Preparation is EVERYTHING
There are two important preparation steps to making your holiday food plan work:
1.) Plan you free days ahead of time, and stick to them
2.) Plan THE DAY AFTER THE FREE DAY and prepare the food ahead of time.
The most important day is the day after your free day.
That's why you need to have all of those meals planned and prepared the day before your free day.
Let me repeat that: You should go into your free day, with the day after your free day's meals prepared.
This is what it's like for girls who have their post-free day healthy food prepared ahead of time
For example:
Lets say it's the day before Thanksgiving. Steam a bunch of your favorite veggies. Scramble some of those veggies with eggs for breakfast, grill some chicken to have with the veggies for lunch, and then cook up some ground beef with a little bit of brown rice and the rest of the veggies for dinner.
Then put that all in the fridge, in tupperwear that's measured for individual meals.
….and then you have your Thanksgiving. You eat eaverything in sight until you are stuffed and nauseous (which is a good indication that the free day is over).
You wake up the next day feeling like crap, and lets get real, you want to eat some crap to make yourself fell worse… but then you open the fridge and find all that great, clean, healthy, good feeling food already prepared!
You jump right in to an amazingly healthy breakfast, and that sets the tone for the whole day!
From there, you eat your great lunch and your great dinner, and you've set the tone for the whole week. You're back on plan! You feel awesome! You're the king of the world!!!!
You'll Feel Awesome, and You'll Look Awesome
Look, you don't have to be 10lbs heavier at New Years, hoping it will work out better in January.
You can show up to your New Years party with the best body you've ever had.
Don't give up hope.
Most people have great intentions, but they fail because they don't prepare. They make it super hard on themselves by not having a plan ahead of time.
You can't expect willpower to catch you in the moment.
Prepare ahead of time so that it's easier to follow the plan.
Make it easy on yourself this year.
-Josh Hillis, RKC2, CPT, PES, ZMIS
P.S. If you didn't download the FREE The Holiday Fat Loss Black Book already, get it today!
It's FREE and it's awesome!
You can download the two free e-books after the jump: The Holiday Fat Loss Black Book and The Leptin Chronicals. My friends always give away their BEST ideas before a sale, so I try to hook you up with the best free stuff available in fitness.
Hi Josh,
Quick Question: I know you have covered again and again the question around weights making women bulk up and I know from experience that weights have been fantastic for making my body shape improve. However, I don’t think I’m doing intense or heavy enough workouts at the moment, and I still have some ugly body fat hanging around particularly in my middle.
So I’m thinking about trying crossfit it seems to fit in with your philosophy of heavy lifting and intense workouts…the thing is…I did some googling and there are a lot of images out there of Crossfitters with the big big muscles, big arms, muscular backs and six packs. I absolutely respect these women but don’t want to look anywhere near that athletic…I want to look feminine still – more of a Jessica Alba than a Jessica Biel look – who I think looks great but probably too athletic for me. Do you think Crossfit is still a good idea with those goals? They say you should do it 5 x a week, maybe if I did 3 x a week and two other cardio sessions I might get better results?
Thanks,
Laura
Really great question Laura!
First off, it takes A LOT to get muscular like some of the “Andro Friday” CrossFit girls. They’re deadlifting over 300lbs and squatting over 300lbs, can do pullups in sets of 15+, they’re far far stronger than most of the girls in the gym that are worried about “bulking up”.
Second, the rumor going ’round is that some of those girls might also be taking some of the “tamer” steroids. Which is a bad play, being a girl you can get some really nasty side effects that are about 100 times worse (and irreversible) than the side effects guys would get.
Third, CrossFit is a program designed to make you – wait for it – better at CrossFit. Along the way, everyone gets leaner and skinnier, but also a ton of people get injured. Just take a look at the injury forum at CrossFit.com. It’s well trafficked.
What you want is a program designed to get you leaner. And then follow it.
While I have nothing against CrossFit per se, and I know of CrossFit affiliates that are running sensible gyms, I also know there are a lot of morons out there hurting people with CrossFit. You can’t got 100% all the time. No one can. You’re going to get hurt eventually if you’re at a gym that’s run that way.
A smarter plan would be CrossFit “style” workouts done at 70-80% of max effort 2x per week, and a strength plan twice a week where the sets and reps change every month.
If you can deadlift 135lbs and do 3 pullups and 3 dips, you’re already strong enough to hit your goals, and then it’s ENTIRELY a matter of better diet.