For most people, the holidays are a time for family, friends, and food.
If you’re anything like me, your fitness has taken a backseat over the holidays as you’ve spent time with family and you’ve probably eaten a few too many holiday cookies.
Now that the holidays are over, you might be feeling a sense of despair as you look down at the scale or try on your favorite pair of jeans and realize they’re a little more snug than you’d like.
If you get frustrated after the holidays and don’t know how to get back on track with your fitness, don’t worry.
I’ve got your back.
In this article, I’ll show you the 5 steps you need to take to get back on track with your fitness after the holidays.
So, put down those holiday cookies, find a place by the fire, and get comfortable.
Let’s get into it!
Don’t beat yourself up
Everyone falls off track with their fitness to varying degrees during the holidays.
Wait, let me edit that statement..
Everyone who is normal falls off track with their fitness to varying degrees during the holidays.
The only people who don’t fall off track with their fitness a bit are those annoying fitness nuts who bring their meal prepped food containers to Christmas dinner.
And David Goggins.
For everyone else on the planet, spending time with family and friends, enjoying holiday desserts and skipping a few workouts here and there is totally normal.
But now that the holidays are over, you’re probably feeling bad about yourself and trying to figure out what you need to do to get back on track with your fitness.
Don’t beat yourself up.
It doesn’t matter how much you ate over the holidays, or how many workouts you missed.
Feeling bad or guilty isn’t going to do anything! The best thing you can do now is make a plan to get back on track.
I’m going to show you the 5 steps you need to take to get back on track with your fitness after the holidays.
What NOT to do after the holidays
First, let’s go over what you absolutely should NOT do after the holidays.
I know you’re feeling desperate, and you want to do something to get you back on track as fast as possible.
You might be tempted to try something extreme to lose weight and get in shape.
It’s also about to be a new year, and you might be thinking about taking some drastic fitness measures, like:
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- The 75 hard challenge
- Doing a juice cleanse
- Going on the Keto diet
- 48 hour fasting
- Eliminating all junk food
- Working out 7 days a week to burn off all the holiday weight
I know you’re motivated right now, and doing something extreme sounds like it would be the fastest way to make progress.
But here’s the thing.
Most people who try to make an extreme change to their fitness and diet will not succeed in the long term.
Why?
Simply because it’s not sustainable.
You might be able to do any of the above diets or challenges for a few days, or weeks, or maybe even months.
But to really make a change with your fitness, you need to make changes that you can adhere to for the rest of your life.
Most people view fitness as a temporary thing that they need to do to get in shape, and then once they are in shape, they plan to go right back to their old habits!
Not you though, because you’re here reading this article 😉
The thing is, you don’t need to do anything crazy to get back on track with your fitness after the holidays.
I know you want results as quickly as possible, but it’s going to take time to lose the weight you gained and get back to where you want to be.
Once you realize that making progress is going to take time, and you’re probably not going to get the results you want in the next 30 days, coming up with a plan becomes a lot easier.
How to get back on track with your fitness after the holidays
Without any further ado, here are the 5 steps you need to take to get back on track with your fitness after the holidays!
Step 1: calorie deficit
If you’ve read any of my other fat loss articles, you know that the only way to lose fat is by being in a calorie deficit. This means consuming less calories than you burn on a consistent basis.
Now, there are a lot of ways you can create a calorie deficit.
It’s important to realize that any diet you’ve ever heard of or tried before works by simply creating a calorie deficit.
This means that you don’t need to completely cut out carbohydrates, or even all junk food.
You don’t have to do intermittent fasting if you like eating breakfast.
Unless you just really like juice, you definitely do not need to do a juice cleanse.
As long as you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight.
You can (and should!) be able to incorporate some of your favorite foods into your calorie deficit. This is going to make sticking to your calorie deficit much more enjoyable.
If you need help figuring out how many calories you should be eating for your goals, you can use my calorie calculator below.
Cal’s Calorie Calculator
Along with being in a calorie deficit, aim to eat your goal body weight in protein every day.
What does this mean?
Let’s say you’re 180 pounds and you’d like to lose 20 pounds.
You would simply shoot for 160 grams of protein every day.
Getting enough protein is going to help keep you full and keep your muscle mass as you lose weight. Staying full while you’re in a caloric deficit is going to make it much easier to stick to.
Step 2: strength training
Once you’re in a calorie deficit, your focus in the gym should be on getting stronger and building muscle.
NOT burning as many calories as you can through exercise!
It’s extremely difficult to burn a meaningful amount of calories through exercise. You’d have to spend hours and hours each week doing cardio, which nobody has time for!
Not to mention that most methods of estimating your calorie burn are very inaccurate. Your apple watch that says you burned 600 calories during your HIIT workout? I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s probably not even close..
Strength training 3-4 days per week is going to be a much better use of your time.
When you do strength training, you’re going to build strength and muscle as you lose weight.
Keeping your muscle as you lose weight is going to give guys a chest and shoulders and girls toned arms and a round butt.
Now I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t do cardio.
Doing some low intensity steady state cardio is great for your heart health and generally, moving more is going to make you feel better.
What I am saying is that when you go to the gym, don’t focus on burning as many calories as you can. Focus on trying to get stronger by following a strength training program and add a few days of cardio in if you have time and you enjoy it.
Want 50 FREE workouts?
Clink the link below and I’ll send you my Strength Training Blueprint, completely free.
Step 3: daily step goal
Want to do something incredibly simple that’s going to increase your metabolism, make you feel better, and help you live longer?
Walk more!
The research is pretty clear at this point. People who walk more, tend to live longer.
People who walk more will also increase a part of their metabolism called non-exercise associated thermogenesis, or NEAT for short.
Hitting a set amount of steps each day will ensure that you’re burning around the same calories each day, whether you workout that day or not.
This extra calorie burn can add up, and make it much more likely that you’ll be in a calorie deficit.
So how many steps should you be taking per day?
A good range to shoot for is 7,000 to 10,000 steps per day.
If you’re having trouble getting more steps in, here are 3 simple ways to increase your daily step count:
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- Schedule your walks: It might sound silly, but plan out several short walks throughout the day. 10 minutes when you wake up, 10 minutes after lunch at work, and 10 minutes after dinner. You’ll be surprised how quickly your steps will add up.
- Park further away and take the stairs: Again, it might sound like this doesn’t make a difference, but little tweaks like this really add up during the day and help you reach your step goal.
- Combine walking with another activity you enjoy: Finding a podcast you like, listening to an audiobook, or even walking on a treadmill while watching a show are ways to increase the likelihood you’ll actually get your steps in.
Step 4: sleep
You probably don’t need me to tell you that sleep is important, but I’m going to tell you anyway!
It’s especially important if you’re trying to lose weight and improve your fitness.
When you’re tired, it’s much harder to stay disciplined and make the food choices that will help you stay on track. It’s much easier to justify skipping the chicken and potatoes you have in your fridge and hitting Wendy’s on the way home instead.
Sleep also affects two hormones called leptin and ghrelin that play a big role in your appetite.
Leptin is a hormone that signals your brain when you’re full. Ghrelin is responsible for telling your brain that you’re hungry.
When you’re sleep deprived, your leptin levels decrease and ghrelin levels increase!
This one-two punch is going to make it a lot harder to stay in a calorie deficit consistently.
Making sure you’re getting 7-9 hours of sleep per night is going to help keep these hormone levels in check, which in turn will make it easier to get back on track with your fitness after the holidays.
Having trouble sleeping? Here are 3 things you can try:
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- Invest in blackout curtains: Getting some curtains that eliminate all light coming in is going to help your body produce melatonin, which will help you fall and stay asleep.
- Decrease your room temperature: Our core temperature naturally lowers in preparation for sleep. Keeping your room between 62° and 68° at night can help speed that process up.
- Eliminate blue light before bed: Blue light also interferes with your body’s ability to produce melatonin. Put your cell phone on night mode and try to limit watching TV right before bed.
Step 5: consistency over perfection
The last and most important step is a mindset shift.
A lot of people have an all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to fitness. They are either motivated and dialed in, or they fall off the wagon and they don’t incorporate any fitness into their life.
Here’s the thing.
Making a change to your fitness takes time.
It won’t happen overnight.
There’s no quick-fix solution that will solve all your fitness problems in 30 days.
It’s probably going to take longer than you want to lose the weight you gained over the holidays and get your body back.
Staying consistent is much more important than trying to be perfect. You’re much better off coming up with a simple routine that you can stick to, rather than trying another extreme fitness or diet approach that you quit after 14 days.
I know that’s not the “sexy” answer you were looking for, and truth be told it doesn’t exist.
Building these habits into your routine is how you will change not only your body, but your life.
Things will come up that will set back your progress, like getting sick, or traveling for work, or getting injured.
And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you should give up and throw in the towel.
You don’t need to be perfect to see results and lose weight after the holidays. You’re going to see much better results by being 80% consistent for 3 months than 100% consistent for 2 weeks.
Wrapping up
Now you have the plan, it’s time to go execute!
Start putting these 5 steps into action today, and I promise you’re going to feel much better and more confident towards reaching your goals.
Just know that it’s going to take time to see results, and you’re going to have to be consistent.
If you want someone to take all the guesswork out of your workouts and nutrition, and give you a plan that’s completely tailored to you and your goals, you can apply for coaching to see if we’d be a good fit for each other.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, leave them below!