Christmas is over, you had great time with family, attended 7 parties, ate cookies, drank the drank, stayed up late, missed a few workouts, and now you feel like your physique is buried under a pile of wrapping paper along with your gym shoes. So what now? Do you say the heck with it, and throw in the towel, plop on the couch with some left over pie and wait for 2025 to roll up with it’s good intentions and try to fix it then?
We’ve all been there, even as coaches and trainers, we’re still human, and the best habit and intentions can falter when you travel across the country for the holidays and have only gas station or airport food to sustain you, and then when you’r not at home in your own environment with your own food and daily habits, alot of that can go out the window for a few days. It can leave you feeling groggy, fluffy, out of sorts, and just wanting to wear that giant sweater your aunt bought you for the next week.
So what do we do now? Interestingly enough, the habits that are going to fix this lapse in discipline are the same habits that you know you should be following daily anyway.
- Drink water
- Move more
- Prioritize protein
I know you probably feel like a crash diet or wild plan is the only thing that can save you right now, but when it comes down to sustainability, these small habits will bring you back to baseline, and beyond, at the same rate and have a higher chance of success. Think of it this way… if it’s 60 degrees in your house, and you want it to be 67 degrees, turning your thermostat up to 80 isn’t going to make it 67 any faster than just setting it to the temperature you want.
Set your thermostat to the god habits you want to maintain long term.
Water: Get a large water bottle bottle, heck maybe you even got a sweet new Stanley from Santa, and figure out how many of them makes 100 ounces, and bring that sucker everywhere, no matte how many bathroom trips you know you’ll have to make.
Movement: Pick a few movements that you now you can get through, set a timer for 30 minutes, and work through them at your own pace until you work up a sweat. Maybe you squat with or without weight, do situps or pushups, and jumping jacks. You don’t need to set any PRs here, just use it as momentum to get the ball rolling. You should also track your steps and make sure you’re starting to get closer to 10k a day again, it’s easy to sit around during the holidays!
Protein!!! At the expense of sounding like straight up gym bro, for real through, protein should be your priority. And when we say lean protein, we mean you can’t focus on eating leftover christmas ham and expect to lean out, all the extra fat kind of negates it. Eat lean ,eats like chicken, turkey, protein powders, greek yogurt (plain non fat,) and so forth. If you focus here for the majority of your meals, it will help fill you up, and inadvertently keep the calories in check.
That’s really it… just get back on track like you never spent a week laying back covered in the red and green foil wrappers of holiday reeses cups and Hershey’s minis, and put that behind you! Over the next week we’re going to dive deeper into goal setting and making sure you have a clear heading to build better habits around moving into January, but for now, just climb back on the gainz train.
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