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By
Charles Staley, B.Sc, MSS
Director, Staley Training Systems |
| Getting through the
winter holiday season without gaining 10-15 pounds never seemed
like much of an issue to me personally, but based on all the
questions I've been fielding about it lately, I thought I'd
share my own thoughts on effectively handling the period of
time stretching roughly from December 24th to January 1st. |
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First, Keep Things
In Perspective
We're only talking about 9 days here,
max. So even thought I hate doing thermodynamic "worst case"
hypotheticals, remember that if you ate 3500 calories in excess
of your metabolic requirements each of those 9 days, you'd only
gain 9 pounds.
Now, I gotcha- no one wants to gain
9 pounds over the holidays, but look how much work it'd take to
do that: if your daily caloric requirement is 2500 calories, you'd
have to eat 6000 calories a day, every day for the entire 9 days
to gain 9 pounds of fat! Using a less extreme and slightly more
likely scenario, gaining 5 pounds over the holidays would require
eating about 4500 calories a day for 9 days. That's a lot, don't
you agree?
Having Your Cake And Eating It Too
Most people have time off from work
over the holidays, which theoretically should open up some time
and energy to get in some extra-productive training- that's for
starters. Yeah, you'll have family in town, you'll have parties
to attend, but the point remains. So there shouldn't really be any
reason to become totally sedentary for 9 days.
Given that, why not plan a handful
of strategic eating opportunities, enjoy the experience, and leave
the guilt-trip for your in-laws? For example, why not completely
gorge yourself on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, and likewise
on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day? That's 4 days total.
If you ate an additional 3500 calories
on each of those 4 days, you might potentially gain 4 pounds. But-
and this is a significant point- that's a lot of extra eating. Even
if you ate yourself silly on those 4 days, you're unlikely to reach
the 14,000-calorie surplus necessary to gain 4 pounds.
Draw A Line In The Sand- Somewhere.
Now in case you're thinking I live
in a cave somewhere and don't really understand that the average
American starts the "holidays" a few days before Thanksgiving
and ends them in mid-January, believe me, I get it. So if you're
one of those people, let me suggest a neat little self-help tactic
that I really like. It's called "setting boundaries."
When it comes to your food, training, and general lifestyle habits,
you should have a certain line you won't cross. Ever.
The list can be as big or as small
as you need to suit your own needs, but thing of these boundaries
as the cornerstones of your personal philosophy of living. Make
these boundaries personal- they don't have to make sense to anyone
else but you.
For example, one of the "lines
I won't cross" is eating in bed. It's just something I don't
do. Eating and sleeping are separate activities in my mind, and
I just personally find it slovenly to eat in bed. Now that might
not have any meaning for you, so come up with your own boundaries-
basically, your own personal "rules" of behavior.
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Then, Have
Fun!
One nice aspect of having your
boundaries is that you know when you're inside of them, and
also when you're outside of them. For me, I eat whatever I
want on Christmas day and also on New Year's day. On those
2 days, I can totally enjoy myself food-wise because on all
the other days, I followed the rules. If you don't have this
type of structure, you're always living in a guilt-laden "no
man's land."
Letting loose is just as important
as discipline by the way- without one side of the coin, you
can't have the other. Having a day where you eat whatever
you want helps you to relax and recharge. So go eat a doughnut-
right now. I'll take it as a sign that you understood the
message I'm trying to get across in this article.
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About The Author
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His colleagues call him an iconoclast,
a visionary, a rule-breaker. His clients call him “The
Secret Weapon” for his ability to see what other coaches
miss. Charles calls himself a “geek” who struggled
in Phys Ed throughout school. Whatever you call him, Charles’
methods are ahead of their time and quickly produce serious
results. His counter-intuitive approach and self-effacing
demeanor have lead to appearances on NBC’s The TODAY
Show and The CBS Early Show.
Currently, Charles competes
in Olympic-style weightlifting on the master’s circuit,
with a 3-year goal of qualifying for the 2009 Master’s
World Championships.
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