By Dr. Susan Smith Jones
With all of the holiday festivities, parties, gatherings, and calorie-dense foods, it’s not uncommon for people to gain weight between Thanksgiving week and the first week of January. In fact, over half of Americans will gain between 5 – 10 pounds during this short time. OUCH! Let’s make this the first holiday season that you actually feel on top of the world when the New Year arrives — with soaring self-control and confidence and a healthier and stronger you — without gaining any extra weight.
1. Start the day in a healthy and positive way: Just as the first day of a new 30-day health and get-fit plan sets the tone for the entire month-long program, the first 40 minutes of each day sets the tone for the entire day. How do you want these first minutes to be in the morning? I want them to be relaxed, happy, healthy, positive, and sanguine. To make this happen, do what you can the night before so your first moments upon arising can be as positive as possible. Lay out your exercise clothes or your work clothes so you don’t need to think about what to wear in the morning. Perhaps you can pack the lunches for yourself and your kids the night before. Set the kitchen table for breakfast the evening before so it’s ready to greet you in the morning. When you begin the day in this most positive way, your entire day will flow more smoothly and confidently. During the holidays, there’s so much added stress in our lives, so this simple practice of honoring those 40 minutes will make a profound difference in your life. Start tomorrow morning and continue this simple practice thereafter. In an upcoming Blog, I’ll share with you what I do
2. Eat frequently and don’t skip meals. A common strategy, especially during the holidays, is to skip breakfast—and lunch—because you know a big meal is coming, so you save up the calories for the celebration. This strategy backfires, because you come to the meal starving and wind up eating way more than you ever intended. Eating frequently throughout the day on healthy foods helps to eliminate hunger, which in turn prevents overeating. It will also help stabilize your blood sugar. Even a small meal of something healthy is better than none at all.
3. Bring healthy snacks while out shopping or in the car. Roaming the mall for hours or sitting in holiday traffic leaves everyone starving and vulnerable to the usually bad fast food choices. If you come prepared to roam around with some crunchy, healthy snacks such as apples, oranges, celery, carrots, or even nuts or raisins, you’ll be less likely to succumb to the call of the food court or fast food restaurants.
4. Have something before you go out, especially to a holiday party or big dinner. You know what foods you need to stay away from. Well, those foods are a lot harder to resist when you’re starving and your blood sugar is low. An ounce of prevention goes a long way here. A piece of fresh fruit, some whole grain crackers, or a piece of whole grain bread or toast with some fresh fruit jam, or a nut butter like peanut or almond, will keep your appetite at bay. Try any of them an hour before the big holiday dinner and watch your willpower soar while your waistline stays in place.
5. Don’t just eat to be “social”. Try to avoid eating just because others around you are. If you are not really hungry, nibble on a celery stick or sip on something low-calorie.
6. Watch out for processed carbs. Processed carbs, like breads, crackers, and chips are everywhere. Even though they aren’t always sweet, most are high in refined starch, which converts to sugar in the body quickly (and with no fiber to slow its release into the system) and can end up as stored fat.
7. Plan ahead. Especially during holidays like Christmas, and New Year’s Day, try to plan around where you’re going, what temptations are likely to arise, and how you’re going to deal with them. Decide in advance what you’re going to allow yourself, but prepare for it so you don’t go overboard. It is okay to taste things without finishing them.
8. Fiber is your secret weapon. Not only is fiber supremely healthy and directly related to the reduction of risks for a whole host of diseases, it is a huge player in the weight-loss field. It also contributes to a feeling of fullness. Consume as many high-fiber foods as possible before attacking any other foods. Raw veggies contain sufficient bulk to fill you to some degree, before you turn to the high-sugar, low fiber junk that converts to fat right away.
9. Eat slowly. Hormones signal the brain when you’re full, but it takes about 20 minutes from start time before you feel it. Slow eating not only aids in digestion but also gives your brain a chance to know what the stomach is doing. If you make the meal last, by talking, putting down your fork between bites or just plain waiting, you’re less likely to eat on “automatic pilot” and more likely to realize you’re full. Besides eating slowly, chew your food thoroughly. You’ll be amazed how much will power you can generate when you take your time and give your “satiety center” an opportunity to tell you that you aren’t that hungry anymore.
10. ON THE FLIP SIDE — finish your big meals within an hour of starting. The body produces a second insulin hit if it senses a lot of food coming in continuously. You can avoid that second hit (and the subsequent fat storage that it triggers) by finishing within an hour of starting. If you see something you like that you forgot to eat within the hour, that’s fine; just save it for tomorrow or later. It will still be there, and you won’t be wearing it on your hips.
11. Fill up on salad. Whenever possible, always fill up on a salad first. A full salad plate looks like a lot of food and psychologically “feels” the same way. You can always go back for seconds, or even thirds; but all of this slows down the eating process, giving you more time to feel full. And more often than not, the larger portions of food you might have eaten if they had been on your plate will wind up staying on the buffet table. During the holidays, it’s more important than ever to eat a healthy salad every day.
12. Keep your body hydrated. Our bodies are 70% water. Our cells are 70% water and our planet earth is 70% water. That’s no coincidence. Each day we need to drink 8 glasses of purified water and even more when it’s hot, during exercise, or in a dry climate or dry atmosphere, like an airplane’s. You probably won’t feel thirsty every time you need to drink. Most of us have downplayed our water needs for so long that our thirst mechanism doesn’t work as well as it ought to. Interestingly, if you gradually work up to eight glasses of water every day, your thirst response will become more reliable. For those of you who desire to look younger, lack of moisture in faces causes wrinkles the way lack of moisture in grapes causes raisins or in plums creates prunes.
Water also is a safe, cheap, and effective appetite suppressant. Often when we think we’re hungry, we are actually thirsty. This is because the brain requires both water and sugar, and we can confuse the signals it sends us. The next time you think you’re hungry, but you ate not long ago, drink instead. If your body wants water, you’ll be satisfied. If not, eat something.
13. Make sleep a top priority in your life and set the tone for the day. When you don’t get enough sleep nightly, around 7-9 hours, it sets your body up to hold on to all of the calories you eat and also causes you to crave foods that are not good for you – the most calorie-dense foods. Have you ever noticed that after a food night’s sleep, you are more positive in the morning and you make better food choices? It’s true. Also, keep this in mind. The first 40 minutes of the day sets the tone for the day. So make sure that during your morning routine, you are relaxed, happy, not rushing around, and you begin your day with a healthy meal within one hour of getting up. If you skip breakfast, it causes your metabolism to slow down. And if maintaining or losing weight is your goal, you definitely don’t want that to happen. Eating smaller meals (three reasonably-sized main meals and two snacks) throughout the day, as opposed to one or two really large meals during the day, keeps your metabolism stoked and this supports healthy weight loss.
© Susan Smith Jones
For more than three decades, Susan Smith Jones, PhD, has been one of the world’s most recognizable names and faces in the fields of health, fitness, anti-aging, and human potential. In addition to being the author of 27 books and audio programs (Wired to Meditate, Celebrate Life, How to Achieve Any Goal, and Choose to Live Peacefully), Susan taught students, staff, and faculty at UCLA how to be healthy and fit for 30 years! Visit her website at www.SusanSmithJones.com or call: 800-523-9971 • 215-632-6100, both ET.
