How to Approach Your Nutrition Plan During the Holiday Season
by John Gorman
Owner of Team Gorman LLC, Sponsored by Strong Gym and 1st Phorm
Fall is in the air and Halloween is over leading us into the Holiday Season filled with Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas feasts and New Year’s parties. For most of us this is always a favorite time of year where we get to see family, friends and love ones and celebrate our thanks for everything we have or to give special gifts and share a great deal of love all around. It should be one of the happiest times of the year, but for some people it’s dreaded and a great source of stress when it comes to eating. It doesn’t have to be this way, and in fact shouldn’t be at all and in this article I will outline ways to approach all the dinners, the parties, and the get-togethers and come out just as good as you went in.
Some folks reading this may be in the middle of offseason and trying very hard not to put on any more weight, and some may be just finishing up dieting for a show this fall, and are trying very hard not to put too much weight on and go through that dreaded post show rebound that is so common in our industry. Both scenarios are definitely hard in this situation with family get-togethers and dinners planned, especially if your body is just coming off looking very lean and for mosts an all time best. Family will want to go the extra mile to “just get you to eat some normal food” as the saying goes from many of our loved ones and without having a taste of some nice fatty and super sugary foods such as pumpkin pie or mashed potatoes and gravy or candied yams, we ultimately fall prey to our weakness for food.
Here’s the thing I want everyone to understand- YOU CAN EAT AT THESE DINNERS WITHOUT GETTING FAT! Yes you can eat pumpkin pie, you can eat mashed potatoes and gravy. The key is- you just don’t want to eat yourself sick when you do it. I tell my clients that they should follow a conservative approach and make the dinner about being with family, NOT about the food. Don’t obsess over food, it’s only going to taste good for 15 minutes anyway, then you will be miserable if you overdo it. It’s perfectly fine and acceptable to eat some turkey, some greens, and a nice slice of pie or some mashed potatoes and gravy. Hey, have some of BOTH! What? I said have both, just don’t eat platefuls. What do you think is going to happen, its calories, yes but your body is going to be used to a certain amount of calories that day, so just eat your normal meals and when you eat one of these dinners, just don’t eat 1-2 meals on your plan and sub this dinner in. If you eat a lot, sub it in for 3 meals. Is this an exact swap calorie for calorie? No, of course not, but if you are super worried about gaining weight, simply eat less of your normal meals that day and sub these in and enjoy time with your family.
I always recommend to clients that IF they can exercise that day, eating wont impact fat storage as much. If you hit the gym, elect for a high rep workout, maybe even full body and the excess calories are more likely to store in the muscle cells vs. the fat cells. Of course if you eat WAY over you will store some fat, but electing to hit the gym and hit a depletion workout for a hour helps immensely.
I know we like to take our own food to Thanksgiving each year. NOT in Tupperware (I will get to that in a second), but we bake our own sweet potatoes with cinnamon, Splenda and some sugar free syrup in the oven and people eat them up! They don’t even know it’s not super high calorie (well, I guess they do now if they are reading this, but if they are reading this they are probably ok with it) and truth be told, we measure out slices of sweet potato about 25 carbs in size. This helps us stay on track due to having multiple dinners that day. We will eat turkey, lots of greens, and some sweet potato’s we brought to be able to stay somewhat on track, and then save some dessert for one of the dinners. When it’s time to eat pie, we aren’t eating the sweet potatoes 🙂 Something else you can do is 3 days leading up to a big dinner during the holidays is cut your daily carbs in HALF, and go hit the gym and do high rep workouts. This will deplete muscle stores and allow for more to be eaten that day with less to worry about. When people elect to go this route, I tell them to eat a couple meals and enjoy and don’t even worry about it. Eat with family, that’s the most important thing. Tupperware. I post every year on FB and tell people that if they bust out their pre-planned meal in Tupperware at the dinner table (Chicken and broccoli usually, smelling horrid) then you are really being a super _____. You fill in the blank, I certainly could but Leslie would chew my ass (for being too truthful of course). We already live an alienating lifestyle, you will NOT harm yourself from eating one meal with your family on Thanksgiving. RELAX. Don’t be that asshole 🙂 (sorry Leslie, you’ll get over it) 2 years ago on FB, I had another a couple competitors arguing with me on my Thanksgiving day post about how people shouldn’t eat out of Tupperware with their family, even if dieting for a show. I mean, who is stepping on stage before March? No one of course, its November. Anyway, these folks where taking their food scale, measuring out turkey, and busting out Tupperware with their own brown rice and sweet potato meals. They were SO paranoid not to count every, single, gram, that they neglected to be with family and didn’t leave this weird ass lifestyle at home. I mean, how hardcore is that if you bring Tupperware AND a food scale to Thanksgiving? Come on………… The funny thing, a couple of these people didn’t even compete for like 6 months after this- you KNOW if they would have just eaten with their family that meal would have made ZERO difference in their look on stage 6 months later. Instead their family probably put up with them, that’s what family does, but rolled their eyes secretly. We are weird, we eat out of Tupperware, and we put oil and fake tan on ourselves and go flex in front of crowds on a stage. For crying out loud, leave our weird ass lifestyle at home for ONE DAY when you are with family. Our sport is looked at harshly but family – we don’t need them disliking it anymore 😉
And let us just be real for a minute- when you are at Thanksgiving eating out of Tuppeware you think you look like this: But honestly to your family and the rest of the world you really look like THIS: