With the holiday season approaching there’s only two things to be totally sure of: there is going to be a lot of spending and a lot of eating and drinking! And though finances are a whole other question, here are two recommendations on how to stave off the holiday season weight gain.
Eat the Rice Alternative: With an ever-increasing number of people affected by Celiac Disease grocery stores and specialty food retailers are offering more and more rice-based and gluten free products.
Switch to rice chips, rice pasta, rice flour or rice milk. Though white rice is still a starch, many of these products come in a brown rice variety to lower starch and provide easier digestion.
A few favourites include Rice Works™ brown rice chips and Taste of Thai™ rice noodles, both of which can be integrated into your everyday diet with minimal adjustment to taste or flavour. The only difference? They have no wheat and less starch, aiding in a healthier diet.
This year, instead of mashed potatoes, opt for some brown rice. Pre-dinner, instead of chips and dip, put out rice chips and hummus. It’s these small changes that, over time, will make all the difference!
Burn Fat not Sugar: Having recently taken up routine with a nutritionist and sports trainer, here's one tip everyone needs to know!
Around the holiday season people begin to punish themselves at the gym, getting purple-faced in a spinning class, or trying not to pass out in hot yoga, but there’s a simpler solution to weight loss - walk.
Unless you are an aerobic wonder and can run a marathon at 135 beats per minute (bpm), this routine may be the answer to why the weight just doesn’t seem to fall off.
Start by investing in a heart monitor. On a treadmill, set your elevation to 3.5, says Dr. Pat Hewitt, to mimic the up and down of a sidewalk.
Set your speed to one constant level finding a pace that allows your heart rate to eventually stay constant for one hour.
After about three or four hour-long sessions at that speed, your heart rate will start to drop forcing you to increase your speed to maintain that same heart rate.
You will have to start walking faster and faster until you’re eventually running to reach that target heart rate. For example, if you were walking at a pace of 4 to have your heart rate level at 125 bpm, within a week, you may have to walk at 4.2 in order to hit 125 bpm.
This slow, uphill start to the program ensures that your body is only burning fat, and not sugar ensuring you walk away from your workout feeling refreshed and invigorated, but not starving.
The biggest mistake people make is pushing their cardio too hard to the point where they only burn sugar. This causes their blood sugar level to plummet, sending a message to the brain that they are hungry and exhausted as soon as the workout is over.
It’s much easier to think about heading to the gym when an hour of walking is what there’s to look forward to and not someone on a bike screaming at you through a microphone.
The holidays are supposed to be about re-energizing and change so why not use this technique Hewitt prescribes to his clients looking to drop fat and improve fitness?
Take that you ‘no pain no gain’ believers!
