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It’s the season for long lunches, family parties and the potential undoing of all your hard earned training results! But just because you’re out of your usual routine this holiday season, doesn’t mean your health and fitness has to suffer – here are some great healthy holiday hacks to help keep you fit over the silly season!
Treat the holidays like any other weekday and schedule in your training. Holidays tend to get filled up with day trips, catch ups, breakfasts, lunches or dinners out and nights away. You deserve to enjoy the holidays, so aim to get your training sessions done at times that won’t interfere with your other activities. For example, prioritise your training to be earlier in the morning while everyone is still sleeping!
DID YOU KNOW: The one habit that highly successful people have in common is morning exercise! Including Barack Obama, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg and Tom Cook. Whatever their exercise of choice, these successful people clearly prioritise their training into their busy schedule.
If you’re away from home or simply enjoying some down time in your own backyard during the holidays, enjoy some incidental exercise by exploring the local area. You could go bush walking, snorkeling, horse riding or play backyard soccer – just to name a few. Getting out into the great outdoors, breathing in the fresh air and seeing some different – most likely stunning – scenery, can be fantastic for the mind as well as the body. You’ll also be challenging your muscles in very different ways to your usual training – win win!
DID YOU KNOW: You can burn around 180 calories bushwalking for 20 minutes at a decent pace with a day sized backpack on. Triple that to 540 calories for an hour’s bushwalk.
With the majority of restaurants and cafes showing their menus online now, there is no better way to be armed for a meal out with friends during the holiday season.
Not only can you plan your meal choices by knowing in advance what’s on offer, you can also take your planning one step further and make sure your training session that day covers you for your planned indulgences!
Try these 5 simple steps when you have a planned meal out with friends:
Research the eatery and find their menus online
Choose what you would like to eat – think healthier options!
Roughly calculate the amount of calories in your chosen meal/s
Plan a training session that will cover the extra amount of calories you plan on consuming
Complete that training plan!
‘Tis the season to be jolly, which might mean indulging in a few extra drinks! But try to know what you’re drinking – not just the alcohol content, but the juice and soft drink mixers too because they are all added calories to your diet and usually made up of sugar.
Once you know the calorie content of your drinks, find an exercise that will equal that amount of calories.
For example: A glass of wine is usually around 120 calories and a schooner or pot of beer is around 160 calories. To make an allowance in your day for these you would need to complete:
20-28 mins on the elliptical machine
8-11 mins of skipping
35-45 mins of Pilates
12-15 mins Cycle class
25-30 mins circuit training
Know what you’re drinking in terms of exercises and you might think twice about drinking it!
With studies showing that exercising with someone else can be more beneficial than training on your own, what better time to rope in some family and friends to exercise than during the holiday season when you are likely to have more time to spend with them?!
If you’re a Goodlife member, you can even bring a friend along for a free trial session. You never know, you might just convert them into a regular exerciser!
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