Ten outstanding holiday fitness strategies
Do not fall prey to sacrificing your workouts during the holiday season. Your workouts are important throughout the year; however, during the holidays with added stress, parties which include lots of tempting goodies and libations, working out regularly is crucial.
Follow these 10 outstanding holiday fitness strategies to keep your mind and body fit throughout the holiday season which may enable you to enjoy the holidays more this year than ever before. As always, prior to beginning any exercise program, please consult your physician.
Strategy 1: Make your workouts a priority and schedule your shopping, cooking, partying and visiting around your workout schedule. You will be amazed how simple this really is to accomplish and how much better you will feel because you have some control over this hectic time of year.
Strategy 2: Stick to your regular dietary regimen rather than opting to fall off this track during the holiday season. You can still enjoy the occasional special meal or treat on the actual holiday, but avoid the holiday season trap of eating from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.
Strategy 3: Get plenty of rest. Sleep is an essential part of achieving workout success. The better rested you are, the more likely you will make wise choices including not sacrificing your workouts and sticking to your dietary regimen.
Strategy 4: Hydrate. While this is always important, particularly if you have imbibed the day before, your body will most likely be dehydrated. Consequently, hyperhydrate prior to your workouts, sip water throughout and then hyperhydrate following the workout. Sip water while you shop, cook and wrap!
Strategy 5: Workout frequently, keep the workouts of reasonable duration and intensity so that you do not stress about being at the gym for too long during the season. This is actually a great strategy year round, but particularly helpful during this time of year.
Strategy 6: Keep your workouts simple. Starting a new workout modality is certainly possible any time of year; however, to avoid additional stress, just perform the workouts you are familiar with now and perhaps begin a new program once the holiday season is over.
Strategy 7: Shopping online may be a time saver, but remember how we used to shop at the mall for hours? The advantage to actually physically shopping is that you expend calories the entire day. Sitting at the computer does not efficiently burn calories, so perhaps do a little bit of both this year by shopping on-line for what you must and then hitting the shops for the rest. It is good for the economy too!
Strategy 8: Set a goal to at least maintain your body weight, body composition and girth measurements during the holiday season. Keep a close eye on these measurements to stay ahead of the curve.
Strategy 9: Request workout attire or fitness tools for gifts this year. Check out my recent column in Sky-Hi News online, “Ten Holiday Fitness Gifts” for ideas for yourself and others.
Strategy 10: Wear your heart rate monitor all day to keep track of the calories you are expending. Set a goal for each day and if you are not achieving that caloric expenditure, then kick it up a notch during your workouts.