Happy Thanksgiving week!
You can step on the scale on Monday without having gained any weight! Here’s how:
1) Trim back your calories and carbs on Wednesday and Friday.
The day before and the day after, stick to just protein and veggies, and ignore any starches that lie about (bread, pasta, pie, potatoes).
Gaining weight or losing weight isn’t dependent on a single day: it’s dependent on a longer trend of total calories over time.
So if you cut back the day before and the day after, you have a lot of extra calories and carbs that you can get away with on Thanksgiving day!
2) Don’t skip your workouts all weekend.
Take Thursday off, and enjoy some rest.
But do SOMETHING exercise-wise on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — even if it’s just a hike.
Any time you’re sedentary, your body will put calories into the “Store Fat” bucket.
When you exercise regularly (meaning every other day or so), your body takes calories and puts them into the “Rebuilding and Refueling” bucket.
- Lift weights.
- Ride a bike, or take the dog for a walk.
- Do some calisthenics while you work out a Black Friday scheme.
- Move, don’t sit!
You cannot eat like Thanksgiving Day for 4 or 5 days in a row and not gain weight. Just because you have 20 pounds of stuffing left over doesn’t mean you need to eat stuffing every meal until it’s gone.
Enjoy your one day of crazy eating, then get back to normal:
- Eat healthy leftovers for lunch and dinner on Friday and Saturday (like turkey and veggies).
- Do a half-hour workout, even if you’ve got family around. You may need a break anyway 🙂
- Give away or throw out temptations that will give you trouble: pie, cookies, dinner rolls, etc. Don’t make it easy to go on a 5-day binge!
Low Sugar Desserts (I wrote the foreword) – always a favorite
BEWARE!
Thanksgiving often begins a downward spiral of overeating, sugar cravings, and lack of exercise that lasts until New Years.
Don’t let one day become 6 weeks — it just gets harder and harder to undo.
Have a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving! And as always, let us know if you need anything, we’ll be around all week.
Your friend and Coach,
Dan
P.S. We’ve got a fun, effective tool for you to gain ZERO weight over the holidays this year: Project Zero!
