By: Chris Gates

The holiday season is one of the most fun times of year.

But at the same time, it’s incredibly challenging from a health and fitness perspective.

Facts are facts. Most people gain weight during the holidays.

And that’s thanks to…

• Holiday parties.
• Big meals.
• Lots of drinks.
• Desserts, too.

It’s a perfect storm of factors that lead to problems with weight management, and managing your health and fitness goals.

But I have good news!

You CAN navigate this period of time and make it successful from all angles.

1. You can enjoy the hell out of each and every holiday.
2. And you can also find ways to keep your training, nutrition, and goals moving in the right direction.

And that’s what I’ll do for you in this article, so that you can learn how to not gain weight on a holiday.

So if that sounds good to you, and you want to make this the best holiday season you’ve ever had, let’s dive in!

Check out some my client’s stories, and the amazing progress they’ve made!

Before We Begin, This Is Most Important…

More than anything, you should enjoy yourself over the holidays.

Whether it be Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, or any other holiday that you celebrate, it only comes once a year.

And often, this is the one time of year where you get to spend time with certain family and friends.

You should maximize it.

Amidst all of the strategies and game planning we’ll talk about in this article, it should all revolve around setting you up for the most enjoyable holiday season possible.

Training and nutrition should fit into your life.

Not the other way around.

So the goal here is to maximize your enjoyment, while at the same time maximizing your progress.

How to Not Gain Weight on a Holiday: Consider It An Open Book

When November rolls around, I often have conversations with my 1-on-1 online fitness coaching clients about what changes, if any, they’d like to make to their programs.

And I always frame the discussion around the fact that we have an entire playbook to use.

All options are on the table.

For example, if you’re trying to lose body fat, we don’t have to be in a consistent calorie deficit over the holidays. We can bump things up to maintenance, or even put you in a slight surplus.

You can take time off from fat loss now, in order to make more progress in the future.

Your workout program can change, too. If you have a lot going on, we can reduce the amount of days you train.

Or, if you’ll have more time than usual at your disposal, we can train more and have even more fun in the gym.

Your program should be an open book this time of year. Because once again, it’s all about maximizing your enjoyment along with your progress.

You can make progress a million different ways. Let’s figure out which option makes the most sense.

How to Not Gain Weight on a Holiday: The Scale Will Go Up. And That’s OK.

Something else that’s important to understand is that the scale will go up, and it doesn’t mean you’re a failure.

It doesn’t mean you ruined all of your progress.

In fact, it doesn’t even mean you gained body fat.

It’s actually nearly impossible to gain several pounds of body fat in one day. So if you have say, a big Thanksgiving dinner, and the next day the scale is up five pounds, it doesn’t mean you gained five pounds of fat.

You’d have to massively overeat to make that happen.

• One pound of body fat is equal to about 3,500 calories.
• So in order to gain one single pound of body fat, you’d have to overeat by 3,500 calories.
• Which means gaining five pounds would require you to overeat by 17,500 calories.

That’s impossible.

Instead, what you’re seeing on the scale is likely a small amount of body fat, plus a large amount of…

1. Water weight, due to increased carbohydrates.
2. Water weight, due to increased sodium.
3. Changes in your hydration, due to alcohol.
4. More food weight sitting in your digestive system.

All of those things show up on the scale, because the scale weighs more than just body fat.

How to Not Gain Weight on a Holiday: DON’T Do This…

So when the scale spikes up, there are a couple of things I want you to avoid.

1. First, don’t slash calories dramatically. That’s not going to “fix” your problem.
2. You also don’t need to increase how much you work out to burn a ton of calories and get that holiday weight off.

All you need to do is get right back to your normal routine.

That’s it.

That’s the solution.

Because again, the weight you gained isn’t mostly body fat. It’s mostly a bunch of other stuff.

So if you just get back to your normal healthy habits and routines, you’ll see your weight normalize after a few days.

You’ll be right back to where you started.

And the entire situation will feel less like a disaster.

Strategy No. 1: Avoid the Free-For-All

The simplest way to not gain weight on a holiday is to reserve your indulgences for the holiday itself.

Don’t let a single holiday bleed into several days, or several weeks, or your life.

For example, most people don’t gain a ton of weight on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day. The major weight gain occurs due to those individual days turning into week- or month-long benders.

Try to avoid…

• Having mountains of leftovers in the fridge.
• Snacks and treats laying all over the house.
• Alcohol on most nights of the week.
• Desserts on most nights of the week, too.

Simply treating the holiday like a holiday, enjoying yourself with no limitations, and then getting right back to your normal, healthy routine is the name of the game.

If you can do that, any overeating you do on the holiday itself will be an extremely minor blip on your radar.

It won’t make a difference.

But if you say “screw it,” and let the holiday season turn into a month-long free for all, you’ll hit New Years with a lot of work to do, and a lot of body fat to lose.

Strategy No. 2: Plan Ahead. Now.

When it comes to health and fitness, planning ahead is always the biggest determining factor for making sustainable progress.

So if you’re wondering how to not gain weight on a holiday, the best thing you can do is start planning ahead.

Like, right now.

Literally map your entire holiday season out on a calendar so that you can visualize all of the gatherings and events you have coming up.

• Holiday gatherings.
• Drinks with friends.
• Going out to dinner.

All of it.

When you can view everything on paper, it can help you identify trends with your daily lifestyle. And those trends will reveal ways you can get creative with managing your diet and exercise.

For example…

• If one week looks extremely busy, you can plan to workout on fewer days of the week (but make the most of those workouts you CAN complete).
• If you have a meal or two where you want to have a ton of flexibility to eat whatever you want, you can have a few low-calorie days prior to those meals.
• Perhaps you have an entire week where working out just isn’t an option. That’s OK! You can plan for it to be a deload week.
• Or maybe the next month will be really hard for you to eat a standard diet. That’s OK, too! Calorie cycling might be the perfect remedy. Plan your high-calorie and low-calorie days accordingly.

Like I mentioned before, there are a million ways to manage your training and nutrition to make progress.

Planning ahead will allow you to build a creative strategy that fits your exact lifestyle.

Strategy No. 3: Manage the Holiday Itself Effectively

Planning ahead is going to make the biggest impact. But there’s still a lot you can do on the holiday itself in order to not gain weight.

The name of the game is often rooted in small adjustments or reductions. For instance…

• Having a smaller breakfast and/or lunch can remove quite literally hundreds of calories from your regular diet, which you can reallocate to your big holiday meal.
• Fasting might even be an option, if it’s something you can manage appropriately. Be sure to listen to my podcast episode on how to not gain weight on a holiday (linked above) to learn more about the appropriate way to apply fasting to your approach.
• Get a workout in earlier in the day, before your holiday festivities begin. And no, not to burn as many calories as possible. Do it to build your body up, make a healthy choice, and feel great for the rest of the day.

Anything you can do before the big meal or gathering helps and will give you more flexibility to just enjoy yourself without stress or worry.

And when the time comes to sit down and enjoy a big meal, try to make it the majority of what you eat. Limiting snacking is another simple strategy to help conserve hundreds of calories.

Lastly — and this one should be obvious — don’t eat to the point of pain or discomfort.

I used to gear up for Thanksgiving with the mindset of absolutely inhaling every food in sight. And for years, that led to an upset stomach and days of GI distress afterward.

The holiday season isn’t an excuse to binge eat.

Strategy No. 4: Consider Working With A Coach

The vast majority of this article has been about how YOU can manage your diet, exercise, and lifestyle to not gain weight during the holiday season.

And I absolutely think you can do it 🙂

But sometimes hiring a coach can help. Because a coach will manage all of these details for you, and give you a plan that you just have to execute.

No guesswork. No gray areas or confusion.

• Show up.
• Do the work.
• Have confidence that what you’re doing is working.

If you’d like a little assistance this holiday season to both make progress with your health and fitness, while also enjoying the hell out of the holidays, I’d love to help!

I work with people all over the world to build muscle, burn fat, and make sustainable progress that sticks.

You can check out my coaching page to learn more about 1-on-1 online fitness coaching. And if you like what you see, go ahead and submit an application. I’ll follow up with you directly to talk more about your goals.

Thanks for reading!

~ Chris