There’s no reason why you shouldn’t maintain your weight loss results while enjoying the festive season with your family. If you want to avoid weight gain during this period, it’s quite easy once you have the right mindset.

Between Halloween and Christmas, there are so many events and celebrations and it’s quite possible that you’ll be surrounded by a lot of food. But it is completely possible to maintain your weight loss and avoid weight gain during the holiday with these few tips.

How To Avoid Weight Gain During The Holiday

Make Healthy Swaps

There are plenty of things you can do to make your holiday recipes healthier. The simplest way is to use cleaner ingredients in your recipes. Sometimes, it’s also better if you can make healthier recipes from scratch.

This will help you to avoid the added sugars, preservatives, and questionable ingredients that are found in packaged food, especially really processed foods like candy.

There are many sugar alternatives that you can use in your recipes, as well as foods that are already low in carbs if weight loss is a major goal.

Here are some ideas on how to reduce calories in baking and cooking.

Baking

• You can replace butter with applesauce or mashed banana
• Instead of adding sugar, use low carb substitutes such as stevia, erythritol or xylitol.
• Add dried fruit instead of chocolate chips or candies
• Replace regular chocolate chips with dark chocolate or low carb chocolate chips
• Use extracts like vanilla, almond and peppermint to add flavour instead of butter and sugar.

Cooking

• Use herbs and spices to flavour dishes instead of butter
• Experiment with new cooking methods such as baking, steaming or grilling instead of frying
• Replace cream cheese, sour cream and mayo with Greek yogurt

Related: The Best Sour Cream Substitutes For Cooking and Baking

Snack Smart

From Halloween treats to Christmas desserts, unhealthy snacks will be readily available during the holidays. The key to avoiding weight gain, however, is to limit unnecessary snacking.

If you’re at home, you can control this problem by keeping treats out of sight or making healthier treats, to begin with. However, that strategy is more difficult to avoid in situations that you cannot control, such as at your workplace or a dinner party.

Because life does happen, if you are hungry and need a snack, go for real foods.

You can have fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds which are all filling snacks that don’t contain added sugars or unhealthy fats, both of which can lead to weight gain.

Add More Protein

Most holiday meals are loaded with carbs and fat but not enough protein. It’s important to have enough protein to avoid weight gain because protein is what helps you to feel full long after you’ve finished eating.

Protein is also necessary for maintaining your weight loss because it boosts your metabolism and your levels of appetite-reducing hormones.

Making sure that your holiday meals include a serving or two healthy protein like meat, poultry, fish, and beans to reduce the likelihood of overindulgence.

Don’t Celebrate While Hungry

It’s very tempting to skip a meal before going to a party or event. However, this practice often leads to overeating, which leads to weight gain.

Before you go to an event, load up on some healthy protein and veggies and then enjoy the party fare in moderation.

If this isn’t an option for you, then here are some tips that you can use to enjoy the buffet without going overboard.

• Get a lot of veggies and protein on your plate before anything else
• Use a smaller plate to help with portion control
• Eat slowly
• Try to avoid going back for seconds

Stay Hydrated

It’s a widely-known fact that we often mistake thirst for hunger. This can lead to overeating when we really just need some water to get hydrated.

Hydration helps us to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight. The more dehydrated you are, the lower your BMI so water is good.

Also, try to limit your intake of liquid calories by avoiding soda and fruity drinks.

Exercise

This one is a very obvious way to avoid weight gain during the holiday.

Normally, the holiday season is very busy and exercise gets swept under the rug. However, if you want to maintain a healthy weight, it’s a great option.

If you don’t have a fat-burning activity that you normally participate in, you can start by joining a gym or going on walks/runs a couple times each week.

The most important thing is that you start moving.

Get Plenty of Sleep

One of the perks of the holiday season is that we get a free pass for late-night parties. The effect that this has on our bodies, however, isn’t so good.

Lack of sleep leads to increased hunger. It also leads to less energy to exercise and be a happy human being. It slows down your metabolism which means that it takes longer to burn fat.

The reason behind this is that sleep restriction may increase your hunger hormone levels, ultimately leading to higher calorie intake.

 

Avoid Weight Gain

The holidays are great to enjoy food and family and tradition. However, it’s not great to start the new year realizing that you overindulged and now your weight and energy have to pay.

It is possible to enjoy the holiday without gaining weight or feeling deprived. Above all, just eat in moderation and prepare to hit the gym if your good intentions get thrown out the window.