Get It Back After The Holidays

It’s December, and with only a handful of days left until 2016, you have to start setting goals and resolutions now. With that being said, I know you all have stuffed yourself this past Thanksgiving (more than you’d like to admit) and that’s why I am blogging on some of my favorite ways to lose the belly fat from the holiday banquets.

Most of you probably are not really ready to commit to the ideal that you may have overeaten this past Thanksgiving. And for the most part, I’m willing to wager you did cross the line. You know. The line labeled, “EAT HERE IF YOU WANT TO BE SATISFIED.”

You may not want to admit it, but most of America overeats. Still not convinced? Ok. Answer these questions:

1. Have you ever supersized anything?
2. Have you eaten at a buffet before?
3. Have you ever eaten out of the ice cream carton or the potato chips?

So, suppose I were to ask another question. How much food did you really NEED to eat this past holiday weekend? What would you say?

Most likely, you wouldn’t know how to answer that question. Because, how much is too much?

Well, I started really watching the amount of food I would take in on a normal basis. How did I know if I ate too much?  I could estimate the caloric intake, but that wasn’t enough. I had to go with hard evidence. The only way I could truly determine I had ‘acted a fool’ was to assess how I felt after eating.

If I felt full, too full, to the point where my stomach was encroaching on my stomach, I had overstepped my boundaries. I learned to eat until I was satisfied. That means ate only enough of what my eyes wanted. I would load my plate with a little bit of every item and when I was finished, I pushed away from the table and did not go back for seconds.

But you may not have done that and possibly overindulged too much. So what are you to do now? Get back to getting busy.

Here are my 5 quick hitting activities to get you back on track.

1. Light walking. Start off with distance as a barometer of how much you’ve done. Half a mile, or one full mile. Either one counts towards getting you back on track. Track your time. When it gets too easy. Take it up a notch and finish the distance quicker.
2. Bike riding. Same thing here. Go for distance first, and track your time to complete it. Then advance to heart rate monitoring. Try to get your heart rate within a safe range of 75/80 of your heart rate max. 220-age = your maximal heart rate. Take 75-85% and work at it for a time period and stick with it and push yourself to new limits concerning distance and effort versus heart rate.
3. Whether light or aggressive, swimming is a great exercise because it works multiple muscle groups at one time. Actually, you can activate 3-4 muscle groups or more per one stroke during swimming. Therefore, you get more work for your buck, or stroke that it.
4. Take it up a notch from walking. Once you have achieved walking a certain distance at a good pace, at 75-85% of your age adjusted max heart rate, it’s time to add a jog. I suggest not building or taking down Rome in a day. Try interval training. Jog a big, walk a bit. Pick a distance within the mile where you will either run or walk. And then go at it, full throttle.
5. Abdominals! I know you were hoping I’d skip it, but I didn’t. You’ve got to hit these and hard. I suggest planks verses crunches and lower abs versus upper abs. This means incorporating legs like reverse crunches and scissors.

Hope this gets you going everyone. We only 24 more days until Christmas and then New Years, if you don’t get right now, it will be that much harder going into 2016. Be safe!