Who Gained Weight During The Holidays? I Have A Solution!!!

I sure have noticed a lot of threads the last week or so with people concerned about all the weight they gained over Christmas, and wanting to get back on track for the New Year. Never fear, I have a solution - it's called the PP Program.

What is the PP Program you ask? Well it's simple.
Perspective + Patience = PP

Let's start with Perspective. This has two critical components.

First, Perspective about the holidays themselves. In mid-December, there were so many threads about how people were dreading Christmas and what it was going to do to their diet and worrying they were going to undo all their progress. Christmas is supposed to be a joyful time! It comes once a year - and it is filled with so many wonderful things - and one of those wonderful things are food traditions. It is sad how many people are dreading something that should be so enjoyable! After Christmas, I've counted dozens of threads of people regretting their eating/drinking choices during the holidays, talking about throwing out food and never doing this again. Seriously - perspective people!

Now let's talk about the numbers Perspective. Does everyone remember that it takes 3,500 extra calories ABOVE Maintenance in order to gain 1 pound of fat? Did all of you who are lamenting your choices during the holidays log what you ate? Even guesstimating? I did. I ate and drank everything I wanted, and then some, for an entire week (we had a lot of celebrations and a lot of leftovers!). I was over my calorie target every single day - nothing but red for the entire week. OMG, can you imagine seeing all that red? EEEK! Guess what the weekly overage was? 3,657 calories. That's right. With indulging to my heart's content, by logging what I thought I was consuming, I realized that I really didn't go over that much. That's about 1 pound of true fat gain, even if my estimates were way off, I know they weren't off by a factor of 5. Perspective!

What's that you say? You've been weighing yourself and you gained 10 pounds? Who here ate a lot of sodium rich, carbohydrate heavy foods during the holidays. Oh yeah - everyone, right? That's what holiday meals are made of. Guess what - those things cause a big spike in water retention. You know what happens with weight gain from water retention? It goes away in time...

Which brings me to the second P. Patience. Everyone just needs to take a breath and be patient. You didn't put on all your initial weight over night, you didn't lose your weight over night, and you didn't put on 10 lbs in 3 days at Christmas. Things will normalize, you just need to be Patient.

But wait, I'm not done yet! You know how you get rid of water weight? You drink a lot of water (I know, sounds counter intuitive) and guess what you do? You go Pee Pee!!!! And the more you go Pee Pee, the faster you'll lose that water weight and the faster things will return to normal.

So just to recap:

Patience + Perspective = the PP Program. (And in the meantime, if you can go PP, it will help!)


Now, who's ready for New Years!?