If you’re like me, you’ve spent much of the last month stuffing your face with Christmas cookies, cake and egg nog. And now you’re looking to shed the 2, 5, 10 pounds you’ve packed in since Thanksgiving dinner rolled around. I’ve noticed the gym as packed as I’ve ever seen it over the last few days, and it reminded me of an article Time magazine published last August: “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.”
What’s going on here? Church calls it compensation, but you and I might know it as the lip-licking anticipation of perfectly salted, golden-brown French fries after a hard trip to the gym. Whether because exercise made them hungry or because they wanted to reward themselves (or both), most of the women who exercised ate more than they did before they started the experiment. Or they compensated in another way, by moving around a lot less than usual after they got home.
So if you’re looking to lose those pounds, focus on changing your diet. And if you stay conscious of not “compensating,” hit the gym, too.
on Dec 31st, 2009 at 10:13 AM
The boyfriend and I have a room in our house that has some fitness items; kind of like our own personal gym. But, we are still members of a gym. I’ll be using the home gym through the month of January because every damn January the gym is a ZOO. Everyone with their “I want to lose weight” New Year’s Resolutions comes in and makes the gym unbearable. So…we just have to wait it out a month and wait for all of them to slack off and the gym get back to normal volume.
Changing the diet is key. I always pick up a few pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas and I start the year off by doing a cleanse/detox of all vegetables and no meat. Then I get back into my regular diet of mostly chicken and fish and vegetables and healthy carbs. I love holiday food so from Thanksgiving to the New Year all the holiday parties and foods that are associated with it adds up. January I really kick it into gear and am able to shed whatever holiday weight I gained by the end of the month. Just have to come up with a realistic diet/excercise plan that will work for you.
on Dec 31st, 2009 at 5:37 PM
Didn’t Cyd and Jim do a Podcast about shedding tonnage for the beach season this past year? Might want to relisten to that for starters.
on Dec 31st, 2009 at 5:50 PM
Rightfully so, its all about how healthy what you put in is. I also recommend doing short bursts of exercise – like 5 minutes of quick exercise with short breaks in between.