How I lost 5 lbs Between Thanksgiving & Christmas
I lost 5 lbs & 2.5 total inches in the last 6 weeks of the year. During that time, I celebrated my kids’ birthday, Thanksgiving, & Christmas. I had pizza, cake, cookies, & margaritas. I worked out two or three times per week. I didn’t track my food.
Here are the 5 things I did & learned:
Embrace boring
I did the same workouts each week. I ate a lot of the same meals throughout the 6 weeks. I had some variety, but I absolutely had staple meals. Having a routine allows us to adjust much easier to interruptions. Boring works & actually gives us more flexibility for fun.
Zoom out
I had a stretch of 10 days when the scale didn’t drop at all. I had days when it spiked up 2+ lbs overnight (and was above my starting weight). The day-to-day fluctuations on the scale can be infuriating and enough to make us want to quit. But, if we zoom out, we can see the overall trend. Don’t get stuck in the day-to-day.
Check out a 10-day stretch vs. the whole 6 weeks 👇🏻
Choose what matters
I love Christmas cookies & apple pie. Could I have made quicker progress by giving them up? Maybe, but I’m not so sure. By giving myself the freedom to enjoy the things I love, I was way more likely to stick with my plan. Diets fail because we give up the things we love. Keep the things that you love & cut out the stuff you can go without.
Consistency is better than perfection
I missed 4 out of 18 workouts. I was under 7k steps 8 days. I ate at or above maintenance at least once per week. You don’t need to be perfect. Perfection is a prison. Give yourself the freedom to go off plan occasionally. You’re way more likely to stick with it.
Just keep swimming
17 out of 40 days my weight either stayed the same or increased. That’s 43% of the days my weight didn’t go down. Many people quit after one or two days of not seeing the scale drop.
Quitting only guarantees you one thing: you won’t get there.
People have asked me a lot over the past couple weeks how the holidays were with kids. My answer has shifted with time. On Christmas day, we woke up, did our thing just the 5 of us. Then, we packed everyone in the car & drove to my parents’ house where we did Christmas with them. After naps, we drove to my in-laws & did Christmas together there. Then, back home for bedtime, sort through gifts, & organize the house a bit.
A couple keys things:
We are incredibly blessed. Not only to have a family that’s alive & healthy, and a family that lives so close that we can see everyone the same day. It’s not lost on me how rare that is.
Our kids did exceptionally well (or as well as you could hope 3 toddlers could) for such a big, full day. I was incredibly proud of them.
It was, honestly, a truly wonderful day across the board.
At the same time, when we finally collapsed on the couch at the end of the night & looked at each other (I think for the first time properly since waking up), we said the same thing: “that was overstimulating.” It was. It was an incredible day, but we were “on” from the moment we woke up until past their normal bedtimes & beyond.
So, if you’d asked me that night how the holidays were, my response probably would’ve been: “it was overstimulating.” But, with the benefit of space & time, I can look back on the day & delight in all the awesome things that happened. It certainly was overstimulating, but does that negate all of the wonderful, core-memory-type moments we had? Of course it doesn’t.
The kids did really well & those couple of hard “parenting opportunities” don’t discount all of the memories we made.
On your fitness journey, don’t discredit all of the great things you’ve done because one moment wasn’t perfect.
It would be silly to expect my toddlers to behave perfectly throughout a day of gifts, toys, travel, food & family. It’s just unrealistic. Those times should be expected. We should even go so far as to plan for them, embrace them. They’re part of the journey. Don’t call the whole thing a failure just because of one hiccup.
Zoom out. Stay patient. Don’t quit. You will get there.
