Don't let the Holidays derail you.

I couldn’t help but feel a little out of place in the diet and fitness world lately. Everywhere I turn, every health guru, every social media platform is pushing out diet plans to “stay on track” over the Holidays. Pedaling diet hacks to follow in order to not gain weight or to not lose control with the endless amount of food you’ll be subjected too.

“Save your calories for your Christmas dinner”

“Limit your desserts”

“Exercise to burn off those calories or make room for them"

“Don’t step on the scale”

“Don’t come to your meals hungry”

“Eat a little before so you don’t overdo it”

“Limit yourself to one alcohol beverage”

Have we completely lost our minds?

Aren’t we focusing on the wrong thing? What about everything else you ate in the year? What about all of your habits outside of the holidays? What about your relationship with food?

We have like 5 holidays in the U.S. So let’s say you eat 3 meals a day, that is 15 meals. The other 360 days, eating 3 meals a day, adds up to 1,080 meals.

Do you see my point?

If you go off the rails during the holiday season, maybe it’s because you’ve been dieting the entire time. Restricting, depriving, eating lame ass diet food, micro managing every single morsel, not taking care of yourself. Couldn’t that perhaps be the reason?

Can we take a moment to zoom out for a second, set aside the diet culture nuance, and take a look at the bigger picture? It’s not the holiday season, it’s what you’ve been doing the other 360 days.

5 days of unsupportive food choices should not make or break you.

Yeah, you might feel like shit, you might overeat (because you are likely eating a bunch of hyperpalatable food with no brakes), you might indulge more, but if you were well-fed, nourished and ate a supportive diet the other 360 days of the year, those 5 days wouldn’t even move the dial.

And let’s be honest, most people eat “holiday” foods in their regular diet. Cookies, breads, donuts, pizza, fast food, pastas, baked goods, Starbucks Frappuccino….. Are those really any different than stuffing, pecan pie, Christmas cookies and dinner rolls? No, they really aren’t.

So is it really the holidays we need a “plan” for?

You’ve already been on diets, probably most of the year, and it didn’t work. So why do we think going on another diet over the holidays is going to work any better?

I don’t know, maybe I’m beating a dead horse. Maybe this is just what the industry has come too. Continuing to try to diet out of problems that dieting got us into.

So, I’ll be over here by myself focusing on the other 360 days, focusing on the big picture, and not be pedaling out any holiday diet advice.