Staying healthy both in body and mind while enjoying the holiday season can be a challenge. With back-to-back parties getting in the way of your training schedule and holiday treats tempting you everywhere you turn, it’s definitely a change to the routine. To make it even more complex the health and fitness media is full of articles about how to “survive” the holidays. I do agree that this time is not a reason to completely ruin all your hard work and long-term goals. However, it is also not the time to add more stress to your life by calculating how much running or how many HIIT sessions you’ll need to do in order to work off a portion of yesterday’s festivities. Life is just too short. After all we are on holiday! Eat, The next couple of weeks will be full of opportunities to overindulge at various parties and family gatherings. Now, I am not suggesting you go and gorge yourself endlessly on beer, chocolate, and deep-fried treats, but it is a great time to enjoy getting a good amount of calories on board without worrying about it. You’ve earned it! If you normally follow a well-structured exercise program and eat a good-quality diet, a couple of days off will not slow your progress. It may even help you recover and come back reinvigorated and stronger in the New Year. All the upcoming parties will be full of all the things we love but know aren’t necessarily good for us. If you read around, you’ll find plenty of ideas on how to minimize the effect of the festive season on your waistline, including: • Eat at home first. • Start with the crudités and fill up on carrots and celery. • Follow the vegetables with plenty of protein, and you’ll be less tempted to eat the sugary desserts. • Drink plenty of water. • Before the party, do a workout including some heavy compound lifts or a full-body metcon to prime your muscles to absorb all the upcoming calories. All of these are perfectly valid ways to control calorie intake, but remember this is the time to enjoy family and friends please don’t take them too seriously. If there are two things the recovering body really loves, they are carbs and protein. Between them, insulin and leucine (a branched-chain amino acid found particularly in darker meats) coordinate the initiation of muscle-protein synthesis after exercise. A nice big slab of Roast with all the extras followed by a bit of dessert is exactly what your body needs after a hard year. Studies have shown that high-calorie re-feeds boost thyroid hormone (T3), testosterone and metabolic rate, particularly in very active people who err on the side of calorie restriction (which is a lot of us).A few days of higher calorie and carbohydrate intake will therefore help your long-term strength and fat loss goals, as well as recovery. Just remember this isn’t an open invitation to overdo it. Sleep, after all the protein and carbs you’ve just consumed do you know what your body really wants? Sleep. Sleep is essential for full recovery and adaptation after exercise. Sleep deprivation (even just five hours of sleep per night) has been shown to increase cortisol, reduce testosterone, and change the way the body releases growth hormone. All of these things will affect your ability to recover and build muscle. However, most of this hormonal dysregulation is restored with recovery sleep, so think about the holiday period as a time to make it up to yourself. Those who sleep better also have better fat loss. When you’re on holiday, there will always be the temptation to get up early before the rest of the family and go train. But why not just use the time to sleep properly? Don’t set an alarm. Let yourself wake up naturally and get the real benefits from your time off. Relax, be honest when was that last time you took a real recovery or deload week? We all know it isn’t training that makes us stronger, it’s what you do outside the gym that makes the real difference. Real progress comes down to taking the time to recover properly. However, for most of us, the pressures of life mean that we’ll happily beat ourselves up in the gym many times per week, but often do so at the expense of time taken to look after our bodies the other 22 hours of the day. Just remember it can take up to ten days for your central nervous system to properly recover from a taxing training session. While it’s probably worth doing some exercise a couple of times during your week off, why not make that training about keeping your body moving (flexibility, mobility and stretching) rather than another soul-crushing workout? Better still why not get outside with the family and enjoy game together, training isn’t just restricted to the gym. And if you decide to just sit around, that’s okay, too. You won’t lose your gains if you give yourself a few days off. Why not spend some of the time enjoying your new hobby of sitting and watching TV using the foam roller? With the type of lifestyle that the majority of us lead you need time to relax about and have fun with friends and family. Trust me you’ll probably have enough stress with traveling, buying presents, and having to deal with difficult family members. Worrying about a slice of cake or should you have another roast potato just isn’t worth it. • Decide you’re going to enjoy yourself, and then don’t think about it again. • Have a sleep-in many, many sleep-ins • Take full week off training. Yes thats right no gym • Relax, eat drink and be merry.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 05:13:49 +0000
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