Common Mistakes to Avoid: Maintaining Your Weight During the Holidays

It’s natural to try to eat everything you want during the holidays while avoiding weight gain. Unfortunately, sometimes this ends up being a recipe for disaster. First, you skip meals and get too hungry, and then you end up overeating anyway. The main reason is that the hunger drive is so strong that as soon as you start denying yourself what you want, combined with eating less, you set yourself up for cravings and disappointment.

The following are five common mistakes to avoid during the holidays to maintain your weight:

Skipping Breakfast to Save Calories

Most people consume the same amount of food every single day regardless of their efforts to avoid it. Because of this, skipping meals can actually set you up for failure. First, you’ll get too hungry, and then you’ll eat too fast and too much. So you may as well plan healthy breakfasts every day of the year regardless of the plans for what you want to eat later.

Eating Too Fast and Not Pacing Yourself

When you’re too hungry, which skipping breakfast will cause, you may end up eating so fast your brain cannot catch up. So instead, every time you eat something, understand it takes 20 to 30 minutes for your brain to get the signal it’s full. So eat whatever you want to eat slowly while focusing on how it tastes, how it feels in your mouth and the pleasure of eating it.

Drinking Your Calories

It’s amazing how many calories you can ingest through liquids. The truth is the most liquid you should drink is water. Everyone needs 8 to 10 glasses of water each day to help their body function properly. The average woman only needs about 1500 calories a day. If your morning smoothie has 1000 calories, you’re going to overeat.

Ignoring Stress-Management Techniques

Stress causes you to have lowered defenses due to the heightened amount of stress-related hormones coursing through your body. The main culprit, cortisol, is responsible for your belly fat and also for giving you those uncontrollable cravings. Practice stress management by keeping a good wake-sleep schedule, eating right, moving every day, and staying hydrated.

Avoiding Exercise

I know you’re busy, but you still need to do intentional exercises every single day. The good news is you don’t need that much. For example, you only need roughly 21 minutes of walking at a moderate pace every single day or 150 minutes every week. This is the minimum you need to maintain your health. When you focus on the minimum required for health, it makes it easier to accomplish.

Focus on avoiding these common mistakes during the holidays and all year long. The more stress you can reduce in your daily life, the easier it is to focus on what needs to happen to ensure you reach all your goals in life.