Christmas

Genghis

Christmas is upon us. The time of year when even if you want to, it becomes difficult to avoid rich foods, chocolate, alcohol, and other excesses. At the same time, with all the socialising and family time, it may become easy to lay down the best worked fitness plans.

I would like to know what others believe is the balance between Celebrating Christmas on the one hand and not suffering a lapse in either fitness or shape. What is the compromise programme that will allow you to maintain your progress to date, if not actually making any further progress.

I know from the past that even 5-6 days away from a diet or fitness regime can mean never getting back to it.

logic1

At the moment I'm on an extremely strict diet and have been for several months. I'm stopping for two weeks over christmas and I'm not gonna worry one bit about diet.

I know when I come back in January I can hit the diet and training harder than ever and have my next 6 months schedule pretty much planned.

Proper planning prevents piss poor performance.

Plan out your training before, during and after christmas, it's a huge step towards not falling off the wagon.

.logic.

Jak

Over Xmas I will probably train once less per week. Nothing to really worry about on that front.

On a side note - I opted to go home today instead of stayin at work and taking advantage of a free bar for 3 hours. Why? Because we have nights out tomorrow, thursday and then friday, Saturday. The point being - have fun, but make the odd sacrifice.

You don't have to get hammered every night. I don't think the drink is a big issue with weight gain as much as heavy nights will tend to sway people from training the next day - that is the true cost - tho personally I'll generally drag myself training regardless of state. A hangover with guilt is insufferable.

As for rich foods and all that .. I dunno, never had a sweet tooth, don't like chocolate etc etc. I genuinely never understood people who would just gorge themselves on crap and junk food.

JAK.

The'real'Guvnor

Where's the problem?
Christmas is full of high protein foods - Turkey for one.
As for training take the 24th, 25th and 26th off. Train 27th, 28th and 29th. Take the 30th, 31st and 1st off and return to a normal plan on the 2nd.

Now as for the mince pies, cake, stuffing, mash or whatever go nuts for a week. The worst that'll happen is you'll gain a few lbs which will go very fast. My weight varies by as much as 10-11lbs in any given week depending on time of day and fluid levels etc.

Bottom line don't feel guilt for misssing a few days training - it's not life or death.

Runfree

Well some of the gyms are closed over xmas. For example my gym is only open for 3 days with the worse hours ever. So most likely I'll just train to keep the strength in the muscle. Ah well x-mas isn't the worst of it.

You are only missing a couple of days. Just enjoy your self for once. Don't worry about any of the diets. Might want to stop the supplements for the time though unless you actually go to the gym.