How To Get Through The Holidays Without Gaining Weight

Holiday season is the favorite time of year for most people. It’s a time you get together with your family, friends, and all loved ones, you spend time together, catch up, and do fun holiday activities.

One of the most common parts of holiday festivities is eating together. Everyone gets together, makes memories, and eats delicious foods together.

So, the holiday season is full of indulgent foods and drinks, dessert swaps, dinners, appetizers, holiday buffets, and so much more.

Therefore, holiday weight gain is a common concern amongst adults, because maintaining your pre-holiday weight can be challenging when you’re constantly surrounded by delicious comfort foods and gatherings that revolve around food and eating.

However, it’s definitely possible to not gain weight during holidays, even without sacrificing delicious meals and family holiday parties where you want to eat some tasty dishes.

In this post, I’m sharing with you some tips on how to get through the holidays without gaining weight, without denying yourself of eating delicious food, and having a good time with your family and friends.

How To Get Through The Holidays Without Gaining Weight

Portion Control

Be mindful of portion control. There’s no reason you can’t eat all of the delicious food you see on the table, but if you want to maintain weight you had before the holidays, try to take smaller portions of the calorie-rich foods. That way, you still get to eat everything, but you won’t gain weight. To make it easier for yourself to portion the high-calorie foods, fill your plate with a salad or some veggies – that way you will fill up with healthy food a bit, so you won’t need to eat too much of the unhealthy stuff.

Drink More Water

Since every holiday party usually comes with tasty (and usually not healthy) holiday drinks as well, it’s easy to forget to also drink water – not just juices, cocktails, and fun drinks.

Water nourishes your body, and it actually helps you not gain weight.

So, don’t forget to drink water as much as possible, whenever you can – drinking cocktails and not feeling thirsty because of that isn’t enough. You need water.

Exercise More

A standard way to maintain weight when eating more is exercising more. If you’re eating more calories, you’ll want to burn those extra calories by exercising more.

But remember, exercise doesn’t have to be something you hate. If you don’t like going to the gym, you don’t have to. There are so many ways you can burn the extra calories you’re eating – dancing, running, riding a bike, hiking – whatever form of exercise works for you, do it. It will help you not gain weight, while still eating everything that you want to eat during the holiday season.

Plus, physical activity is always needed, not just to not gain holiday weight.

Eat Low-Calorie & High-Fiber Foods Before Going To Parties

If you’re going to a dinner party or a dinner gathering with your family and friends where you know there will be lots of delicious foods that are on the higher-calorie side, try to eat on the lower-calorie side for breakfast and lunch.

Fill up on low-carb and high-fiber foods (fresh fruit, vegetables, salads, soups, lean meats, etc.), so when you get to the party, you won’t be starving, and that will be your only unhealthy meal of the day, so you won’t have to stress as much.

Plus, eating healthy foods for other meals isn’t only important for maintaining your pre-holiday weight – it’s important for your health as well.

You need to nourish your body, get all of the nutrients and vitamins you need, and you probably won’t be able to get that with the food you’ll eat at those gatherings (hey, we all love holiday meals such as mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, pastas, and fried food, but it’s not really nourishing for your body, right?).

Snack Wisely

Snacking is always “dangerous”, but especially during holiday parties. When the gathering has mini finger foods you can snack on while talking to other people, you tend to do just that – eat them without thinking.

And since you’re just eating small mini foods and snacks, you don’t even think about the fact that it adds up, and since they’re usually high-calorie snacks, eating them without thinking can definitely make you gain weight if that happens often.

Practice Mindful Eating

Mindful eating means listening to your body. It means eating when you’re hungry and not eating when you aren’t.

If you genuinely don’t feel hungry, you don’t have to eat just because you’re at a gathering and there’s food there. Oftentimes delicious food makes us want to eat it even when we’re not hungry, but practice mindful eating, and eat only when you’re hungry.

Avoid Processed Foods

Avoiding processed foods is something you should do as much as possible, always. But especially when you’re trying not to gain weight. You’ll be eating tons of delicious homemade stuff at family gatherings, and since that holiday food is usually not the healthy type of comfort food, you don’t want to eat processed foods on top of that.