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It is never easy to stay fit through the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. With everything from the big holiday dinners to sugar induced office parties, it is almost impossible to stick to a regular fitness routine and healthy eating plan. Here are Team Fitness America’s top 10 tips to stay fit, remain trim, and protect you from having to do a post holiday, crash diet.
Eat before you go to any event or holiday party.
Eating before you go to a place full of great tasting food, allow yourself to be full, giving you the ability to avoid all the heavy hors d’oeuvres stockpiled at each holiday event. Holiday parties and events are full of high fat foods and pastries. The time between Halloween and New Years proves, each year, to be a period full of high calorie events that can leave you only to be depressed from the addition of unwanted pounds. We have all kinds of events from the Harvest Festival to a Christmas Gala and even the Pineapple Festival, which each are all themed around different types of food. If you go with your stomach already semi full, then you will notice that most of the foods are not as appealing to eat. Munch on a few items and still have a good time, but by not going to your event hungry you will still feel satisfied, not tired from overeating, and accomplish not offending your hosts.
Get on a solid, effective nutritional plan.
Knowing what to eat is half the battle. Most people, deep down inside, know what foods are bad for them to consume but neglect to go with their “gut feeling” due to the lack of a plan or regime. Other people honestly do not have any idea and might think, “Cheese has milk and is a protein, and therefore cheese is good for me.” Well, some cheese is good for you and some is not. With a solid, easy to follow nutritional plan, you will know what foods to avoid, what is good to eat, and what to venture towards at a holiday buffet, party, or other food event. A nutritional plan that covers your food choices, giving you foods that you like to eat, and the correct amount of caloric intake you should have will assist when you need it most.
Be accountable and stick with it.
Track your food in your online journal. An online journal is a great source for tracking, providing you with the ability to enter all of your food choices for the week, and if you have one, sync it to your PDA for ideal results. That way, if you are at a party or event and you want to see what might fit into your daily-allotted calories, then you will find yourself less likely to overindulge with unnecessary calories.
Always be ready and plan ahead.
If you know at 3pm, the office fills up with cakes and cookies, then plan ahead. Allow yourself one sweet at that time and plan healthy meals around that sweet so that you do not fill up on junk all day.
Lose the “I ate badly this meal so the whole day is shot” mentality.
So what you ate the doughnut for breakfast. Have a healthy lunch and counteract the bad food downfall. Assuming that one bad food choice has wrecked your whole day is not true and it is simply an excuse to eat badly for the rest of the day. Stop that behavior before it becomes a regular thought.
Make tomorrow today.
Most plans for eating healthy tend to be delayed with the thoughts of tomorrow or “When January rolls around I will have a great New Year’s resolution.” Every day you wait to eat healthy and exercise is one more day that you are further away from reaching your fitness goals. Instead of thinking about what you plan to do better tomorrow, just buckle down and do it today. Dig your heels in, make the call to a fitness professional, and get started today. Support throughout the holidays is exactly what you need both physically and mentally.
Hire a personal trainer or fitness specialist to get your fitness goals on track.
Seeing your relatives and friends once a year is now more common than ever, especially since we all are so geographically spread out, and you need to make the best impression possible. If you slack on your exercises or do not want to track your own progress, then a fitness trainer will stay on top of you and your goals. Some of us simply will not exercise unless we know that we have someone coming over to our house to make us do it. So hire a personal trainer to jump-start your exercise routine.
Use a service that emails you updates every day.
Some of us need more than just a personal trainer a few times a week and need daily encouragement with continued motivation. Some services, like Team Fitness America, provide daily nutritional and fitness updates with encouragements to keep us on track while we are attempting to meet our fitness and health goals. You can even upload before and after pictures so you can track your own progress visually and print out shopping lists to take to the store with you so you do not make impulse buys.
Refuse a junk food sale.
A lot of us buy things we do not really want or simply because it “is on sale”. Just because the potato chips are buy one get one free does not mean you should buy them. If you look at what sales are posted and where they are posting them, then you will notice that the high fat cookies and chips are usually on sale while being exactly at eye level with colorful, eye-catching wrappers and inviting pictures. Think of the grocery store prying your hard-earned cash out of your hands as you lift that gallon of ice cream into your cart. You do not need it, your body does not want it, and see it for what is it, a marketing tactic to get you to buy it. Ever notice the healthy food is tucked into a small corner, a bottom shelf, or usually in the backside of the super market and you have to ask where it is?
Refuse the dollar menu at the drive through.
Almost all of the dollar items are cheap, easy to make, and filled with empty calories and high fat. Take a second look at the menu and order the more healthy options, such as a salad without the hefty dressing, grilled chicken, or the many other healthy options that most fast food restaurants have place in their menu as opposed to the dollar double cheeseburger or fried onion rings. Because it is cheap does not make it healthy or good food for you, it simply makes it cheap food.
Keep in mind that as the holidays approach you need to be ready to tackle them with gusto and be ready for whatever parties and unhealthy eating events that take place. Companies, such as Team Fitness America, can assist with you with both the nutritional and exercise side of your life while keeping you accountable as you reach your goals.
On a monthly basis, Team Fitness America propels a fitness trainer to the top of the ranks by announcing them as Personal Trainer Of The Month. This featured spotlight goes to a fitness trainer that is nominated through a high amount of client testimonials, a proven record of client accomplishment, and one that continues to go above and beyond with following company policies and procedures. The month of November goes to New Jersey personal trainer, Julia Luria, who has received rave reviews from her clients.
Luria, who is a dual certified personal trainer and graduate of Ohio State University with a B.S. in Education along with an emphasis on Sport Performance and Coaching, is a recurrently requested New Jersey personal trainer from Team Fitness America. Due to her outstanding client reviews and constant success with helping clients attain their fitness goals, Team Fitness America views Luria as a first-rate fitness trainer and wellness specialist.
Holding two certifications from both NASM and AFFA, Luria has been personal training for twelve years helping numerous clients finally reach the fitness goals so long dreamed of achieving.
“My goal is to make a difference in people’s lives and to help them live a long, happy, and healthy lifestyle,” said Luria, who has pledged to continue excellence to become Personal Trainer Of The Year.
“I enjoy going to workshops to further my knowledge and to keep me up to date with all aspects of fitness,” added Luria.
A few Team Fitness America consumers decided to share their thoughts and feelings about working with Julia Luria.
“I think that she’s doing a wonderful job, she’s really helping me out in many different ways,” said Kevin, a New Jersey client of Team Fitness America. “She understands my goals and has formulated a workout in training according to those goals and I am seeing results after just a few sessions.”
Other New Jersey clients such as Zaheda included, “I think that she is amazing and I have already dropped a pants size.”
“She is awesome and I am definitely going to get more sessions with her,” said Jennifer, who is also a Team Fitness America client from Rumson, NJ.
Team Fitness America has a wide variety of reasonably priced personal trainers that are magnificent at achieving results, but only one fitness authority per month will be chosen as The Personal Trainer Of The Month.
“Clients looking for a great New Jersey personal trainer can call in and request a fitness specialist just like Julia,” said Margaret Pajak, Team Fitness America and Fit2Max, LLC’s founder.
“We aim to keep providing America with personal trainers like her and have them share in the many joys of reaching fitness goals at an affordable price,” says Pajak.
Hiring a certified personal fitness trainer will help you reach your fitness goals while boosting your self-esteem and providing the body that you have always dreamed of having. A fitness trainer can come to you, cover all of your nutrition goals, and help blast fat away in the stubborn areas where you want to lose weight. Do not just rely on the few times a week the fitness trainer comes to workout with you, but instead make use of your time and maximize your results by utilizing these five key points.
1. Start with being honest.
The majority of people tell their doctor or fitness trainer that they only eat a few small meals each day and they really do not know why they are overweight. Most fitness trainers have become schooled to omit certain foods that you eat due to uncomfortable embarrassment levels or food eaten for temporary mental relief. Be honest with them from the start because the only person suffering is you when your fitness trainer does not have all the details they need to create the proper fitness program. Whether it is anything from having an occasional glass of wine to binge eating at a certain time of day, your fitness trainer needs to know exact eating habits so they can prepare a workout and nutritional plan that will kick-start your body into the right direction.
Dave Giordano, lead personal trainer and Director of Operations with Team Fitness America, once had a client that used to eat doughnuts for breakfast every morning and never told him. She finally had a break down during a session and confessed to him that she would eat three doughnuts in the morning on her way to work. Once he was able to redirect her eating habits to a more positive direction, she quickly lost weight and lost the urge to eat sugar in the morning.
According to Serge Ahmed, PhD, who is a scientist that specializes in addiction research, found that sugar can be as addictive as cocaine in a study in 2007. He demonstrated that the characteristics of bingeing, craving, and withdraw of sugar are as addictive as a serious drug addiction. He further proved that sugar acts on the brain circuits such as the opiod pathways and dopamine pathways (Avena, N.M., Rada, P.& Hoebel, B.G., 2008).
2. Keep track of your progress.
Keep a journal that you can write in or even use on online tracking program. This way you can keep track of what you are doing on a daily basis so you can watch as you progress overtime. It is proven that if you document your daily eating habits truthfully, then you are less likely to sway off track as you physiologically do not want to admit guilt of being at own fault for not reaching a goal. List your peak energy levels throughout the day as well as the times of day you eat and what you eat, this way a professional can develop a guide to spike your metabolism during peak hours of the day.
When you eat is just as important as what you are eating. Most people skip breakfast because they do not like the normal, traditional choice of breakfast foods. A big misunderstanding is that you do not need to eat traditional foods for breakfast. Ask your fitness trainer or online nutritional program for a list of great healthy morning foods that will satisfy you and give energy while decreasing the urge to snack all day.
3. Reward yourself with non-food based items.
A common occurrence is that we do not reward ourselves for good decisions that we make but instead harp only on the negative ones after the fact leaving us with guilt and depression. We may have a day where we eat healthy and exercise but the next slip while missing a workout leading us to eat some comfort foods to make us feel better. If you concentrate on the positive by rewarding yourself when you did well, then you will remember the positive of what fun you had and how great you felt, as opposed to the negative making you feel sluggish and unaccomplished.
Some great rewards are a facial, pedicure, manicure, massage, or even a budget minded shopping trip. Anything that is non-food based but gives you pleasure will give you a great reward without adding any unwanted calories.
Virgina Pola, PsyD, suggests using plants to reward yourself with while sitting them on your desk. She is responsible for helping companies reward their staff for a job well done without using the traditional approach of a pizza party or an ice cream social. While she offers great company ideas, grand personal ideas can be gained from her as well as she recommends a gift of time. Ask your significant other, friend, or loved one to take duties over for the day and relax, do something you desire to do that normally would not have time to do (ezinearticles.com/losing weight at work).
4. Stay hydrated.
Most of us mistake thirst for hunger creating a need to eat when in reality we just need to add a glass of water to our system. The body is over 70% water and it will go into a dehydration state if we are not properly refilling that percentage. So next time you think you are hungry start with a simple glass of water and go from there.
While working out, make sure to have a bottle of fresh water nearby and sip it in between sets to keep yourself hydrated. Not only does hydration keep you from overeating, it helps your body to function more efficiently.
5. Eat light before a workout.
Many of us think that working out on an empty stomach is best, but if you have not eaten in hours then you will not have the fuel your muscle cells need for an optimal workout. Many people choose to work out after work, which can already serve to be stressful especially after a difficult day. You just spent all day dealing with customers, clients, and stress while avoiding the office brownies or cookies and you probably have not eaten in 5 hours. Attempting to workout at this point is pointless and ineffective. You need a snack before you meet with your fitness trainer, otherwise your energy will be at its lowest point and you will find yourself struggling throughout your session, which should be an enjoyable and effective workout.
Hiring the right fitness trainer while keeping all this in mind will help you reverse the fight for weight loss from non-effective to extremely rewarding quickly and get back into those clothes that you reserve in the corner of the closet for when you expect to be thin.
For more information about Team Fitness America, please visit www.teamfitnessamerica.com.
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