Catching up with family, traditional holiday food, and bright lights decorating your neighbors’ houses are a clear sign that the holiday season is in full effect. With 2019 waiting for us around the corner, the holidays bring one last hurrah before new year’s resolutions are established. Along with the holiday rituals, the days get dark sooner, it starts to rain, and the temperature plummets to a chilly climate that the Napa Valley culture doesn’t necessarily enjoy. Staying inside sipping on hot chocolate, enjoying holiday cookies and watching Chevy Chase’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation sounds more enticing than to be out in the cold, wet, and dreary winter weather.
The frigid conditions outside promote people to stay inside more. Leisurely walks around the neighborhood or hiking at local parks are halted by the lack of light and muddy terrain. A pleasant solution might be to stay inside and get some holiday baking done. Making gingerbread men and fruit cake is indeed a generous gift to your friends, family and co-workers. However, we are now introduced with the struggle of consuming junk food and underuse of our bodies.
Who wouldn’t want to sample their own holiday cookies before sharing them at the office?
Additionally, you better believe that co-workers and fellow parents at school events are thinking the same thing. It seems rude to turn down someone’s gifts. To deflect the shame of offending someone on their holiday baking efforts, perhaps you could just take some home with you. The next thing you know, you have snow man cookies and Disney themed cupcakes in your fridge. It probably didn’t go in the garbage can. It probably went into the fridge or stored on a plate with plastic wrap thoughtfully placed over it to save for later.
Saving treats for later. Eating higher calorie food with substantial fat content and sugar. Staying inside and decreasing physical activity. This sounds like preparation bears undergo in Alaska when hibernating for the arctic winters.
The truth is we are not Kodiak Bears living in Alaska. We’re human beings living in one the best environments in the world. Just because the weather outside is suboptimal to get outside and have a Labor Day tail gating event doesn’t mean we have to hang up our life time fitness efforts.
During these holiday months, we see our personal training clients in the Napa Valley veer off the path to their health and fitness goals due to some of the previous stated reasons.
“It’s too cold, it’s too late, there’s all this good food around.”
Sure, there are some variables that might impede us from staying active. The overabundance of the traditional sugar filled apple cider and eggnog doesn’t help either. But this doesn’t mean we should forget about how managing our life time fitness goals will set us up for a successful and exuberant new year in a healthy physical state. Succumbing to the elements and glutinously devouring holiday treats without any concern will surely lead to the development of a winter coat in the form of fat that is a hassle to shed when the sun starts to shine outside again in Spring time of 2019.
We work on tactics with our personal training clients in Napa to manage these obstacles that might impede their health and fitness goals. Here are some very low hanging fruit tips to help regulate holiday season threats to our health and fitness:
- Perform resistance training at least once a week. Resistance training can be anything from taking an aerobics class to performing a routine of push ups or squats. It’s important to ensure the body’s lean muscles are consistently in a sugar and fat burning state. Putting muscular stress on the body keeps blood flow circulating regularly. A substantial advantage that resistance training offers is the efficient management of insulin. The more lean muscles are working, the more sugars from food can be absorbed from the blood stream and utilized in the muscle to help rebuild connective tissue. By performing resistance training at least once per week, you can avoid the threat of pre-diabetic conditions while all the gingerbread men are staring at you right in the eye enticing you to eat them.
- Be aware of your portion sizes. During each meal, be mindful about only eating a handful size of protein and carbohydrate in each meal. This could be as easy eating a handful size of rice and a handful size of meat. Over consumption of food will lead to excess calories not being able absorbed properly and transfer into fat. We’re not bears in Alaska looking to achieve a winter coat. Perhaps we shouldn’t act like them.
- Eat more vegetables. You can never get enough of them. The more plant-based foods present in the diet, the less likely you’ll get sick in these cold, wet months.
Take this holiday season to enjoy staying inside and embrace the delicious traditional foods that make the frightful weather more enjoyable. Remember, the new year is right around the corner with plenty of exuberance on the horizon. Fresh experiences and journey’s in the new year are way more enjoyable with a healthy and fit body.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
