10 Ways To Manage Your Weight At Christmas

christmas-tree.jpg1. Shift the Family Focus Away From Food:
Plan something big this Christmas. This could be as varied as raising lots of funds for your favorite non-profit organization or entering your house in a holiday lights contest.

Make this a new family tradition and try and move everyone away from bonding over food.

2. It’s not “All or Nothing”:
One of the biggest Christmas overeating justifications is that you won’t get a chance to have some of this holiday food for the rest of the year. Here is what you can do to remedy this:

Two weeks before Christmas, have some of your favorite Christmas treat. This will give you a nice reminder that there is no reason why you can’t have some of these foods outside Christmas.

3. Eat the Healthy Options First at a Christmas Party:
Try & locate healthy snacks like fruit pieces at the next Christmas party. Fill yourself with some of these before moving on to other treats.

4. Skip the Food Gifts:
Talk to all your friends and promise not to exchange any food gifts (like chocolates) this Christmas. Instead:

5. Get Each Other Christmas Gifts That Make Exercise Fun:
These can include:

6. Keep Yourself Busy in Decorations:
Keep yourself busy in decorations and try & stay away from the kitchen. With you busy in decorating the house and the food temptations far away; weight management will be much easier.

7. Don’t Deprive Yourself Completely of Christmas Treats:christmas-decorations.jpg
In the days preceding Christmas, people love to share holiday food. Don’t deprive yourself of these treats completely.

Keep an eye on how many you’re eating but do enjoy a few!

8. Ask Around & Find a New Exercise Partner in Your Family:
If the entire family is getting together, ask around to see if anyone has really gotten into exercise lately. You may not have regular exercise friends around Christmas and new year, so it’s a good idea to find someone else to exercise with.

This will help both you and your family members get exercise in the absence of the regular partners.

christmas-pudding.JPG9. Simply Enjoy The Christmas Dinner:
One day doesn’t make or break your weight management goals. Simply have a good Christmas dinner with your family & enjoy the meal.

10. Give Away The Leftovers:
While the Christmas dinner doesn’t make a huge difference to your weight management goals, eating leftovers for the next week is an issue. Give them away or even throw them away.

Any option is better than forcing yourself to eat them for the next few days.

14 Ways To Manage Your Weight During The Holiday Season - Part 2: Getting Exercise

9. Relieve Stress With Exercise:
In part 1 we discovered stress to be a leading cause of overeating during the holiday season. One of the best ways to relieve stress is exercising.

Imagine the positive impact on your weight management goals when you substitute overeating with exercise to relieve stress. So whenever you feel holiday stress creeping up on you, use one of the ideas below to reduce it:

10. Instead of the Escalator, Take the Stairs at the Mall:inside-a-shopping-mall.JPG
Check out the numbers for:
Calories Burned while Walking Upstairs:

Think about the mall you shop in. How many opportunities do you think you’ll have to take the stairs instead of an escalator?

11. Create an Exercise Schedule:
The holiday season is a very busy time for everyone, so it’s best to create exercise appointments with yourself. Chart out Twenty 1-hour appointments throughout the season where you do nothing but your favorite exercise.

12. Get into a Fun Indoor Exercise During the Holidays:
Check out some of the following fun ideas to exercise indoors. The cold season is an ideal time start one of these:airhockeytable.gif

13. When Shopping, Park the Car as far Away as Possible:
Because of all the walking, shopping at the mall is a good exercise in itself but you can make it even better by parking your car as far away as possible from the mall entrance.

An added benefit of this: It will take you a lot less time to find a parking space.

14. Organize a Winter Team Building Exercise:
A weekend corporate team building exercise is a good way to refocus during the holiday season and get some great exercise in the process. Companies like Alpine Events and the Tahoe Adventure Company provide team building opportunities centered around various outdoor physical activities during the winters.

14 Ways To Manage Your Weight During The Holiday Season – Part 1: Eating Better

In this 2 part series we’ll be looking at simple ways to manage your weight during the holiday season. Let’s begin with tips on eating better:

1. Aim to Maintain Your Weight, Not Lose It!
With all the holiday food around, it’s a little unrealistic to try and lose weight during the holiday season. Focus on maintaining your current weight till January.wrigleys-spearmint-chewing-gum.gif

2. Chew Gum:
Each Strip is about 10 calories and is a much better alternative to all the holiday snacks being offered at the office and at home.

3. Keep The Holiday Stress To a Minimum:
According a 2004 American Psychological Association Survey, 36% of Americans have extra alcohol & food to cope with the holiday stress. The leading causes of this stress are:credit-cards.jpg

We recommend the following ways to avoid holiday stress:

4. Skip Cream Based Dressings:
Cream based dressings add a lot of calories to holiday foods. Minimize them or skip them all together.

bakery-products.jpg5. Decrease the Calories in What you Bake:
Check out our tips to reduce calories while baking. See if you can use some of these for your favorites.

6. Keep Track:
Even if your goal is simply to maintain your weight, continue keeping track. By keeping track of how much you’re eating, you can avoid any bad January weight gain surprises.

7. Avoid Alcohol or Drink in Moderation:
Check out the following numbers for calories in alcohol:

Regular Beer (12 oz.) 150 Calories
Light Beer (12 oz.) 110 Calories
Kahlua Liqueur (1.5 oz.) 190 Calories
Gin (1.5 oz.) 100 Calories
Rum (1.5 oz.) 100 Calories
Vodka (1.5 oz) 100 Calories
Whiskey (1.5 oz) 100 Calories
Martini (4 oz.) 160 Calories
Daiquiri (6 oz.) 180 Calories
Whiskey Sour (4 oz.) 160 Calories
Long Island Iced Tea (6 oz.) 350 Calories
Margarita (6 oz.) 250 Calories

So drinking less will save you a lot of calories. Here are two quick ways to drink less alcohol:

8. Eat a Sandwich Before Heading Out to a Holiday Party:
You are likely to be invited to many Christmas parties around this period. Simply eat a sandwich before you go and you’re likely to eat less of the party food.

Fun Exercise Ideas: Skiing

skier.jpgDoes the idea of swooshing & sliding across stunning, snow-clad terrain sound like a boring, mundane exercise to you? We bet it doesn’t! That’s why our latest fun exercise idea is: Skiing.

Skiing is a Great Exercise:
Skiing is a lot of fun and it is an excellent exercise. Skiing downhill, even with light effort, will give you a very nice workout:
1 hour of Downhill Skiing (with light effort) burns:

At 130 Pounds - 300 Calories
At 155 Pounds - 350 Calories
At 190 Pounds - 430 Calories
At 225 Pounds - 510 Calories
At 250 Pounds - 570 Calories

So let’s say you burn 400 calories/hour skiing. 1 week of a ski vacation can result in:
400 calories x 3 hours x 7 days = 8,400 Calories burned (2.5 Pound, 1 Kg lost).

This may not sound like a lot but remember: This is during the winters - An always difficult time to lose weight. An active ski holiday is perfect midway through the winters.

Getting Started:
camelbackski1.jpg Firstly, get a beginners class in skiing. You will need to learn the basic techniques before you can get started. Also, learning to ski with an instructor will help overcome any fear of getting on the snow.

Most good ski resorts offer beginner classes. But before you book a holiday at a resort, confirm that they do. At least a beginner’s class in skiing is strongly recommended.

Finding Ski Resorts in Your Area:
Try some of these websites to find a resort near you:

Equipment Needed:
We won’t recommend buying any equipment when starting off; in the beginning it’s best to rent the equipment.

Ski resorts usually have very knowledgeable rental shop staff. They will take into account your height, weight, skiing ability and current ski conditions before making a recommendation. This is by far the best ski equipment option on your first few trips.

Skiing Tips:

Have fun at the slopes!

Quick Tips: Weight Management In Winters - 2

steamed-fish.JPG6. Try food items that make you warm:
Some food items like fish and beans contain iron, which helps keep your body warm. Steamed fish is a very good option to try.

7. Start a fun activity:
Learn a new skill or simply go for something you always wanted to try. This can be as varied learning a new dance. For example:

Or if you are more interested in a fighting art, try:

Alternatively you can also take up a sport by:

Be sure to check the credentials of the place you’re about to join. Alternatively, try getting one of the many training videos available for your preferred activity and do it from the comfort of your home.

8. Sustain good heating around the house:
Usually, we are hungrier when we are colder. Or at least we feel like eating more in the cold weather. So it’s imperative to have good heating around the house.

If the cost of heating is an issue, here are a few ideas to help lower your cost of heating the house:sunny-kitchen.jpg

9. At least break even every day:
If you can’t lose it, maintain it. You lose weight when you eat less than your average daily requirements of the day. But, if you think you can’t eat less, eat about as much as it takes to maintain your weight during the winter.

10. Continue keeping track in winters:
Continue keeping track of your food intake during the winter, even if you regularly end up eating a few more calories than your daily requirement. This will ensure that:

As the weather gets better, there is no reason why you won’t be able to make the necessary adjustments to bounce back.

11. Make sure your meal is nice and hot:
Whenever possible, go for a warm meal over a cold snack in chilly weather. Warm meals heat your body and are a very good choice at winter time.

Quick Tips: Weight Management In Winters - 1

When it’s chilly outside, weight management is often put on the back burner. All the additional clothing doesn’t help either. However, with some adjustments, weight can be managed during the winter as well. Try some of these ideas to make the process a lot easier during the cold weather:

1. Drink lots of hot beverages and eat soup:
hot_chocolate.jpgDrink lots of hot fluids. This keeps your body warm. And, if you pick wisely, it will help your weight management goals as well. Try some of these:

Eating soup is a great way to fill up before your meal. It’s also a great way to keep warm. Most clear soups are low in calories. Do some research on your favorites and you will find many of them as suitable choices.

2. If you are eating more, increase your exercise:
If you are increasing your daily food intake in the winter, you can offset that by taking up some extra activity. Just ensure that you maintain a balance between the two.

3. Take up an outdoor activity:
Winter can be a great time to take up an outdoor activity. Here are a few of the activities you can try:

4. Exercise inside the house:
If it’s too cold outside, try exercising inside the house. You can try activities like:

5. Keep your body warm:
Make sure you are properly wrapped up when going outside. If you decide to take up an outdoor activity, warming up properly will reduce the risk of injuries as well.