Let’s face it, Thanksgiving is just around the corner as is party season and a host of responsibilities that come with Christmas and New Year.  It’s a wonderful time to celebrate with the family, but also a dangerous time for your fitness, if you don’t go into this season with a plan.

Allow me to break down and help adjust any mistaken notions that we tend to believe when our schedules get busier.

“I can just exercise as normal.” (Insert nervous laugh here.) This might be true, but is less likely right now, especially if you’re a mom and more holiday responsibilities fall on your lap.  If you’re used to running or performing other cardiovascular exercise for a minimum of 45 minutes at a time, suddenly you’ll see those time slots slip away.  If they still present themselves as slots dedicated to your fitness, first of all, hurray for you and secondly, you had better plan out your nutrition as temptations fire up and, with all things remaining the same, if your calorie consumption, sugar and fat consumption increase over your typical intake, and your exercise has not changed, then you are facing weight gain during the holidays.

“I’m just too busy to fit exercise in this time of year.” Seriously? You can’t spare 1.5 hours during the week to melt off body fat, improve your abilities to cope with stress, feel great about your take-charge attitude toward fitness and carve out special time just for you?  You can’t shop online, consolidate grocery trips, prepare food ahead of time to save time on the back-end, fit in a 20-minute interval workout before the household wakes up, etc.?  My point is that you can do all these things.  Take it from a single mom of three kids (ages 7, 5 & 4).  It’s not easy, but it is simple with a little planning on a Sunday night.  Time is merely an excuse.  You are the keeper of your own schedule and the writer of your own destiny.

“I am ambivalent toward dieting.” Give yourself a pat on the back for your honesty. I know what you mean: the busy season is firing up and you just know your body fat percentage will increase.  After all, temptation abounds.  You know you need to harness your nutrition, but you already feel defeated.  Although it’s not necessary to start a whole different eating repertoire during the holidays, it might just be the change you need to jar your fat-loss and hold yourself accountable.  Not having a plan will produce floundering at best or fat-gain at worst.  Excess body fat has been linked to a host of diseases and poor body image. Why give yourself a ticket weight-gain?  Do you think your body knows it’s holiday season and will “let up” on you if you cave into temptation?  Just because it’s a certain time of year, should that be a reason to give up on your nutrition?

My Fitcampers are given 4 weeks of a “Rapid Fat-Loss Nutrition Plan” with recipes, menus and grocery lists all done for them.  All they have to do is buy the food, prep it (easy), chew and swallow.  Maybe you don’t want to put all the effort into figuring out what to buy, eat, prepare, etc.  Jayson Hunter’s book, The Carb Rotation Diet, is an excellent start and spells out a lot of the solutions to this dilemma.  Or, you can join up my Fitcamp class, if you’re in the Cleveland market, and receive the accountability and no-brainer nutrition plan that will have you looking like a million dollars by the New Year!  In any case, you need to have a plan of action for yourself so that you can avoid those nutrition pitfalls and the 1-10 pound weight increase that occurs during the Christmas season.  (Stay tuned for more tips on this topic!)

One last word on “dieting”: I don’t believe in diets anyway.  I believe in making healthy choices for life that carry you through busy seasons.  Know what I mean?