How to Stay Fit During the Holiday Season

Celebrate the holidays AND your health!

How to Stay Fit During the Holiday Season

Keeping up with your fitness journey during the holiday season can be tough. You’re surrounded by tons of food (most of it unhealthy) and you’re busy–sometimes too busy to make it to the gym. However, you shouldn’t let the holiday season cause you to regress. Instead, you should still continue to progress. Continue reading to find out how to  stay fit during the holiday season.

Set goals for yourself ahead of time.

Food goals, exercise goals, water-intake goals–regardless of what goals you choose to set for yourself, you’re more likely to accomplish them if you set them ahead of time. Meal planning is a great example. It’s much easier to follow your goal of eating properly when you set it and start working toward it the week before.

The same goes for goals concerning staying active. Since the holidays often mean either busy days and nights, or relaxing days and nights, it’s beneficial to set a reminder for yourself to get up and move. Even just getting up off of the couch where you were enjoying some small talk with family, or stepping away from the bar where you’re catching up with old friends, will add to your exercise goals for the day and boost your metabolism.

On a more demanding level, it’s a good idea to set your alarm early in the morning to get your workout in before the day starts. People often refrain from working out over the holidays because they don’t want to miss out on anything. Getting up before anyone is doing anything that you wouldn’t want to miss eliminates this issue. On top of setting an early alarm to get moving, you should also set an exercise goal for that day before your alarm goes off. You’re much more likely to stick to it if you set it the night before.

Take a look at Stick to Your Goals with Meaningful Motivators to find out more ways to succeed during the holiday season.

Hydrate.

It’s a commonly known fact that drinking enough water is essential to both weight loss and health in general. It’s even more important during the holiday season. Going out to holiday parties and indulging in alcoholic beverages seem to be trends during the holidays. Your fitness journey can either be more or less unaffected by these trends, or it could falter because of these trends. Hydrating before going out and drinking is a great way to ensure that your journey follows the unaffected route.

If you think drinking enough water is going to be difficult for you, read 12 Easy Ways to Increase Your Water Intake.

Try out new, healthier recipes.

Since the holidays are full of tasty, yet unhealthy, treats, one way to stay on track is to try making those tasty, unhealthy treats healthier. In doing so, you can still satisfy those holiday taste buds (we all know they crave everything and anything) while still sticking to your fitness goals.

Take a look at 13 Healthy Versions of Traditional Holiday Meals for some delicious recipes to add to the table. Oh, and we can’t forget about dessert! Check out 17 Top Holiday Cookie Recipes, 10 Low-Calorie Holiday Desserts, and 11 Holiday Dessert Recipes to satisfy your sweet tooth while also satisfying your waistline.

Workout efficiently.

Time and space are limited during the holidays, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t enough time or space to get in a good workout. High intensity interval training workouts, also known as HIIT, are the perfect go-to’s during the holiday season because they don’t require much time or space. Many of them can be done anywhere for as little as 10 minutes, while still being super effective. Bodyweight workouts are also efficient–especially if they’re bodyweight HIIT workouts. There’s no reason to not get in a workout that’s quick, requires little space, and requires no equipment.

Try workouts provided in Lose Fat with HIIT — 5 Fat-Burning Workouts, or try some bodyweight HIIT workouts like 15-Minute Indoor Bodyweight HIIT.

Indulge, but don’t over indulge.

It would be silly to try to convince yourself to not treat yourself during the holidays. Balance is key to living a successful, healthy life. If you constantly deprive yourself of the foods you crave, it will only be a matter of time before you binge.

When you work hard all week and allow yourself to have a treat during, as some call it, a “cheat day”, you’re less likely to binge eat and, therefore, less likely to feel bloated afterwards. You’re also less likely to feel that unhappy, unsatisfied feeling you get when you deprive yourself of the foods you love.

So over the holidays, eat clean as best as you can, get your workouts in quickly and efficiently, and eat that piece of pumpkin pie that you’ve been waiting all year for. All of your hard work will not go to waste. By indulging every once in a while, you’ll simply have a better mindset which will then motivate you to work harder. Put in work for that cake, or pie, or ice cream cone! Don’t deprive yourself of them!

What did you think of these tips on how to stay fit during the holiday season? What’s your best tip for staying fit? Check out 5 Tips for Fending Off Cravings for those times when you’re trying to fend off your cravings and not over indulge.

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Taylor Glinane

Taylor is a writer with a passion for health, fitness, and all things alike. Running and hiking have special places in her heart--right next to berries, hummus, and every nut butter imaginable. When she's not running, hiking, snacking, or making a delicious breakfast, she's either at the gym, doing yoga, or outside with a pen and paper.

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