Holidays are the best and worst times ever at the same time when it comes to fitness. It is great because you get to eat so many dishes, receive gifts, and reunite with loved ones at gatherings. On the other hand, it is the worst because you gain so much weight thanks to all the party food! The holidays seem to be the time when so many people, including you, are hitting the gym at Makati at the same time.
While it is important for you to maintain your weight for health reasons, it shouldn’t be at the expense of actually enjoying the holidays. Therefore, you should follow these tips so you don’t have to worry so much about weight gain. Follow these tips so you can focus on good food, drinks, and people around you:
Mix Cardio and Strengthening Exercise
Lots of people go to a gym in Makati to lose the extra pounds during the holiday season in order to look great. While any form of exercise can help, there are certain types that can help you shed pounds quicker than others. Cardio and strengthening workouts together are some of the most effective ones for weight loss and maintenance.
Cardio exercise is primarily responsible for making you lose calories because your heart rate is being raised. Cardio demands that you move and do very active movements for a long period. You need to use a lot of calories and fat so you have enough energy. And because you use so many calories, you also end up shedding weight just after a few sessions. Examples of cardio exercises include running, walking, and dancing.
Strengthening workout is different because it is short, but requires you to do some heavy lifting — for example, a couple of heavy dumbbells. When your muscles carry something heavy, it will experience resistance and become stronger as a result.
While muscles gained from strengthening exercises don’t directly cause you to burn fat like cardio, it does help you lose it faster. When you have more muscle mass, your body converts fat into energy faster while you exercise. Additionally, the muscles will also burn extra fat when you leave the gym thanks to a process called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. You used so much muscle energy while working out that your muscles can only gain it back by burning whatever food you will be eating afterward.
Because of all these reasons, cardio and strengthening go together. To lose weight, you will do cardio to lose calories and fat. But, you also want to quicken that process and so you need to pair your cardio exercises with strengthening.
If you want to have an easier doing cardio and strengthening, you can choose to do exercises that combine both. A good workout that combines both is circuit training. Circuit training involved doing continuous sets of an exercise with little rest time in between. The first few sets may just involve cardio moves, such as jumping, but the sets after will tell you to carry weights while doing moves like lunges and squats.
If combining both in one day’s workout seems too intense, then you can have days dedicated only to cardio or strengthening throughout the whole week.
Serve Yourself Drinks That Improve Metabolism
These drinks, on their own, will not help you lose pounds or help you maintain your figure. Instead, they can act as a complement to exercise because they have chemicals and nutrients within them that boost your metabolism.
Metabolism is important for weight control because it turns your consumed calories into bodily energy. And the faster it works, the more calories you consume and the fewer pounds you gain during rest. Therefore, we do exercises and other activities that will force our body to turn the food and liquids inside our body into energy that goes out.
When you drink them, you don’t have to worry as much about your holiday calories once the party comes.
- Green Tea
- Its catechins, theanine and caffeine raise your metabolism.
- You can lose around 70-100 calories from one cup.
- To get the benefits, do not buy green tea bottles at stores and just brew your own, around 24 ounces.
- Apple cider vinegar (ACV) and pineapple drink
- While ACV is harmful to the esophagus if consumed alone, it can impart healthy benefits when mixed with water and other drinks.
- ACV helps with weight control because it makes you feel fuller.
- Pure pineapple juice has bromelain which helps flush out toxins that bring on the pounds.
- Mixing them together makes a very effective drink for maintaining your figure.
- Coffee
- 1 cup of brewed coffee a day, without added sugar and dairy, can speed up your metabolism by 15 %
Control Your Portion Sizes at Home
The holidays call for party food that is rarely healthy. Additionally, we are pushed to eat a lot of the served dishes because not doing so can be seen as an insult to the party host. While we can’t control what is served in a dinner party, we can control what we consume at home.
To make sure our portion size is enough for each meal when you are at home, we can:
- Use one hand every meal
- You’re eating the right amount of chicken if it fits the palm of your hand.
- You are eating the right amount of fruits if it is around the size of a closed fist.
- You’re eating the right amount of vegetables if it fits your palm twice over.
- Use small dishware
- The size of your dishware really influences how much food you put on your plate or bowl.
- When you use a large dishware, you will get more food compared to if you used a small one.
- In a Cornell University study, the participants who use large bowls unknowingly got 31% more food than those who used small ones.
Key Takeaway
Holidays can be one of the worst times for your body. You tend to gain weight because so much food is served in every party you attend to. While maintaining your figure and shedding the pounds is important, it shouldn’t detract you from actually enjoying this special time. These tips will help you maintain your weight while allowing you to have fun.