Surviving The Silly Season: How To Make Sure You Enjoy Your Holidays Without The Guilt

With Christmas and New Year just around the corner, the holiday season is bound to add to the kilos.

Family dinners, outings with friends, comfort food here and there – no matter how much you run from it, these two weeks do inevitably cause some damage.

However, all is not lost post-holiday season.

If you’ve been consistent throughout the year, or even for the most part, it’s completely alright to binge a bit during the silly season.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, so chill out. Stop worrying You need to allow yourself to live your life for a bit.

“Stop worrying so much about the next couple of weeks,” says James. “Stop stressing so much as if everything you’ve done and learnt over the last year is just going to go back within two weeks. If people focus more on the 50 weeks around the 52 weeks, we would be a lot more successful, and this would be a very stress-free time,” he adds.

'Just don’t get hung up on that, people get really stuck in their own head and think, ‘I feel like shit, I ruined everything,” says Sean.

“If you're talking about fat regain, especially from a deficit, you’d have to over-consume a crazy amount of food. I think people also have this understanding like ‘Ah if I eat, it’s going to go straight into my body fat,’ but that’s not how things work, you have a lot of metabolic processes that come into play. If I eat more, the energy in-energy out equation comes into play - energy in equals energy out. We need to understand that if you put energy into your system, even though you’re not training necessarily, subconsciously you’ll expend more energy; non-exercise activity thermogenesis, you’ll have more food and you’ll have an increase in your thermic effect of food.”

While you are completely responsible for the outcome, which may be good or bad, one thing to remember is that there are still several ways to move around that don’t constitute exercising and second, it’s just two weeks – relax.

Sean says it’s normal for someone who actively trains to feel a little out of place when they don’t for a bit, he admits to feeling the same. “If you are someone who trains regularly, and you’re going to stop for two weeks, you’re going to feel a little bit worse because you are used to moving, and moving makes you feel good,' he says.

'It does make me feel good. When I went on holiday, I used to think, ‘this is my time not to do anything,’ but then I find myself in a few days in my holiday feeling a little bit sad. I enjoy moving, it doesn’t mean flogging yourself in the gym, it just means to get outside, move a little bit. Once your heartbeat goes up a little bit and you’re like, ‘I’m done for the day,’ it makes the good timed a little bit more enjoyable. You’re not going to stress about having beers at night or eating pub meals every day.”

James says it's not the end of the world, even if you do put on a little weight, or lose a little (depending on your goals).  “The worst thing that could happen in people's lives, this is how privileged we are, is that over Christmas, they gained a couple of kilos,' he emphasises.  'Come on! What is so negative now in this day and age is that gaining body fat is looked at as the worst thing. When you get really lean bad things to happen, the same thing if you go on the other end of the spectrum. But you gained a couple of kilos so what? I guarantee within a few weeks post, you’ll be back down to pre-Christmas body in no time.”

Enjoy your break, relax.

Listen to the Rebuild Health and Fitness podcast episode about Silly Season on Spotify.

If you need help with your nutrition, now or in the future, get in touch - we can help.