by C. M. Erickson

Created on: December 16, 2010   Last Updated: December 21, 2010

Staying fit over winter break can be difficult. Between shorter days, bad weather, fattening food, and the lure of spending time around a fire or TV, it can seem almost impossible to stay fit. However, with a bit of planning, early mornings, and disciplined eating, you can keep yourself on the fitness straight and narrow.

Plan ahead

Your friends, family, and personal desires to relax or see some new thing will compete with your desire to maintain a fitness routine. You must commit to yourself to keep up your fitness, and plan time to exercise.

Maintaining fitness is not the same thing as improving fitness. If you are concerned about fitting exercise in with all the social demands, understand that you can scale back your workouts without losing significant fitness. If you are under a time crunch, decide what is your bare minimum to maintain fitness. Do you need to keep your cardio up? Are you worried about losing muscle mass? Figure out what your critical concerns are, and focus on them. You might have to let that yoga class slide, or perhaps your Pilates class is a critical lynchpin.

Plan your fitness into your winter break. Get a calendar out, and chart out when you have parties, trips, or other social events. Figure out what sorts of things you need to have for each event. Do you need to shop for presents or bake cookies? Block off time for that as well. If you are a gym member, call and get their holiday hours. As you look at the rest of your “white space” on the calendar, block off exercise time for yourself. Make sure everyone knows that you are working off of that calendar, and to not try to plan something during your exercise time. You are busy.

The early bird gets the exercise

Mornings are the best time to squeeze in workouts, while the rest of the family is sleeping or drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. If you are back by 9:30 or 10, you most likely have not missed anything important.

Disciplined eating

Holidays are chock full of parties and celebrations, which all come with fatting holiday foods. You must prepare yourself for each of these events to make sure you do not pack on unnecessary pounds.

If you go to a buffet, get one plate, fill it, and never go back. Eat slowly and talk with lots of people, and you will eat far less food than someone who stands next to the buffet and grazes. Look for filling items like meatballs, and any foods that look as close to their natural forms as possible. Try to avoid anything with cheese or cream. Try to drink water or wine, but avoid punches or eggnogs.

Vow to yourself to never eat anything fattening that is not homemade. Grandma’s legendary peach cobbler should never be passed up, but hoho’s and packaged cookies and cheesecakes should never get a second glance. Choose your one weakness, and only eat one serving of it. Do not eat it mindlessly, but try to enjoy every bite. This will help you feel like you are not cruelly denying yourself.

Plan to have healthy snacks at home, and try to avoid eating out of boredom. Instead of laying out chips and dip, lay out veggies and dip. Try to avoid seasonal flavored coffees, as they can have up to 500 calories in each mug. Drink plenty of water, as often people confuse thirst with hunger, and eat when they really just need to drink water.

By planning ahead, getting up earlier than everyone else, and being disciplined while eating, you can maintain your fitness over winter break.

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