'Tis the season to take five pounds off
Yes, you can slim down. These five diet strategies from experts make it easy.
By Lorie A. Parch
Forget all your preconceived notions about gaining weight over the holidays. The truth is, this year you can enjoy the festivities and even shed those nagging 5 pounds.
Heres the math: To lose 5 pounds, you need to shave 17,500 calories (or 3,500 per pound). Break that down over November and December and it works out to only 300 calories a day. You're losing at a very healthy, controlled rate less than a pound a week which makes you more likely to stick to your weight-loss efforts and keep the weight off post-Jan. 1. Heres how to do it.
1 Cut Calories Modestly
Resist the temptation to make major cuts in your diet. There are just too many fabulous things around to eat this time of year. Instead, aim to reduce your intake by just 100 calories every day, while bumping up the frequency and intensity of your workouts, advises Pat Vasconcellos, R.D., an American Dietetic Association spokeswoman in Boston. To offset the calorie increases at the holidays, focus on exercise that way you wont feel deprived.
Cutting calories is easy if you know where to look, says Elisabetta Politi, M.P.H., R.D., nutrition manager at the Duke Diet & Fitness Center in Durham, N.C. If you give up one slice of bread, you're saving 100 calories, she says. And if you choose lean fish or grilled, skinless chicken breast over red meat, you can also very easily save 100200 calories.
The trick to translating this to weight loss is two fold: Don't make up the calorie loss with holiday treats (youll need to budget for those) and stay consistent in burning the other 200 calories with exercise to hit a daily 300-calorie deficit. On days you exercise less or not at all, make up the difference by cutting more calories from your food intake. When you do a longer, more vigorous workout, you may want to have a small treat or bank those calories expended.
2 Make Your Free Time Count
True, there is more to get done this time of year. But most of us get at least a few days off too. Use that time to fit in a number of good workouts that burn some serious calories and fat (a 50-minute run burns nearly 600 calories, or two days worth of calories toward your 5-pound goal). Carve out more time for workouts by doing your holiday shopping online.
Do make time for regular, healthy meals. You never want to miss a meal, or change the timing of your meals, Vasconcellos cautions. When you eat is key for weight loss, especially during the busy time of the holidays. Make sure you eat a small meal or snack every three to four hours to prevent overeating. If you're going holiday shopping all day, bring something to keep you going, like a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich and a piece of fruit.
3 Eat What You Love
If you're too rigid during the holiday season, it normally backfires on you, Politi says. Instead, she says, focus on having a small amount sometimes just a bite of what you really love several days a week, or even every day. I've found with my clients that if they have a little bit of their favorite food every day, it takes away their anxiety and the feeling of eating something forbidden, Politi says.
The exception: If you know that one bite will lead to another (and another), youll probably need to keep the verboten foods out of the house altogether. Avoid the panic of missing out on foods you only get to enjoy once a year by putting a few goodies in a Ziploc bag and freezing them. Knowing that you can have a bite of Christmas fudge in February may take the edge off and keep you from overindulging now.
4 Reframe The Holidays
Heard a news report warning that youll put on 5 or 10 pounds from Halloween to New Years? Not true. A 2000 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the average person gains just over a pound during the holidays. So don't dust off the elastic-waist pants just yet: Instead, take a hard look at what really pushes your buttons to overeat now is it parties, difficult relatives or the endless bowls of candy at work? Look at each party as a separate event; tell yourself, Im going to enjoy myself tonight, but when the party's over, I go back to healthy eating and exercise, advises Denise Supik, M.S., a licensed clinical professional counselor at the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center in Baltimore.
5 Prepare For Parties
