Keep the focus on family and friends

All too often, the emphasis is on the food rather than spending time with those we love. If you try to keep the focus on family and friends, this can help you shift mental gears and see the food as secondary. Yes, many people have food traditions that make the holidays special, but this is usually only a dish or two. However, when you think about it, is it really the food that makes the holiday, or the memories that the food invokes? Go ahead and make you favorite holiday dishes, but keep portions a reasonable size and focus on the time together. Also, try to avoid the feeling that you have to stuff yourself on your favorite holiday meals because you won’t have the opportunity for another year. This type of “all or nothing” thinking can make you act in ways you might not otherwise.

Eat Only Until You’re Full

We’ve all heard this one before, but it bears repeating because it is so easy to overeat during the holidays. This includes not only the actual days, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, but also in between. This is a season of leftovers, and tasty ones at that, which can make overeating easy. Because the holidays involve a lot of parties, conversation, and occasional drinking, it can be very easy to get distracted by the mood and “forget” that you’re on your third cream puff. Make a conscious effort to monitor your level of fullness and stop when you start feeling full. This can be easier said than done, but the extra effort can be worth it. Are the few moments of gratification worth the many hours afterward feeling miserable? In the moment, yes, which is why it takes a conscious effort to monitor intake.

Choose Your Parties Wisely

While it’s tempting to accept every invitation, consider the long-term effects. Do you really need to attend every party that comes your way? Not necessarily. Yes, parties are great fun, but they are also an area where temptation is great and willpower is low. As your holiday invitations come rolling in, consider the ones that are important. The office party, for example, may be one that you need to attend to stay in good graces with the boss; the party hosted by a co-worker that you barely know can probably be skipped. It can be hard enough avoiding all the goodies that people bring to the office and well-meaning friends give for gifts; adding extra social gatherings only makes it harder to say no or to limit your intake.

Focus on Your Long Term Goals

When you think about it, the holiday season is relatively short, even though it feels like it’s a few months straight of nothing but eating. However, if you break it down, there’s a manageable lull between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and even between Christmas and New Years. As you navigate the actual holiday days and your chosen parties, keep your long-term goals at the forefront of your mind. Yes, the holiday treats are tasty and tempting. Think of the little ways you can enjoy the holidays and still keep the bigger picture in mind. As you reach for that second helping, ask yourself if the short-term satisfaction is worth the long-term costs.

Keep your confidence up!

During the holiday season, with so much going on, it’s very easy to throw your good eating habits and diet plans out the window for two months. Sweets and baked goods are constantly available, and it may just seem like too much to try to keep to your plans. However, throwing in the towel simply sets you up for failure. If you believe that it’s pointless to try to eat well, then you probably will see those extra pounds creep on. Remind yourself that, with a little bit of planning, it is possible to make it through the season with minimal damage, but you do need a bit of confidence in yourself.

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From the 15th floor windows of my New York City apartment, I have a clear view of a big and many windowed “health center,” (aka a four-story gym complex). September is one of the gym’s busiest months. Right after Labor Day, active women, who I hope are incorporating daily outdoor activities with a seasonal summer flavor into their daily routines, flock indoors to the gym and an artificial routine of treadmills, exercise bikes and medieval torture devices. I see them sweating early mornings and late at night from my windows. I see them going and coming from my daily walk as I pass the gym.

It is a sign of the times — but also our American culture — that many women seem to have only two modes: sitting or spinning. They’re either avoiding even the slightest heart rate increase (like those women in my apartment building who take the elevator to the second floor) or they’re sentencing themselves to hours at the gym as punishment for their indulgences throughout the day. So often I see the begrudging look on women’s faces and hear the phrase, “I don’t want to go to the gym, but I have to.” Pourquoi? If you are eating mindfully, and eating the correct portion sizes, you don’t have to torture yourself on those metal contraptions or run a marathon to stay trim. French women reject the notion of “no pain, no gain,” opting for a more pleasurable notion of mild, sustained exertion. We prefer all-day movement, what I like to call “the slow burn,” and we practice it as second nature instead of attacking it like boot camp.

Exercise requires the same sense of balance we require in other aspects of our life. We know by now that most dieting has a yo-yo effect and fails; we must recognize that too little and too much exercise meet the same fate. Overexertion at the gym may actually sabotage your weight loss goals. Too many women I know go overboard on the treadmill, and then eat more as either mental or hunger compensation. Eating a protein bar loaded with chemicals and calories just to burn them off seems silly. Or is it just to moi? The overheated workout also often leads to defeatism (I give up!). My window survey confirms those overcrowded gyms in January are half as crowded in February and March. Those New Year’s resolutions may provide us with the motivation, but after a few weeks of killing ourselves on the elliptical, we burn out.

French women see exertion as an integral part of the day. I encourage you to look at everyday movement (what you do in street clothes, not spandex) as essential to your overall wellness, and not to see exertion as something assigned to the gym. Here are a few French tips on how to stay fit without ever setting foot in la gym.

1.) Don’t save your steps, multiply them! Instead of driving your car around in circles to find a close spot, purposefully park far away and walk the couple extra feet. Do you know burning a mere 50 extra calories a day equates to five pounds a year?! Burn those calories creatively; think thrice about using interoffice mail, walk that memo to your coworker’s office. Take an extra few laps around the block at lunchtime, take the long way home when walking your dog at night. The principle is to squeeze as much physical exertion as possible during a few intervals a day into what were once routine tasks tied to avoiding any physical efforts.

2.) Incorporate simple resistance movements into your daily routine. Use your own body weight as resistance wherever possible. Isometric exercises, discreet but effective, are very French. This can be done before you even leave the house in the morning. For example, while waiting in traffic or on the subway, contract your abs for 12 seconds with your back pressed against the seat (it’s better for you than road rage). When reading a magazine at home, try sitting on the floor with your legs stretched and apart in a V and your hands on each side; this is a great stretch for your inner thigh muscles.

3.) Take care of your core. I’m a firm believer that we need to attend to our abdominals as we age. These are the muscles that hold all our vital organs in place; they support good posture and a healthy spine, something we must take care of as we get older. Do a few sit-ups as part of a little stretch/exercise/yoga routine in the morning — it’s never too early or too late to start this ritual.

4.) Acquaint yourself with small to moderate free weights (3-5 lbs.), especially if you’re over 40. A bit of extremely simple resistance training is an antidote to hours spent on gym machines. Short but focused movement with small weights is a good way to preserve upper body tone and bone density and supplement the cardiovascular benefits of an active lifestyle. A little goes a long way, and that only increases the older you get, so don’t let extremism overtake you.

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