Gladden Gains Fitness

Sensitivity warning: The introductory paragraphs contain quotes that involve guilt and shame relating to food and exercise.

I am not a fan of the fitness, food, and “health” messaging around the holidays, whether it’s “burn off all that stuffing!”, “earn those cookies!” and the like, or anything implying that everyone should set a weight loss goal for their New Year’s Resolution.

But unfortunately, the holiday season is when many people begin to think a lot about food, health, fitness, and exercise. So, despite not wanting to participate and further perpetuate in this concept that the holidays are when people should exercise more or start to think about losing weight, I also don’t want to let people fall prey to what toxic and misleading content might be on Pinterest or TikTok. I know this happens first-hand since I too, live in this society and was a victim of the “Lose 10 pounds in 30 days” Pinterest workouts before, and I understand people’s mindsets during this time from being a personal trainer of over 3 years.

If you’re going to look for content how to start getting into fitness for your New Year’s Resolution or to “stay fit for the holidays” anyways, it might as well be actual, good advice and not some weird skinny tea (see: laxative) ad on how to drop 5 pant sizes while still eating all the cookies you want.

It’s important to note that while goals are vastly different from person-to-person, this article will specifically address the common goal of weight/fat loss and generally getting “fitter” that many people have around the holidays. Stay tuned for another article coming soon if your goal is to put on weight and muscle mass.

Here are 22 tips (since it’s 2022…) on how to approach fitness during the holiday season– and beyond. It’s a long one, but without the proper knowledge, reaching your goals will take longer.

Goal setting for fitness & healthy habits

We all get into starting to think about how when we have a why. Goals help us to keep accountable, but there are some guidelines when it comes to setting realistic goals.

Start with small goals– slow & steady wins the race

You don’t need to— never mind that— you shouldn’t try to start doing everything all at once. While there are (few!) people who manage to do it and stick to it, I hate to break it to you, but you probably aren’t one of them if you’re reading this. I only say this so harshly to emphasize how unrealistic it is to come up with, say, 10 goals and expect to be good at all of them. If you’re running track and have goals to be both good at long distance running and sprinting, do you think you’ll substantially reach both of those goals? Probably not.

Many of your goals will likely be related to each other for example, say you want to lose 10 pounds (lbs) so you decide to implement every healthy habit you’ve seen on the internet, even if you’ve never tried them before. You think you’ll start meal prepping, drinking a gallon of water a day, getting 1g per pound of body weight of protein per day, hitting the gym 6 days a week, and completely cut out any processed foods. While it might seem like a good idea in the short-term to go completely cold turkey on bad habits that have accrued, we as humans only have so much energy to put into each effort. You cannot put 100% into every big goal.

So, start small, build up, and watch how small habits can add up to help you reach your goals over time. For example, start with a goal of going to the gym at least once a week, reducing the amount of takeout you might be ordering, having water and protein at every meal. While these still qualify having multiple goals at once, these bite-sized goals are much more attainable and will have you more likely to stick to your plan in the long-run and increase adherence as you scale your goals once you reach them. Stop looking for a quick fix. Note that a commonly-accepted rate of sustainable and healthy fat loss is to lose approximately1 pound per week.

Identify outcome goals vs. process goals

In the example above, wanting to lose 10lbs is an outcome goal. The process goals include the unrealistic goals of meal prepping, drinking a gallon of water every day, etc., and the realistic goals of going to the gym once a week, having a glass of water and a serving of protein at every meal, etc. If you have a performance goal of benching, say,100lbs, that is the outcome goal and a process goal may be to bench at least one time a week.

It’s important to have process goals along the way so that you can identify how you are going to get to that outcome goal, but also so you can celebrate wins along the way and be conscious of how you are improving your habits.

Make sure your goals are for you

I could write an entire blog post about this in itself, but I’ll try to be succinct. In order to reach your goals, you have to want them. This may sound self-explanatory, but too many people tell others themselves one thing, when their real goals might conflict with that. For example, someone’s goal might be to lose 10lbs just because they feel like they have to or maybe they saw it in a magazine. Think– even if someone wants to lose weight, why did they choose 10lbs specifically?

Why they feel that way can be for a number of reasons, but feeling like you have to, you should, or because you think that is what other people expect of you, is not a good reason to have a goal. Goals should be yours– they need to be personal and important to you. The more important and personal they are to you, the more likely you will actually have the motivation to keep going.

Managing expectations with fitness

You don’t know what you don’t know. Having a bad experience when it comes to reaching your fitness goals can be incredibly discouraging if you don’t know what to expect. Let’s talk about a few things you need to be aware of with your fitness journey.

It’s okay to just do what you can

We’re all busy people. Yeah yeah we all have the same 24 hours in a day. Just kidding! We aren’t doing that here. If 10 minutes is all you have for movement one day, turn on 10 minute youtube workout or go for a walk. If you can decrease the times you’re ordering fast food from 5 days a week to four, you’re already making progress. You don’t have to– and shouldn’t as we saw from the beginning of this blog– tackle everything all at once. With that being said…

Match your expectations with your effort

You don’t need to be going to the gym 5x a week or hit your exact macros everyday. Doing just a few minutes of movement everyday is still an improvement from none at all, and being mindful about your eating habits and knowing what you’re putting in your body is still a step up from mindlessly eating whatever is just convenient. However, if you are not putting in optimal effort, you cannot expect optimal results.

While something may be maximal effort for you and what you can do at the time given your constraints, it may not be “optimal” for getting results. You can and will still get results from making small steps and changes in your lifestyle, but keep in mind that it will take longer. The influencer who makes a living off of working out and eating healthy has a better ability to train and eat optimally for their goals more so than someone who works two jobs and only has 30 minutes or less to workout each day, for example.

If you are not where you want to be, you can either scale your expectations to match your effort, which is what is going to be most realistic the average person– or scale your effort to match your expectations.

Keep in mind what roles nutrition versus exercise play

You could probably guess that I do not like the simplicity of the phrase “abs are made in the kitchen,” but people say it because there is truth to it. Fat loss is about 80% nutrition and 20% exercise. Exercise in terms of percentage, actually contributes relatively little to your daily energy expenditure (calories out). Controlling your calories out can be very difficult to measure, but that’s a conversation for another day. Plus, any fitness trackers or cardio machines are rather inaccurate when it comes to tracking calories burned. Your calories in (what you eat) is easier to control (though it is still difficult). You will not lose fat without a caloric deficit (calories in < calories out).

While I do not recommend this for your body composition (fat-free mass vs. fat mass), you can lose weight without doing any exercise at all just from eating in a caloric deficit. With that being said, understand that beginning an exercise program without any changes in your habits and nutrition is unlikely to bring the change you want to see. Lift weights for help with your body composition (building lean muscle mass and reducing your body fat percentage), do cardio for your cardiovascular health, and improve your nutrition and eat in a caloric deficit for fat loss.

Progress isn’t linear

Progress is not linear mentally nor physically, so you should not expect it to be. Some days are going to be harder than others, some weeks will even be harder than others. Do not feel pressured to give up or on the other hand try to do even more by punishing yourself with hours of cardio if you see the scale go up or if you feel like you just can’t stay on track. Consistency is key and progress is made over time– over a long time. Engaging in a healthy lifestyle is not a quick fix. In terms of the physical plateaus or even spikes in weight, it is to be expected due to how fat is burned in our bodies– a temporary in water weight is normal throughout periods of your fat loss journey.

Stop looking for external motivation

Move your body for you, eat healthier for you. Our bodies function based off of essential nutrients that we have to get from food, plus we start to lose bone and muscle mass at age 30. 30 YEARS OLD, PEOPLE! This is not to fear monger but to emphasize how important it is to resistance train and fuel our bodies properly. It should not be solely for aesthetic purposes but for our physical and mental wellness, too.

You need to have motivation that comes from the pure desire to live a healthier lifestyle (and then it goes back to your “why”). Once you have your motivators down, it then comes down to discipline and enjoyment. Keep doing it because it is your lifestyle, it’s not a trend or a diet. Find a form of exercise you enjoy so that it will never feel like a chore.

Exercise, fitness, and the gym

Now that you know what roles nutrition and exercise play for fat loss, here are some tips specific to exercise.

There are no “fat loss workouts”

Technically speaking, there is the “fat burning zone” with heart rate and you do actually burn more from fat vs. from carbs at a lower intensity and/or longer length of a workout. However, know that you cannot lose fat just from a specific form of exercise. A HIIT workout or an ab circuit is not specialized for losing fat. You cannot lose fat without a calorie deficit. High intensity and therefore higher-calorie burning workouts don’t mean you will lose fat, and neither does working out in the “fat burning zone,” as fat stores will be quickly replenished if you are not in a deficit.

You can’t spot reduce fat

Let me repeat that last sentence– you cannot lose fat without a calorie deficit. You also cannot spot reduce fat. Where you lose fat first comes down to genetics– it’s just luck of the draw. Doing squats doesn’t make you lose fat or shrink your butt, most people are doing squats so they can grow their glutes. So why would you then expect an ab exercise to shrink your waist and burn fat from that area?

Ignore the “love handles workout” or “get rid of your flabby arms” clickbait– not to mention guilt-inducing and shame-based– titles. You can’t spot reduce fat.

You don’t need supplements to be successful in the gym

Supplements are called supplements for a reason as they are meant to supplement your diet. Most of your nutrients should come from whole foods. If you’re already hitting your protein goal from whole foods, there is no added benefit to adding a protein powder shake into your diet. You don’t need creatine, preworkout, a pump product, etc. to build muscle and lose fat. If you want to use them, you can, but you will make progress without them if you’re doing everything right with your training and nutrition. If you do decide to take supplements, do thorough research on what each one does and know the side effects. Don’t take a supplement just because some influencer told you to.

Lifting will not make you bulky

First, get rid of the idea that being “bulky” is a bad thing and that you should take up as little space as possible. While this blog post is centered around losing weight, it’s still important to battle the biases you may have around body image.

Anyways. Lifting does not inherently make you bulky. If it did, everyone that went to the gym would be absolutely jacked, and yet we still have many people who lift weights all the time and still don’t have the muscle mass that they want. Becoming big and bulky takes effort just as losing weight does. The “bulkiness” will come from diet and body fat relative to lean muscle mass. The actual exercise and act of lifting weight does not make one bulky.

Losing weight does not equal losing fat

Our bodies are made up roughly 60% water. Then we have fat, bones, skeletal muscle tissue, organs, etc. Losing a ton of weight in a short period of time should not be an indicator of progress. It is unsustainable but it also likely means that you are not losing fat, but you may just be losing water weight or you could even be losing lean mass. Take it slow.

The opposite is also true. If you see the scale go up a few pounds overnight, you did not gain pounds of fat. One pound of fat supplies 3500 calories of energy for our bodies. So, in order to store one pound of fat, you would need to eat 3500 calories over your maintenance calories. Fluctuations in weight over the short term can be due to many factors (blog coming soon on this topic), and it is most of the time going to be due to holding onto some water weight.

Rest

Despite what hustle culture may tell you, we grow at rest. Muscles need rest for recovery and build back and create adaptations from rest. If you are going all out all 7 days of the week, you are going to make less progress than if you allow yourself to rest. Rest days are allowed to be rest days as well, you don’t have to do cardio for an active rest day but by all means, you can do that too.

Nutrition & food

That’s right, most of losing fat comes from nutrition; so, it’s important to have a good understanding of how to properly fuel your body through your diet.

You don’t have to count calories to lose weight

Calorie counting is a tool. As stated above, a calorie deficit comes from the energy balance equation of calories in versus calories out. Keep in mind that what you burn does not just come from exercise but that the majority comes from your body just keeping you alive, stay tuned for a more detailed blog on calorie deficits and the energy balance equation. Given that, all you have to do is eat less than you burn. You don’t have to count calories to do that. Your body will do it for you. You don’t have to track your macros or ever track a single calorie if you don’t want to.

Tracking macros or calories is a tool to help you understand how much energy (calories) you are putting in your body. It’s not absolutely necessary for weight/fat loss. How do you think people lost weight before apps? Or going back even further, how do you think people lost weight before there was even the discovery of the calorie or macronutrients? While tracking will certainly help you have a better understanding of your own personal energy balance and gives you insight on how to tweak your diet for better results or better performance, it is not the end-all-be-all for weight loss.

I recommend people to track their macros at least once just to get a good idea of what they are eating. There are reasons (such as disordered eating or mindset around numbers) that might stop one from wanting to track macros. But don’t avoid tracking macros just because you don’t know how, as there are many tools out there that will help you, such as the Macros Inc. FaceBook group.

You can still eat all your favorite foods– including those cookies

Can you eat an unlimited amount of these cookies and not gain weight like the skinny teas might tell you? No. That’s where the “in moderation” comes in. You can have everything in moderation. Some people like to follow the 80-20 rule, where 80% of their foods come from whole, nutritious foods and 20% are more fun foods or things that may be deemed “unhealthy.” Restricting certain foods on a regular basis will only make it more difficult to stay away from them when the opportunity arises to eat them and increases the likelihood of a binge. Rigidity in mindset is unhealthy, too. Include things in your diet that won’t make you feel like you’re going crazy or make it feel like you’re on a “diet.”

Balance macronutrients: proteins, fats, and carbs

Emphasis on the protein. The recommended amount for protein will vary from source to source but the National Academy of Sports Medicine (the institution through which I have my personal training certification), recommends 0.6 to 0.9 grams per pound of body weight if you are strength training. While we’re at it, you don’t need to drink shake within 20-30 minutes of your workout. It can help, but it is not the end of the world if you don’t get your protein in within that “anabolic window.”

I could go on for a long time about the purpose of each macronutrient in the body, but for simplicity we will say that carbs give you energy and fuel your workouts (fiber also helps you to stay full and feel satiated), protein helps to repair and build muscle, and fats give you energy and allow your body to perform many different functions. The recommended balance of macronutrients is 15-35% of your calories from protein, 45-65% from carbohydrates, and 20-35% from fats.

Understand the impact of alcohol on your fitness journey

While many people want to single-handedly blame too much fat in the diet or too many carbs, what leads to gaining weight is an overall surplus in calories, or eating more than you burn. With alcohol coming in at 7 calories per gram, it’s important to be mindful of your alcohol intake. You could be in a deficit all week but a few too many White Claws and Bud Lights at happy hour can put you right back at maintenance or even into a surplus. It’s important not to view this as “ruining your progress,” but it will throw off the speed in which you make progress. Try to scale back on alcohol intake or cut it out entirely if you can, as alcohol is not exactly great for your body. When it enters your body, it takes priority over digesting your food. It also has catabolic properties which can break down muscle tissue, or at the least increase your time needed to recover from a workout.

Meal prepping doesn’t have to be turkey, rice and broccoli

You might want to start getting into meal prepping by cooking something that you would already normally eat. Once you build this habit, you can make some healthier or lower-calorie swaps and choices. But even once you get there, there’s no reason to be eating unseasoned proteins with plain rice and broccoli unless you truly enjoy it (and I’m not convinced…) You can make yummy meals, but try to incorporate protein, carbs, fiber, and veggies into every meal.

Note how certain foods make you feel

I’m going to be incredibly honest here. I really enjoy a beach club with onions from Jimmy Johns. But the double cheese on that sandwich makes the whole thing go straight through me and gives me a stomach ache. So, I order it with a single serving of cheese instead of double like on the menu. I don’t do it for the lower calories, I do it because the double cheese will fill my bowels with immediate regret.

Different foods are going to react in your body differently. It takes trial and error to figure out what might be irritating. Sometimes things cause you to painfully bloat, sometimes things give you a stomach ache, and sometimes things straight up give you an allergic reaction (no more crab rangoons for me…) Note how these foods make you feel and while you don’t necessarily have to go straight to cutting them out completely, decrease your intake so that you can feel good in your body and reduce negative physical feelings deriving from food, which can lead to negative mental feelings with food.

Water

Drink water. That’s all I can really say on this one. Our bodies are around 60% water and water performs a lot of very important functions in the body. As you become more active it will be even more important to replenish the water you deplete and lose.

Enjoy the holidays!

These times come once a year. It’s okay to enjoy them and eat the food that has taken countless hours to make. The food is damn good. Don’t track the meal or worry about the calories and don’t do extra cardio or feel like you have to “earn” your food. One day does not derail progress, just as one day of going to the gym doesn’t get you exactly where you want to be.

However, you should still practice mindfulness as it is important to listen to your body. Stop when you are full, and if you are hungry again later, you can go for seconds (or thirds, etc.). Don’t stuff yourself until you feel sick or go past the point of “I can’t take another bite!” Being physically full and feeling sick from food is not the way you want to spend your time with family and/or friends. Implement some movement if you can– not as punishment but to keep you from feeling lethargic.

Overall, don’t restrict yourself, but also don’t push yourself just because you may feel like you won’t get a chance to eat good food for the rest of the year. Implement balance throughout the year, and you will feel less inclined to go too far past full or feel like progress is lost when the holidays come around.

Fitness doesn’t have to be difficult, and it shouldn’t be. If you need more guidance, I offer online coaching starting at only $149 a month. You will learn a sustainable approach to health, fitness, and nutrition and how to fit it all into a busy lifestyle. No more fad diets, no more wondering why “nothing is working,” and no more questioning whether you’ll ever be able to reach your goals. Check out my online coaching offering for more information and fill out my consultation form to get started.