Approaching the holiday season and fitness like a sane person 🎄

Every year we hear the average person gains 2-3 pounds over the Holidays, which if ignored can obviously add up to a lot of extra chunkage.

Now the solution to this is obvious: just don’t do Holidays like normal folks.

Bring a low calorie meal packed in Tupperware to Thanksgiving dinner.

Skip any Christmas get-togethers — there’s a pandemic right? Better just stay home and share your broiled chicken over Zoom.

Image credit: Matataku

here’s a better way. It just takes a little planning.

I’ve never worked with someone who couldn’t get lean eating whatever they wanted once a week. There’s very little metabolic magic at play — it’s simply creating a sustained calorie deficit combined with a well-timed (but brief) break to keep you motivated.

It’s not so much the degree of calorie deficit or whether you refeed every 7 days or 10; it’s just having a system that you can follow that makes controlling calories possible & bearable.

So 6 steps forward, 1 step back. Do that for 12 weeks and you’ll be surprised how much fat you can lose.

Why not use those same principles to avoid holiday weight gain or even get leaner, all while ENJOYING the holidays?

What to do:

Mark off the days where you KNOW it will be impossible or impractical to diet. Resolve to eat & enjoy life on those days.

On the remaining days resolve to stick to a high calorie, low calorie plan.

Go very low cal on diet days and you’ll get leaner.

Keep calories more moderate on diet days but REALLY eat on holidays and you’ll get bigger, especially if you time workouts strategically (more complicated but fun, and hey, I can help you).

Me? I plan to do what old school bodybuilders used to do: eat a lot the next two months while increasing my training as well.

So taking advantage of the most anabolic tool at your disposal — food — and combining it with focused, hard training. And then backing off and letting things settle in.

You have the power to control your physical destiny while enjoying family, friends, and food. It just takes an honest assessment of your social obligations combined with some planning and a dash of discipline.

Or you can argue on the internet about how wrong I am, and how everyone who breaks 190 pounds by eating & training more must be on steroids, or lying, or genetically superior, or worst of all: lying about being on steroids and genetically superior?

Sounds productive. But you do you.

– Bryan