Most diets fall apart or are completely discarded during the holiday season. This is because most diets are too restrictive and work great in theory but don’t allow for any wiggle room of ‘real life’. Instead, if you can adopts healthy habits, those habits can help you navigate tricky situations (be in birthdays or holiday parties) successfully while reaching your fitness goals.
In looking specifically at the holiday season, I’ve identified several major problems with how most people address food choices and weight loss during this time.
Healthy Habit Problems:
- There’s too much food laying around during the holidays. Most of it isn’t healthy.
- Too much accepted justification. “I only eat this during the holidays”.
- It’s really hard to maintain your weight during the holiday season, let alone trying to lose weight during this time.
- Eating 5-6 ‘small’ meals a day during this time of year is a recipe for disaster.
- Distracted eating is at an all-time high. Distracted eating is when you engage in another activity and eat/snack absent-mindedly. IE eating while you watch all the football bowl games, eating/grazing while you visit with friends and family.
The Healthy Habit Solution
I’m a simpleton. I like to simplify everything as much as possible. While there may be hundreds or even 10 things you can do, what is the ONE thing that if done will make the biggest difference? So what’s that one thing? I would say it’s limiting yourself to 3 meals a day during this period, and no snacking.
Eat 3 Meals a Day During the Holiday Season
Let’s look to European culture for a moment. They typically eat 3 meals a day, with one meal being larger than the others. This was the American culture as well for many, many years. Now why did we have to go and change it? We got too smart. We’ve been told that eating 5-6 small meals a day will help us keep our metabolism up and will help us lose weight by not overeating during the regular meals.
I’m not going to touch the validity of this claim in this post, but I will say this is a horribly bad idea during this time of year. It’s a recipe for disaster because the food that’s available isn’t our normal healthier food. There’s far too many sweets, pastries, fatty foods and just large quantities of food in general.
Essentially, we stock pile all of our ‘comfort foods’ and with the ‘go-ahead’ of eating frequent meals we justify ourselves into grazing and snacking on the things that will damage our healthy habits faster than anything. In summary, we mistakenly apply the 5-6 meals ideology and we end up eating WAY too many calories for our needs. We gain weight and become frustrated at the 5-6 meal/day rule. It’s not necessarily the rule that failed us, it’s the food and our liberties we’ve taken with it.
By focusing on only eating 3 meals a day during this holiday season, we bring greater mindfulness to our eating and choices. Far too often we fall victim to distracted eating while we socialize with friends and family. By making this 1 simple choice to only eat during dinner, for example, you don’t have to worry about what you’re eating at dinner as much. Sure have another roll. Dessert? Don’t mind if I do. Enjoy the holiday meal and the company. But once dinner is over and you’ve moved away from the table-you are finished eating.
Distraction is the enemy of our healthy habits and fitness results. Focus on eating-nothing else. Distraction leads us away from our goals and focus. You may need to bulk up on your self-control to follow this rule, but by increasing your focus-especially during the vulnerable moments getting between you and your goals you’ll be more likely to come out ahead.
Does this mean you only need to eat 3 meals a day now forever? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on what’s worked for you in reaching your healthy lifestyle and fitness level. I do recommend trying this strategy during the days when you have holiday parties or the big holiday dinner (aka Thanksgiving dinner). On these days, keep the other meals really light and healthy-get your fruits and veggies in during these meals that way you can enjoy the bigger less-healthy one while still maintaining a neutral energy balance (calories in = calories out).
If you’ve liked this article, download our FREE Healthy Eating Guide for other great tips for keeping your fitness level during the holiday season.