http://media.blubrry.com/pledgetraining/content.blubrry.com/pledgetraining/Maintain_Don_t_Gain_Holiday_Edition.m4a
First lets go through the basics and then take a deep dive into some of the newest research and the finer points to keep your waistline through this holiday season!
We’re already past Thanksgiving and heading straight into all of the holiday parties… which means tons of baked goods, cakes, pies and treats all around the house, office and set out at holiday parties calling your name.
The Exercise Routine:
First, let’s talk about your basic exercise routine…
1. You’ll want to do cardio 3 x a week or more for 30 + minutes + each bout.
Cardio counts as a brisk walk, jog, bike ride, elliptical or row machine. If you have a heart rate monitor don’t try to kill this part of the routine – we’ll talk about your intense workout right after this … keep your heart rate from about 110-140 beats per minute. We want to burn all fat and increase our fat burning enzymes in our mitochondria to keep them healthy and working during the rest of the day.
2. Okay next you’ll want to do your intense strength and/or anaerobic workout routine 3 x a week.
So the goal of this is to spike your testosterone, to keep that lean muscle torching through calories and to give your body some room in the muscles and liver to store those extra carbs that you’ll likely be eating. For this you can do some intense body weight high-intensity-interval training for 20+ minutes, a crossfit workout for time or as many rounds as possible at your local crossfit gym, or to just go to your local gym and do some heavy lifting mixed with some super sets to keep your heart rate elevated. An example of this would be doing 5 sets of 5 reps heavy bench press, followed by 15 plyopush-ups (or push ups where you clap, or come off the ground etc…) or you could do the same thing with 5 rounds of 5 heavy squats superset with 15 jump squats immediately following each squat set before moving on to the second round.
Here’s an easy series of tons of at-home workouts that i’ve made to fit the bill:
Shred Series (at-home workouts)
Knee-Friendly HIIT workouts
The Diet:
Moving onto diet, you’ll want to be eating super-clean around the parties…so the simplest way to do this is to make 1/2 your plate at each meal as non-starchy veggies, then a serving of meat or another complete protein and a serving of some healthy fat like olive oil, avocado, avocado oil, grass-fed butter, coconut oil etc…
Alright now lets get to how to manage the holiday parties! It’s not just food that’s the issue,
