the house decorated before guests arrive, but change it up a little!  Have everyone get in the festive mood with some holiday music playing while you guys decorate.
• You don’t have to stay inside the whole time, even if it IS cold!  Have fun with new traditions like making a scarecrow, pumpkin carving, or building a snowman before dinner.  Or (and this is a brave move for my friends in the North…) get your group bundled up and go take a walk around the block!
• Check out local events in your area.  A lot of places host plays, movies, craft fairs, corn mazes, or street vendors to engage the community in the festivities.  Go to them!  Center your holiday around the event and then dinner/desserts is a nice addition to an already full and wonderful day.

4.  Make a pact with yourself to do an activity of your choice every day.

Not only do we tend to eat a little more during the holidays, but we get extra busy with all the planning, cleaning, and shopping.  Sometimes when our thoughts are going a mile a minute, and we’re mentally exhausted at the end of the day, it feels like we’ve moved more than we have.  Cleaning and shopping take up a lot of the day, but there’s not a lot of physical exertion involved.

And for some, maybe the extra errands DO add up to more steps or walking than usual.

For most of us though, it often takes away the extra time we were dedicating (or trying to dedicate!!) to being active.

So make a pact with yourself as soon as the craziness starts to break up your regular routines.  Pick a realistic activity goal that you’re going to do every day just to keep yourself moving and motivated.  Maybe Monday you’re going to make sure you go up and down your stairs at least 10 times during the day.  Or Tuesday, you’re going to take a break from planning, put on your favorite songs, and dance for 15 minutes.  At the end of the day when you’re watching your favorite show, promise yourself you’re going to do laps across your living room or break out the step stool and just do step ups.

If you live near stores that are only a block or two away, tell yourself you will walk there if you need to pick up a last minute item.

It doesn’t have to be the same activity.  You don’t even have to have a whole 30 or 60 minutes dedicated to anything.  Just pick an activity and make it happen, even if it’s in small amounts, all throughout the day.  When life gets busy, finding a chunk of time is almost impossible.  But finding 5 or 10 minutes a few times a day certainly IS possible & it adds up before you know it!

5.  Leftovers!

First and foremost on the leftovers: YUM!  🙂

Who doesn’t love holiday leftovers?  They’re full of fun memories, great taste, and the cooking part is already done!  You can’t beat it!

BUT… (oh come on… you knew that was coming…)

I want you to repeat after me:

“I am not solely responsible for finishing off a 15lb ham, a mixing bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy, and a pie.”

As amazing as leftovers are, there also tends to be a lot of them and we feel responsible for making sure the food does not go to waste!  And that’s definitely a difficult position.  With all the food insecurity and waste that surrounds us all the time, how could we possibly throw out leftovers?  On the other hand, we risk our own health to try and avoid that waste.

I have a few suggestions:

• PLANNING!  You can’t go wrong with planning ahead.  Make sure you’ve cleared out your freezer.  If you store the extras in the freezer, you have a much longer window of time and you won’t feel as pressured to eat a lot at once.
• Take into consideration the ideas above that suggest making the holiday less food-centered.  If there are other activities going on, there will be less food and less waste at the end of the day.
• If you’re hosting, tell everyone who is interested to bring a container with them to take a meal home.
• If you’re the guest and people are offering leftovers, only take what you know you will eat in one or two meals so you don’t feel tempted to over indulge.
• Contact local food pantries and food rescue teams for ideas on facilities that may be able to accept your leftovers as a donation.  I know there is concern about food donations and food safety.  But there is a law called The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act that protects people  from liability when donating to nonprofit organizations.
• Be forgiving to yourself if you find that you do need to get rid of some foods at the end of the day.  Most foods can be frozen, but if you come across items that need to be eaten or tossed… remind yourself that your health IS a priority and plan a little differently next time.

So there you go!  Hopefully these tips for how to prevent holiday weight gain got your creativity and motivation going a little!  Holidays were meant to be a fun and exciting time of year.  Worrying about gaining weight shouldn’t be the thing preventing you from enjoying yourself!  If you find that there are other things you do or you have a suggestion to share, please feel free to comment and add to the list.