If you plan ahead you can enjoy the holidays without gaining weight. Understand your strengths and weaknesses so that you can determine the triggers that cause you to skip your workouts and overeat. Think about being with family and friends while eating in a healthy manner and maintaining a fitness routine.
Some tips:
1. Crank up the intensity of your workouts 2.. Hike. While an easy hike might be less than your normal training load, it’s something that the whole family can do together.
3. Restaurant portions can be huge so even before you start your meal, have your server wrap up half of your food. Keep in mind, a portion of fish or meat is about the size of your fist or a deck of cards. Some restaurant portions can feed a family. Of course you can wait till you have finished some of your food before you ask for it to be packaged. But the chance of you having anything left over to take home will decrease if your meal is in front of you. Most people will pick on the food until there is too little to take home. If half of the food is taken away to begin with, it will enable you to keep some control on your food intake. You will also have a good lunch for the next day.
4.. Order a low-calorie soup and plenty of vegetables. Soup is very filling. Vegetables are low in calories and nutritious. The fiber in the vegetables is good for you and is also very filling.
5. Avoid the white starchy foods. That would include bread, pasta, rice, and cream sauces. Most starchy foods are high in calories with little nutritional value.
6. Eat before you go out to the party or restaurant if you are trying to control your weight. Eat a small portion of a food, not more than 200 calories, consisting of a protein and/vegetable. By having a healthy snack before you dine out, you will not come into the restaurant starving. Weight control is about keeping control. You can not have control over what you eat if you let yourself get too hungary. If you walk into the restaurant starving there is a good chance that you will eat the entire bread basket and select high calorie foods for your dinner.