Will you be asked to dress like Santa this year?

I read an article the other day that said Americans, on average, gain eight pounds over the holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Years! Eight pounds is 28,000 additional calories consumed!  It's no wonder we all make New Year's resolutions to lose weight, we've all gained weight!

So how do we make it through the holidays without gaining weight?

1. Not every item on the buffet needs to be tasted! Scan the buffet table before you start filling your plate.  Fill it with vegetables first, ideally salads not candied yams, leave a little room for a small portion of turkey or ham and a small amount of potatoes. If there is something you truly enjoy once a year like Aunt June's fudge squares have one, but only one and that is your special treat of the day.

2. Plan ahead, if you know you are spending the day with family and the house will be jam packed with temptations, bring a healthy option with you, I love bringing fruit salad. You will notice a lot of people over the course of the holidays are happy to see a light and healthy option after eating so many heavy meals.

3. Have a cut off time and stick to it! I don't eat after 8pm, not because I think calories consumed later in the day end up on my thighs but because I know if I give myself permission to snack after dinner it turns into an evening of one snack after another.

4. Lay off the booze, do you know what tastes really good with a glass of wine? Everything! If you like to drink have a drink, a single drink, enjoy it.

5. Get some sleep!  As the holidays ramp up we all get a little stressed and as our schedules get busier and busier we start to sacrifice sleep to get everything done in time. There are so many studies which link lack of sleep with obesity, who hasn't woken up after too few hours of sleep and spent the entire day looking for energy sources from caffeine and sugar?

6. Avoid the office kitchen at all costs during the holidays! If your office is like mine it is full of holiday gift baskets for the entire month of December. As soon as I cave into one delightful chocolate I open a floodgate and I'm like a crack addict hiding in my office with a fist full of candy sweating and salivating. Avoidance is the only thing that works for me.

7. Stick to your exercise schedule. I know its seems impossible with so many other things to do to fit in a run or a trip to the gym but it is worth it! Just think if nothing else it will be an hour of time just for you!  No one asking you to run to the store, bake eight dozen cookies, clean the house....set aside the time for you and your sanity!

8. Take some time and just relax. Have a cup of tea and sit in front of the fireplace, take a walk around the neighborhood and look at the lights, call a friend you haven't seen in awhile, book yourself a spa treatment, have a nap!

Happy Holidays!

Heave Ho!

I'm a cardio junkie, you can tell me I have to run for two hours, I'm there, three hour kickboxing class, sign me up!  Tell me I have to lift weights and I am gone faster than the Road Runner. I find weight training tedious and boring. But here is the thing about weight training...you see results quickly!

Three days a week I drag my weary butt to the gym to weight train, casting longing looks at the runners, the cyclists, the power walkers...my heart pleads for them to take me with them but alas I have the attend to the task at hand. Ugh.

The benefits of weight training are endless, improved strength, posture, increased metabolism, improved bone density...need I go on?  So if I want to continue well into my 80's carrying ridiculously large handbags that weight 20lbs I need to lift the weights. So how do I motivate myself to do it?  Here are my tips:

1. Mix it up...I change my weight training program frequently. I may only do the same program twice, maybe only once..as soon as I hear the little Devil on my shoulder say...let's skip this and go for a run I plan something new.
2. Make it efficient...I can commit 30-40 minutes to weight train, after that I'm like a group of 4 year olds at a school  pageant, uninterested, lolly-gagging and getting grumpy. I do compound exercises that target multiple muscle groups at once.
3. Play some music! Music is a huge motivator for me, put on the headphones (does that make me sound old?) and crank it up.
4. Track your progress...I keep track of how much I lift each time, it really helps to see how far I've come.
5. If you can't make it to the gym throw in a DVD.  There are hundreds of DVD's on the market, even if you only do them a handful of times they can give you ideas for the next time you are at the gym.
6. Hire a trainer, no this isn't a plug to hire me, a professional can put a program together for you that will help you see results faster.
7. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat, but it takes up less space on your body. Who wants jiggly bits when you can have tight toned bits?
8. When I see that I can curl as much weight as the guy next to me I am pumped for the rest of the day.
9.  Don't fear the bulk, ladies your body is not going to turn into a man's! Muscles are sexy and some studies have shown weight training will only increase a woman's muscle mass 10 - 20%...if you want to be a body builder you will train and eat in a very specific manor, doing bench presses at the gym three days a week isn't going to give you Arnold's pecs.
10. Suck it up! I whine about lifting weights sometimes...but at the end of the day I just suck it up and get it done.

Have fun and ladies the next time you are at the gym and feeling like you shouldn't be in the weight room with all the guys throwing around hundreds of pounds remember this...they are comparing themselves to the guy next to them, they are not even looking at how much weight you are lifting.

Music to get you moving!

I don't know how people run without music, the sound of my feet hitting the pavement is enough to drive me insane, and its a short drive. Here is a list of some of my favorite songs to workout to, and occasionally clean the house to.

1. Beyoncé ft Jay-Z - Crazy in Love
2. Katy Perry - Hot n' Cold
3. Pink - Funhouse
4. Black Eyed Peas - Pump It
5. Katy Perry - California Girls
6. Justin Timberlake - Sexy Back
7. Ke$ha - Tik Tok
8. Down with Webster - Time to Win
9. Ray Lamontagne - You Are the Best Thing
10. Bruce Springsteen - Johnny 99
11. Lady Gaga - Bad Romance
12. Black Eyed Peas - Boom Boom Pow
13. Britney Spears - Toxic
14. Miley Cyrus -  Party in the USA
15. Jay Z ft Alicia Keyes - Empire State
16. Nelly - Hot in Here
17. Usher - Yeah!
18. Jay-Z - 99 Problems
19. Lady Gaga - Poker Face
20. Ting Tings - What's My Name?

Now I don't want any judgment on my music selection, what ever gets you through a workout.  I know some people who listen to audio books, I don't judge them, but I could.

Is a calorie just a calorie?

If the rule of thumb for weight loss is fewer calories consumed and/or more calories burned will result in pounds lost (3500 calories per pound) can you in theory eat anything you want as long as you end up in a calorie deficit?  Hello cookie diet, cabbage soup diet, grapefruit diet etc?  The similarities between all "diets" are they restrict calories.  So in theory for a certain amount of time you can lose weight eating what ever low calorie food you want.  But there will come a point, and it will come quickly, where your body will be nutrient deficient, calorie deficient and you will crave more food and you will binge on more food.  That is why I hate diets.

We need a mental adjustment people!  We are bombarded with images of food 24/7 and we live in a society of instant gratification. Yes you can have a burger with the buns deep-fried and a ham, wrapped in bacon, stuffed inside a turkey, Oreos crumbled on top of ice cream covered in chocolate sauce and whipped cream.  Here is the point, we want all these things but we don't need all these things. 

When we see a child throwing a tantrum at the grocery store we call them spoiled brats...well folks we are a generation of spoiled brats. I can walk to the corner store in less than a minute and buy a huge assortment of candy, soda, chips etc. there is no one to tell me I am not allowed, I can eat fast food at every meal, who is going to stop me?  We don't think about long term effects we want instant gratification, we order what we want to eat and it better arrive in less than 30 minutes, we want a magic diet pill which will shed 100 pounds in a month, we resort to invasive surgery to reduce our stomachs to the size of peanuts to stop ourselves from over eating!