The Trick to Staying Slim in the Face of Cookie-Mania
All right, so summer has come and gone and the Christmas season is coming soon, complete with turkey, cookies, fatty gravies and sugary sweets. With that kind of obstacle in your way, how can you possibly be expected to lose weight?
Unfortunately, with the holidays fast approaching those of us who are on a perpetual diets have begun the yearly routine of attempting to slim ourselves down as far as humanly possible in the interests of ensuring that the ten pounds we are going to gain courtesy of our yearly cookie fix isn't noticeable, and the thought of the battle of the bulge we are going to be fighting after the New Year is enough to make even the most stout-hearted individual cringe as they prepare to spend three grueling months sweating off every ounce of chocolate that has crossed their lips in the name of peace and goodwill.
Good news to all of you closet choc-a-holics out there-there's a better way! Yes, there are ways that you can stay fit and trim through the holiday season without having to either starve yourself for months ahead of time or deprive your body of all of the sugary Christmas sweets it has been craving since last Christmas (good news if the thought of having to go through the holidays without fudge was enough to make you consider going the way of Scrooge and swearing off Christmas forever!).
What's the secret to keeping your sanity in the face of the frosting wars?
- Lay off of the eggnog. While an occasional glass certainly won't hurt, imbibing warm eggnog every night (particularly if it happens to be laced with your favorite brand of additional flavoring) is a quick and easy way to pack on extra pounds. Eggnog contains a great deal of sugar, and just as it would if you ate too much candy that sugar will go straight to your hips.
- Everything in moderation. It isn't having a cookie or two with dinner or a piece of pie in the restaurant with your girlfriend in the afternoon that causes you to gain the holiday ten, it's eating a half a pound of chocolate marshmallow fudge with your spiced eggnog in the evening that leads to disaster.
- Go easy on the alcohol. Alcohol, particularly beer, mixed drinks and other malted beverages carry a large number of calories, and those calories will settle themselves directly on your stomach if you are not careful to keep them in moderation. (Are you beginning to notice a trend here?)
- Don't overeat. This is the number one killer for dieters over the holidays; it seems as though everywhere you go there is someone attempting to feed you something. Either Aunt Sarah has just taken a pie out of the oven, your best friend down the road was given a box of her favorite truffles and she wants to share her newfound wealth with you or your Uncle Ed has a flash of his “special” eggnog sitting in his pocket to was down the pumpkin pie Aunt Sarah just shoveled down you. Don't eat if you're not hungry; if you know that you are going to be going from house to house being force fed in a single afternoon attempt to eat many small meals rather than filling up in one stop. You may still find yourself hungry after your first two or three visits, but by the end of the day you'll be grateful that you spread it all out.
- Don't take candy to work with you. You'll sit and nibble at it all day long, effectively blowing your diet out of the water.
- Clean and decorate your house rather than baking tons of pies and cookies-it will get you in the holiday spirit as effectively as mass producing those holiday treats will.
- Make cookies and fudge for your co-workers. Hey, misery loves company! Seriously though, if you're baking cookies and giving them away in bulk you're soon going to be so sick of looking at them that you don't even want to think about eating one.
- Continue to exercise. One of the biggest dieting downfalls over the holidays is that you're so busy doing what you have to do in a day that your daily exercise routine gets pushed aside with promises to resume after the New Year. Before you know it you've packed on ten pounds and are promising yourself that it'll never happen again.
- If you find yourself too short on time to go to the gym over the holidays there are many other alternatives. Walking is great cardiovascular exercise, and walking the mall is virtually a holiday requisite. You can take your family for a walk in the evening to view the Christmas lights in your neighborhood and go caroling as the holiday approaches. Any and all of these activities beat sitting on your couch chewing on sweets for shaping up over the holidays.
Any and all of these activities will help to keep your figure under control over the holidays without leaving you salivating for a truffle or threatening a woman at the bakery for the last box of sugar cookies-and definitely beats spending the next three months starving yourself to achieve the same thing.
