Holiday fitness
By Bobbi Mlynar
Originally published 01:38 p.m., December 20, 2007
Updated 01:38 p.m., December 20, 2007
Go ahead. Stroll through that holiday buffet line. You can treat yourself to the palate-pleasing joys of the season and still maintain your weight — if you’ve planned ahead.
Fitness professional Sherry Nelson recommends keeping a food calendar to get through the holidays unscathed.
“I think the main thing is make your mind up what you’re going to do — and you’ve got to be solid on that — and plan your next day in mind,” said Nelson, director of physical education at Emporia High School. “Do you have a party? ... Cut down calories the day before or after that day.”
Nelson offered an assortment of options to avoid holiday weight gain.
Attitude can be everything, especially during a time of year when New Year’s resolutions to lose weight follow on the heels of holiday celebrations, then collide with football bowl parties.
“‘Well, I’m going to start a diet first of the year, so I’m going to eat whatever I want,’” is not a good approach, she said. “I think a good way to approach the holidays is that ‘I’m going to maintain my weight during the holidays.’”
• Never go to a party hungry.
“It always works if you drink some water before you’ve got food in front of you, or eat something healthy before you’re around the fattening stuff,” she said. “I think the main thing is, if you don’t have a plan, you’re going to eat more than you intend on eating.”
• It’s smart to socialize away from the buffet table.
“You can put a lot in your mouth in a short amount of time,” she remarked before talking about a Christmas party last week, where she found herself sampling the food while visiting with friends by the buffet table.
“I ate quite a bit — I’m thinking this to myself — so I got a bottle of water and moved myself ... to a table and visited with some people over there where the food wasn’t easily accessible,” she said.
• Eat a healthy light breakfast and a healthy lunch you’ve brought from home.
Salads with low- or no-fat dressings and chunks of chicken can be a tasty way to fill up with a healthful, low-calorie lunch. Nelson recommended snacking on fruits and vegetables, and eating smaller amounts of meats to save calories.
• Don’t let yourself get hungry; keep healthful snacks available instead of junk food.
• Limit portions of hors d’oeuvres.
“Take one or two things and move yourself away from it. It’s difficult, because the stuff is really good,” she said. “Sometimes you can tell yourself, ‘I can have this whenever I want; I don’t have to have this right now.’”
• Exercise as often as possible.
Nelson recommends exercising for 30 minutes a day, five days a week.
“But if some people are not active at all, any kind of exercise is better than no exercise,” she said. Even shopping offers opportunity to exercise. “Between stores, walk fast. Do whatever you can. Make more trips up and down the stairs.”
Ideally, though, Nelson believes that small, steady lifestyle changes are the best way to stay fit and healthy for a lifetime. It’s something she’s emphasizing with students now at the high school’s new fitness center, even though time and sheer numbers limit their using it to three days a week. Baseline readings were taken at the beginning of the year and are being monitored to see the effects of exercise.
“I’ve seen so many improvements, it is unbelievable,” Nelson said.
Cardiovascular fitness levels have gone up and blood pressures have gone down.
“We’ve had some students who were not in the healthy blood pressure range, and they now are. Resting heart rate’s gone down,” she said. “It’s been amazing. ... They’ve dropped their percent body fat not even watching what they’re eating, but through exercise. We’ve had some good gains in lowering percent body fat.”
Nelson said that snacking, fast foods, and restaurant portions present continual challenges to young and old alike.
“The portion sizes are absolutely out of control,” she said, estimating they are two to three times what they were when she was her students’ age. “Some of these students think these portion sizes are normal.”
She said, however, that she doesn’t believe in diets, nor does she believe that fitness and deprivation go hand-in-hand.
“I think they should more slowly change their lifestyle so they can maintain that for life,” she said. “Because we hear over and over again how many people lose weight and they gain it back.
“If you’re drinking four sodas a day, which a lot of people do, cut that down to two.”
If fast-food restaurants constitute lunch five times a week, cut that back to two and bring healthy meals to work on the other days.
“You’re not depriving yourself of something you like,” she said of the regimen. “You should not make a ton of drastic changes that you can’t maintain for a long time.”
F Eat five or six small, healthy meals a day.
“The best weight loss in people that I’ve seen eat five or six small meals a day versus three larger meals,” Nelson said.
F Exercise for the health of it.
Nothing makes people feel better than exercise, she said, as long as the family doctor approves of the program.
“It’s going to make you feel exhilarated and it’s going to make you feel a whole lot better,” she said. “And it doesn’t take money. You can get out there and walk.”
More-formal exercise programs are available at fitness centers in town, as well as the Lee Beran Recreation Center.
People who are not motivated to work out alone can find a friend and make a commitment to meet at set times and places to exercise together.
“I think it makes a lot of difference to have that buddy,” she said. “They’re more apt to go if they know that they’re going to let that friend down if they don’t show up.”