Health & Fitness
Patch Blog: Shed the Holiday Weight With Grace
Fitness and health tips on how to lose weight quickly.
New Year’s Day has come and gone, we’re into January, and once again many people are finding, to their dismay, that they gained five to 10 pounds over the holidays. If that describes you, there’s no sense in beating yourself up for letting yourself go during the holidays. Stop thinking about the ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’, and get on with losing the weight!
Certified fitness and nutrition expert Wendy Grace, who has more than 15 years of experience as a personal trainer to clients throughout Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley, offers these important steps to help ensure you lose the holiday weight healthily and quickly:
1. PUT MOTIVATION FRONT AND CENTER: Post a calendar in a highly visible place, such as the refrigerator. Decide on a time line, such as one, two or three months, over which you want to lose the excess weight. For every day that passes, check it off and rate how healthily you ate that day. (Give yourself 1 to 5 stars, depending how closely you stuck to your calorie goal consumption.) Redecorate the bathroom, too: Find an old picture of yourself when you were in better shape and post it on your bathroom mirror! Visualize yourself meeting your fitness goals.
2. MEASURE YOURSELF WITH CLOTHES, NOT THE SCALE: The scale works in funny ways, fluctuating almost randomly, causing people to become obsessed with it, and to get discouraged easily. So, instead of weighing yourself on a scale, find some clothes that are tight on you at your heavier weight, and try them on once a week. Keep using the tight garment as your measure. Weigh yourself on the scale no more than once a month, or once every six weeks.
3. FIND A WORKOUT PARTNER AND ESTABLISH A SCHEDULE: It is way too easy to say you will exercise “tomorrow,” and then not do it. When you have an agreement with someone else, and you work out together on a schedule, it is much harder to slack off. It’s also a lot more fun! Ask your circle of friends if they are interested; if none are, consider hiring a personal trainer; inquire at the local gym.
and are a couple choices in San Marino.
4. PLAN AND RECORD YOUR MEALS: The most powerful way to drop weight is to plan meals, keep a food journal and calculate calories. Eighty percent of meeting weight loss goals has to do with food intake (the rest has to do with exercise, including both cardio and weight training). It really helps to plan meals one week ahead of time. Allow yourself one cheat day a week (On that day, you may treat yourself to a food you’ve been craving – but it doesn’t mean you can cheat all day long!) The cheat is a reward for being good six days out of the week. Do not keep treats at home, because they will call to you after dinner, every time! Once a week, turn your food journal in to your workout partner. Honesty and accountability will ensure your results.
Above all, do not allow setbacks to make you feel like a failure. Let them go, start again, take it one day at-a-time, and you’ll be back in shape in no time!
