Eat Your Way Right Bonus: Splurge Survival Calendar
It’s no secret that the holidays bring some real challenges when it comes to eating. That is reason #1 why we are doing our “Eating Your Way Right Through The Holidays” challenge!
Well we want to put another tool in your hands to help you take your survival strategy up one more notch. Our colleagues over at Results Fitness in California are having a challenge similar to ours, which they are calling “Holiday Hold ‘Em”. I am guessing they have a few poker players over there. 🙂 They sent me an email with what I thought was a really great strategy involving a calendar and a few minutes of your time.
Like Get Fit NH, Results Fitness emphasizes 90% nutrition compliance, not perfection. What they suggested was pulling out a calendar, calculating how many splurge meals you could have between now and the end of the holiday season, and marking an “x” on all the days and mealtimes you were planning your splurge. A great idea that goes right along with the planning you have already been doing.
We took it one step further and created a calendar for you that covers between today (Monday November 25th) through the end of the year.
Here is what mine looks like:
My strategy was simple and realistic.
I am currently eating 3 meals per day. This allows me 12 splurge meals between now and January 4th, which is the end of the final holiday week.
I knew I would be in the kitchen on Wednesday starting some cooking, and anytime that starts I am probably going to do some sampling, so I planned a splurge there. On Thursday I figured my breakfast will be normal, but the other two meals of the day I better plan on being non-compliant. Add one meal in on Friday for some leftovers, and we are good to go. I used the same strategy for the week of Christmas. That takes up 8 out of the 12 allotted. Figure on a party on New Years Eve and that still leaves me with 3. My strategy then was to use one on each Saturday night of the “non-holiday” weeks, and that gives me 12 total.
This calendar helps me for a couple reasons. I have to have a plan or I will justify sneaking things here or there and not counting them. I like the visual aid. It helps me see that I can still have some days where compliance does not have to be perfect but I am still on track.
One important caveat: You can still lose fat and stay on track over the holidays, but you HAVE to stick to your plan and you have to keep training. Don’t skip training sessions and think it won’t matter. It is the consistency of the training, keeping that metabolism in high gear, plus eating correctly the rest of the time that leads to success. I believe in you, now you gotta Make It Happen!
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