November advances. And so can your health and fitness – or not, depending on how you navigate the minefields of the holidays!
No worries, here to help. As someone who for years successfully plowed through bowls of Christmas cookie dough and carried an extra 50 lbs of padding, I know the trials, tribulations, and temptations. I’m not one of the natural ‘skinnies’ who’s never had a weight problem and is just going to tell you to only have one cookie. That’s not enough. And I don’t mean not enough cookies, it’s not enough advice. If it were, we wouldn’t be in this weight-challenged mess in the first place, right?
Here are my top ten tips for staying healthy, happy and fit through the holidays. And I’ll be giving you the what, and the why, and LOTS more on the how when you join me on the November Success Club Teleclass. Success Club is a monthly training call with open Q & A with yours truly. For November, the topic is “Healthy, Happy and Fit Through the Holidays”. I’ll not only be giving more advice about how to implement these Top 10 Tips, I’ll also be taking your questions LIVE on the call should you choose to join us. You can sign up for Success Club here (and you can cancel at any time, too.)
For now, here are some action steps you can take today as move into those oh-so-festive final months of the year.
10 Tips for staying healthy, happy and fit through the holidays
1) Be choosy. Choose your event or feast. Pick an event or two coming up through the holidays at which you would really like to celebrate and enjoy all of your favorites. It could be a specific holiday, the eve of the holiday – pick a special occasion.
Rather than starting at the beginning of the season and just hanging on, taking a “little bit of this” and a “little bit of that” all the way through – which can get you into a lot of trouble -pick that one holiday celebration and enjoy your favorites. You can’t gain 10 lbs on one meal, I promise.
‘Moderation’ is overrated and can be a health and body-shaping killer. Those nibbles through the day seem innocuous but add up fast. See How I Gained 2 lbs in 2 Weeks. Be choosy.
2) Stay well fed. Eating keeps you thin. I think back to 19mumblemumble with another of my hair-brained schemes to drop some pounds by minimizing breakfast, running 7 – 8 miles, and hoping for the best that I could hold out for a low calorie count by day’s end. Want to know how many times I fell face-first into a pan of brownies by late morning? And that was only if it made it past the batter stage. If you are hungry through the course of the day, it’s harder and harder to resist high fat, high sugar foods that are best designed to help your body manufacture and store body fat.
3) Eat before you arrive. Warning: Do not go to a celebration, event, party, buffet – whatever it is – with hunger in your belly.
Beware of buffet madness: pouring sugar and fat over sugar and fat. Remember, it’s not your fault that this tugs at your taste buds – it’s that biochemical pleasure cycle hook that gets you interested. Arriving hungry just makes it worse.
Because guess what. One – or all – of the following may happen.
- you will be sorely tempted to eat all of the foods that are presented before you
- your judgement will waver
- you
maywill make a lot of decisions about what you put in your mouth that you regret
4) You can’t eat what you don’t have. What do you have going on in the fridge– right now? What do you have going on in the pantry – at this minute? Do you have lots of fresh fruits and vegetables? And good whole grains? And beans? And all the foods that are going to keep you well sated, without taking away from your fitness and health goals? It’s time for a food availability check.
5) Handle the food pushers. You go to a party, you go to an event. They have a little bit of this, a little 
bit of that. Or a LOT of this and that. And isn’t it always true that it’s the people that we love that really are…Well, let’s put it this way. You want to please them, and you want to keep them “happy”. Yet there can be a serious compromise here if you start eating all these foods in front of you. Unless it’s your selected feast day (See Part 1: “Be choosy“), it’s got the potential to destroy all that you’ve got going on with your health and fitness goals.
There’s more than one way to say ‘no’. Get creative!
- the booked solid trick: To escape the forced food, I’ll pat my belly and say “I’m so full up, I’m so booked, I couldn’t eat another bite!”
- the eat it later trick: “Oh, that looks SO good. Could I take some and have it later?”
- push-it around trick: You take some anyway, and just push it around on your plate. However, this tactic comes with a warning: It can be problematic because, well, there it is right in front of you and it’s easier to indulge.
6) Eat a high fiber, slow burn breakfast. A couple of my favorites are a big steamy bowl of steel cut or old fashioned rolled oats with some flax seed or walnut and fruit piled on top. This meal has it all:
- This morning’s breakfast: Steel-cut oats, berries, apples, and a sprinkle of flax seeds, cinnamon, and coconut sugar make an ideal ‘slow burn’ breakfast. Slow burning carbohydrate, as opposed to the ‘quick in, quick out’ type you get with pastry or a processed food
- solid plant protein
- essential, healthy fats, the best kind, coming in its whole plant-food package!
We’re looking for high nutrition and satiety with sustenance. Remember The 3 rules of satiety & why they are critical to your weight loss plan: Becoming naturally thin part.
7) Follow the 50/50 rule. The 50/50 rule makes it all so easy. No need to count, weigh, measure, or otherwise addle your brain with making healthy, slimming meals. Once I got this – well, let’s just say it took an extra 1/2 inch off of everywhere and makes keeping weight in check running like well-fed clockwork.
How the 50/50 rule works
- Imagine that at day’s end, you could pile all the food you ate during the day on a big platter.
- 1/2 of the platter should be piled with high water content vegetables and a couple of fruits. 50%
- The other half should be piled with all the rest of your whole foods: Starchy vegetables, whole grains, beans, seeds and nuts, legumes. 50%
There you have it. The 50/50 rule. This also ensures that you get:
- Plenty of dietary fiber which is key in satiety and keeping you naturally thin.
- The amazing alkalanizing effect of vegetables and fruits
8) Exercise with vigor every day. Moving with vigor gets your brain-to-body connection synced up. When you really get into your body, and you really challenge your physicality, get your heart pounding hard and get your breath going and really make those muscles work, you set into motion a pathway that leads to 4 big effects:
- you create a sense of groundedness in your body
- you create a spirit of vitality throughout your system
- you release and reduce stress by metabolizing those stress hormonesthat are keeping you locked up in ‘Friday’ neck’ (you know, where you start wearing your shoulders as earings) and other nasty effects
- you generate increased confidence for making better choices through the rest of the day
9) Reach beyond the cookie tray. Each choice we make every day is either based in seeking pleasure 
or avoiding pain. Somehow that cookie tray and the fudge platter present themselves to us as such sources of such pleasure that we forget the pain that is right behind them.
I’m going to ask you to reach beyond the tray of goodies to the pleasure that is beyond by delaying that gratification. And turn your focus to what it feels like to wake up every morning feeling:
- healthy
- well ‘digested’
- trim, fit, and great in your favorite yoga pants
Reach beyond that tray to your better, higher choice.
10) Don’t throw in the towel. Say you fall short, you trip up. Something happens: You weren’t prepared enough with good food, you ate the ‘wrong’ thing…Don’t throw in the towel. The next day, the next hour, the next minute is a chance for a new beginning. You are in charge. You are in control. You can take advantage of being the best that you can be at any moment in time. Remember, it’s just a mindset shift to get you back on track.
Hope you’ll be joining us on the November Success Club call!
Lani, this is fantastic! Some of the hard parts for me are the food pushers (great ideas by the way!) and getting my exercise in. I also really like the be choosy idea.
I’m glad you are going to focus on these for the November call for Success Club. Do you have the date selected yet?
Thank you!
Sophie
Sophie – so glad you find them beneficial and I appreciate you telling me so.
As for the call – I’m thinking Tuesday Nov. 27 – does that work for you?
Thanks!
Lani
Hi Lani,
I absolutely love these strategies you have for making it through the holidays! And I love your story of falling face first into the brownie pan…too funny!
I especially have a hard time with the food pushers…I always feel bad if I don’t eat something they offer. And I totally agree with you that moderation is overrated. Whenever I have tried “everything in moderation” it gets me in trouble. It opens Pandora’s box for me and then I just want to eat everything in sight.
Thank you so much for these tips! I think I am going to print this out and put it up on the fridge to help me through this holiday season. Can;t wait for the November Success Club call!
Hey Snowgirl! Sounds like maybe you know exactly what I mean abut the brownie pan. It’s good to know we’re not alone!
Try my food pusher tips – at first it’s harder but then it gets easier. I’ll share more on the Success Club call – gathering all our forces!
Thanks so much for your comments today. LOVE it!
Lani
This is very helpful. Thank you.
Hi Jennie! Yay! I’m so happy to hear this and glad that you stopped in to say so. Excellent!
Hi Lani,
Great tips as usual. I found something I want to work on.
The link to 3 rules of satiety is broken.
Thanks for these timely tidbits, and they’re calorie free!
Hugs,
Karen
Thanks Karen! I appreciate the heads up on the satiety link – I’ll check it out. With some content being expanded upon for the book, there’s been a little bit of activity.
I’m so glad you found something specific to work with!
Lani
Thankyou so much for the great tips Lani, you never cease to amaze me with all the helpfull things you bring to us along our forever going journey.I know i have said this before but it really helps so much with what you write as you have gone through it first hand and have learnt on your own experiences and that you can pass it on to us, it is not just here say and made up, makes it so much more realistikc to put into our lives and kknow it can be done as you have done it. thanks also for another great print out for all my patients, cheers Anna
Thanks Anna! You are going to LOVE the Plant-Based Blueprint! In production now….
Love your notes, always! How’s the progressive meals?
the progressive meals are going awesome Lani, had a great one last week and yep have so e photos for you just waiting on one of my girls to put them onto the computer to send to you so stay tunned. WOW is the plant based blue print a new book coming out? i cant wait to get it if it is the more reading the better for me and the more knowledge i have the better i can promote it. Last week for our dinner we had some great food, we started with a mix of barley flakes and steel cut oats with fruit and soy yogurt, a lovely fruit platter as well and then for lunch we had pumpkin and sweet potato soup served with lentil bread, then a lima bean bake followed by stuffed apples and then afternoon tea was wholewheat apple muffins plus a hill climb for after, we had such fun as well as being healthy, cheers Anna
Anna – fantastic, I can’t wait to see the pictures! Your progressive idea is amazing – does that mean a lot of you live near eachother who work at the hospital? Are you all in the same town so you drive around?
I’ll get all the details for the story we’ll put up – excellent.
Plant-based Blueprint is a download of ‘what does the plant-based fitness expert eat?’ with 2 weeks of my eats, notes, simple guide, and a few recipes. It will be initially available as a gift for new pre-order purchases of the Fit Quickies book. I can’t wait to get it out there and it will launch with my new website.
Lani
wow thats amazing what you do Lani and i cant wait to get it, i will be able to down load it wont i? not sure about all this technical stuff he he. Yes most of my patients live close to each toher, not in the smae towns but the towns are very close to eachother there is only about 10 minutes between each of them and i live on the land so i am a bit out of the town. Everyone is more than happy to travel for the day as it really is fun and food and exerxise into one, so we will continue to do it every month, the next one we have is going to be our xmas celebration one so will be great to see what food we can think of for that , cheers Anna
Anna, I really like the way you are having your progressives so regularly. Can’t wait for the pics!
Yes, the plant-based blueprint will be downloadable!
Lani
Lani, I really appreciate the encouragement you have been on this journey! And also appreciate that I can ask you questions and you answer! 🙂 No question now. Just wanted to say 1. This is my first holiday season plant-based here in the south, and 2. We’ve had some family break-throughs–Woohoo!!
A few details: I found I get TWO Thanksgiving spreads–one family and one church family and TWO Christmas spreads, same deal. I’ve successfully navigated the church Thanksgiving one and boy, was there food! I contributed rolls, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, and cranberry relish–all plant-based. Then “snuck in” some green bean casserole, creamed corn, and sweet potato of my own and got it on my plate with no one even noticing and no one noticed my stuff was any different. I really didn’t want to call attention to myself there. We’re pretty new here. I was way too full to eat those other desserts, but I admired how good they looked. 😀
As for the breakthroughs, *daughter-in-law* brought up the subject on her own at a family dinner, for the first time since February!!–by saying “Do you miss meat or are you used to doing without by now?” Perfect question. Followed by her sister-in-law asking what I did for protein. Great! Followed by granddaughter asking if it had helped my cholesterol. (yeah, only 64 points–ha) It wasn’t my fault the conversation continued! I went home pretty pumped.
Lois,
Rolls, pie, potatoes, PLUS corn and beans and cranberry relish? I want to hang with YOU!
I love your enthusiasm and it sounds like you’re a natural when it comes to insights into opportunities to educate. Nice work!
Thanks so much for coming by and sharing!
Lani
I don’t think I’m a “natural” and I couldn’t have done it without the help I’ve gotten from people online like you! Thanks again! (plus for the encouragement/push to exercise!)
My pleasure Lois! Can’t wait to get my book into your hands!