Avoid the holiday obstacle course

Temptations - they are everywhere. As the holidays approach, this can be even more true. With that comes an almost guaranteed heightened sense of anxiety.

If you are looking to make true and lasting change, say eat healthier and/or lose weight, this can make for trying times.

Obstacles abound with never-ending supplies of cookies, cakes, pies, and all sorts of everything comforting.

What makes this even more challenging is that so many people wave the white flag and push their self-care to the back burner until January 1st…or maybe March. Maybe.

It does not have to be this way. Compromises can exist to make your holiday season not only festive, but productive as it relates to your goals.

Yes, you can actually enjoy yourself - and the treats - of the holiday season while still working on your positive habits. Below, I will tell you how!

While the holidays are often synonymous with over-indulging, taking a mindful step through eating until you are “satisfied” versus “stuffed” can be a great place to start. Eating until you are 80% full leaves you feeling better inside and out is a far more sensible approach than being stuffed and looking for the closest sofa and stretchy pants.

Granted, this sounds simple but is not always easy.

Being aware of your level of satiety (“still a little hungry” versus “satisfied” versus “full”) calls for being truly connected to your body and its sensations while eating. That may seem like like an obvious thing to some, but is challenging for many.

Mindful eating asks for an increased level of self-awareness, paying close attention to your overall experience, including sights, sounds, smells, flavors, and textures.

Being mindful with your eating can also take a great deal of pressure off of the notion that you have to be perfect. This is all about progress, not perfection.

And NOW is the best time to start because this will afford you plenty of practice eating foods you love in a mindful, connected way, without worrying about going overboard.

You still get to enjoy all of your favorite holiday treats while, all at the same time, building a set of skills that will help you improve your nutrition and eat more mindfully all year around and for the rest of your life!

An important point to remember is that this is not an “all-or-nothing” scenario. I do not coach your to be perfect or to aim for some sense of perfection. Rather this is more about you building the habits that can serve you every day, for the rest of your life. Doing your best, truly your best under the circumstances, is sometimes exactly what we need.

This more mindful and connected approach will put you in a position in which you will not feel frustrated, disgusted and give up altogether by the time the New Year comes around.

Rather, I encourage you to use the holiday season to your advantage to make progress with your behaviors, whether or not you eat “perfectly” - which is not the goal here, anyway.

My goal for you this holiday season, during the most challenging of times, is to help bring you through the New Year with more confidence, malleability, and resilience - all tools you can rely on going forward. This will go a long way to reinforcing your relationship with and appreciation for yourself!

If you seek true and lasting fat loss, there is only one way

If you spend enough time in the webisphere or if you talk with enough personal trainers or nutrition coaches, you will quickly discover there are a myriad of opinions on how to lose weight.

And let’s be clear. When most of us say “lose weight”, we mean “lose fat” or change our body’s composition. There is a difference.

Make no mistake about it, there is only one way to create true and lasting fat loss: A caloric deficit.

Now, some will look to use movement or exercise as the primary way of creating that deficit and that approach works…until it doesn’t. Our bodies have this uncanny way of adapting to what we throw at it. If we use exercise as the catalyst to fat loss, eventually our bodies will adapt to needing far more exercise than we can afford to give it without physical injury or straight up burn out.

The best way I can explain it is like this:

When you get paid from your job, regardless of how often you get paid, you set a little bit of money aside every month. Now when I say a little, a few people will get ambitious and try to save 50% or more. Stay with me here…

But what happens is that if you put too much money away for that vacation, that rainy day fund, or retirement, you will quickly find that you took too much away from what you need on a daily basis and will need to start eating away at that savings. Fifty dollars here, twenty there…it adds up. Until suddenly you realize you are not saving 50% at all.

So too with your calories and nutrition. If you cut your calories drastically and in a way that is not approachable and sustainable, you will be setting yourself up for inevitable and unnecessary suffering and may even go so far as to give up altogether. To me, that is the worst case scenario.

Whereas if you look to cut your calories by a far more manageable amount - say, 10 or 15% for the sake of this discussion - you will be more well-aligned to lose fat in a gradual and sustainable way without starving yourself. If you are not starving yourself, depriving yourself of all those foods you feel you cannot have, you will be less likely to fall into the cycle of binging followed by copious amounts of self-deprecation, which has the potential to turn into a never-ending cycle.

The goal here for me is simple. I don’t want my clients to notice they are “on a diet”. Instead, I would rather clients notice subtle changes to their nutrition by way of small, sustainable behaviors, that ultimately add up to a far larger whole - achieving their goals.

Consistency is the key variable. Which leads to…

The other and perhaps equally as important part to this equation is buy-in.

We can lust after our goals. That is normal human behavior. What we need and what I endeavor to earn from my clients is buy-in as it relates to the journey. That is to say developing a keen sense of self-awareness of how the body begins to feel with some subtle tweaks to nutrition, increased hydration, and meaningful movement. Falling in love with this part of the process brings the goals about in a way that, frankly, doesn’t make you angry or hate yourself or those around you.

Call it a lifestyle. Call it a philosophy. What I call it is a way to make progress towards your goals without turning into your own worst enemy.

Be well.

Why you don’t need a cheat day

Cheat meals are complete nonsense.

And the fitness industry (MY industry) is largely to blame.

You will often see “fitness influencers” posting pictures on social media of random plates of chicken, broccoli and brown rice. #fitness #foodprep (sarcasm intended)

It may not always be this combination, but stay with me for a moment, please.

The images portrayed are those of diet perfection which, if you have spent any time around me, you will know is a fallacy. More than likely there is a binge day (or three) involved. Not that there is anything wrong with eating the things you want to eat, but that is for another post.

When we approach our nutrition this way, we set ourselves up for a potentially dangerous relationship with food that is related to neither health nor fitness - at least not in my book.

So what DO you need?

Generally speaking, more protein. Yes, formulas exist in the webisphere. But please know that those formulas are not always geared to you specifically and with your particular goals in mind, no matter how many times you enter your height and weight. You may need more protein than you think, regardless whether your goal is to lose body fat (body composition) or add lean muscle.

Why protein? It is satisfying and takes our body longer - meaning it takes more energy - to digest (that’s Thermic Effect of Food at it’s finest).

Food, for the most part, is the only thing we as human beings take in to fuel ourselves. There is, of course, oxygen from the air, Vitamin D from the sun, trace minerals from water. But I digress.

I say all of that to say that there is an inherent willingness - no, a desire - in every single one of us to take in things that add life to our bodies. Lean proteins, fruits, and veggies. Those are the things which afford us the ability to move in a meaningful way (which we NEED to do more!) and literally feel better inside and out.

It is a far smarter, far more balanced approach versus riding the roller coaster and, in theory, wait and suffer for 6 days in order to inhale a plate of pancakes or 20 burgers.

How about this: 20% of your daily calories could/should come from foods outside what many would consider healthy. Meaning, foods some would consider “bad”, which you will never hear me say. Yes, chocolate included. As an aside, if you want to make that chocolate go further? Try chocolate covered almonds (protein and healthy fats) = 2 birds with 1 stone. You see, there is room for compromise.

The reason I take and promote this approach is simple: You might actually enjoy your life and the journey you are on rather than being miserable more often than not, fixated on a meal several days away to “reward yourself for good behavior”.

This is not prison. This is life and it is a precious and finite thing.

If you look at a week as a whole, you can have that chocolate or a burger [or insert food item here] on any day of the week, knowing full well that your balanced, sensible approach to nutrition throughout the rest of the week will not derail your efforts! Look at you, being a reasonable human being.

Why 20%? Well, let’s be clear… 20% could be less than what we MAY have been doing in the past. Again, compromise.

Resist the idea of binge and restrict culture. Give in to your cravings (within reason). And if giving in to your cravings creates a trigger or a downward spiral, there are resources and tools that can help you along the way.

What we seek in our nutrition practice is a sustainable diet (the word “diet” used in the literal sense), that feels approachable and repeatable. This builds consistency. Behaviors lead to habits which lead to results.

The more we restrict ourselves, the more we fascinate over the things we feel and tell ourselves we cannot have. If that is your “diet”, rest assured, it will not last. Mentally, it is exhausting. Physically, it is taxing. Emotionally, it can be devastating. Those are primary drivers behind the multi-billion dollar diet industry and the culture it feeds (again, pun intended).

If you are looking to cheat on your partner, then that partner is likely not the one for you. So too with your diet - literally, how you nourish yourself.

Make the best effort with your nutrition about 80% of the time (protein, fruits, veggies, some grains) and let the other approximately 20% be whatever you want or need it to be.

If you are the kind of person who likes to track calories and macros, no problem. Let’s talk about what that looks like in a safe, supportive, and sustainable way.

There will be those who will disagree with all of this. Me? I would far rather be happy with life than miserable and resentful.

Your mileage may vary.

Be well.