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Nov. 29, 2025

The 12 Holiday Eating Traps of Christmas: Real Strategies for Real Holiday Problems - 26

In this episode of Driven For Health, Coach Brian Parana shares 12 real holiday eating traps that can derail men over 40 during Christmas, Thanksgiving, work parties, family gatherings, travel, and holiday leftovers.

Coach Brian walks through common situations like fresh rolls before dinner, pressure from family to eat more, late-night pie, endless Christmas cookies at work, drinking too much at holiday parties, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day back-to-back meals, leftovers that keep calling your name, food gifts, travel routines, and unlimited party buffets.

Instead of telling men to avoid the holidays, Coach Brian gives practical strategies that actually fit real life: plan the meal, control portions, prioritize protein and vegetables, drink water, slow down, use simple boundaries, manage alcohol, freeze or share leftovers, and decide ahead of time what is worth enjoying.

This episode is a strong listen for men over 40 who want to enjoy the holidays with their family, stay in control around food, avoid the typical holiday weight gain, and start January without feeling like they need to restart from scratch.

Show Notes
Transcript

In Part 2, Coach Brian takes the holiday game plan even deeper. This episode focuses on real world strategy: how to handle big meals, how to prepare for parties, how to stop the leftover spiral, and how to get through the season without falling into all or nothing thinking.

Grab the Holiday Survival Checklist and put this into action today.

https://thecalltorise.com/holidaysurvivalguide

You will hear holiday moments every man can relate to, from Aunt Sally’s warm rolls to office cookie trays that never stop coming. These stories will help you see your own patterns and give you practical ways to stay in control.

You will learn how to use systems, curiosity, and simple routines to protect your progress. You will also learn how to build an identity that supports long-term health, even when your environment pulls you the other way.

If you want to finish the season feeling lighter, more consistent, and proud of how you handled the toughest time of year, this is your episode.

Want help applying this to your own health, weight, energy, or lab numbers?

Coach Brian Parana offers Health Hot Seat coaching segments for men who want a clear next step with nutrition, fitness, weight loss, blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, or daily consistency.

Learn more about The Call To Rise, a 100-day coaching program for driven men over 40 who want to lose weight, improve their health, and rebuild confidence:

www.thecalltorise.com

To connect with Coach Brian:
brian@brianparana.com

Disclaimer: This podcast is for education and coaching support only. It is not medical advice. Always work with your physician before changing medication, treatment, or medical care.

You know those holiday traps, even if you don't call them traps. Meaning, Aunt Sally puts her warm rolls on the table and suddenly you have eaten three before the meal starts. Or your boss hands you a drink at the office party and the next thing you know you're at the buffet yet again. Holidays are full of these moments.
And today on our part two episode of holiday survival strategies, I am going to show you how to handle every single one. Welcome to holiday edition driven for health podcast. This is part two of our two episode holiday survival series for men over 40 who want to enjoy the season with their families without putting on the typical 5 to 10 lbs.
Today we're going into 12 real situations that derail most guys in the holiday season. Actual moments you will face over the next few weeks. Remember we have through October, end of October Halloween to January 2nd. There's a lot of events that happened in that time frame. And I'm going to share stories and solutions that you can apply as you hear them into each of these things.
I'm calling this episode the 12 holiday eating traps of Christmas. Real strategies for real holiday problems. Eating problems. That is these 12 situations come from years of coaching men through the holidays and going through the same family events myself. You'll hear exact tactics I use myself and the same ones I coach my clients through to use as well.
Let's get into it. Number one, on the first day of Christmas, the holiday trap was Aunt Sally's fresh baked rolls. I'm just using Aunt Sally. Aunt Sherry was my aunt that made amazing rolls and I would eat too many of them. Now, this was when I was younger. I would recall just really enjoying that experience, knowing that she was going to make them and knowing that they were so good.
I'm pretty sure she melted butter on top of them and made them with fresh baked bread. Oh, so good. So, here's the story. Every family has their own version. I just shared mine. And you're at your wife's family gathering and her hand brings that tray of fresh rolls that fills the house with warm, buttery smell.
As soon as they hit the table, the whole bowl full goes up for grabs. Everyone's trying to grab at least one, but sometimes two or maybe three without thinking. Why humans love bread, right? It's mana from heaven in a sense. It is wonderful. That those carbs, that dough, that smell, that taste, the texture, all of it satisfies our simple taste buds.
When we work through this situation, we need to make sure that you don't just automatically grab three or four rules before they even started. It feels automatic because that's what you've always done and that's what everyone else is doing and you feel the urge to grab it as well. Let's just start from a simple calorie situation.
One roll just to grossly label it with calories just for easy math. A slice of bread is usually between 70 to 120 calories depending on what's in it. Mainly carbs, a little bit of protein, sometimes fiber depending on the type of wheat and other things that go into it. Think of it as 100 calories just for easy math. One roll, 100 calories.
One, two, three. Now we have about 300 calories before the meal started. Well, we want to make sure that we plan in advance on what you want to have. That's number one. Okay. When I go into this situation, I'm going to think through I will have one role. And I will put some Oh, I remember my grand my other grandma, she at her house, she would just get the the brown and serve type the the mass produced brown and serves and she just put it in the oven and come out.
[clears throat] I don't even think she'd pull them apart. They'd all be lumped together. It'd be 12 all in this giant bread mass that you'd pull apart. And I would always put jelly, a little bit of butter sometimes, but mainly jelly, strawberry jelly. And that would be what we'd do there. Well, that again, if each of those are maybe they're a little bit smaller than typical roll, but again with the jelly, we're talking about 150 calories and that spins pretty quick.
So, we need to grab one as part of it. And we want to enjoy it. Anything that we always do in life, especially around food, is enjoy the food. Please, for the love, slow down, take a bite. Don't just inhale one in three bites and it's gone already and enjoy it. And then always when someone offers another one, just say I'm good.
Now the alternative route here is to understand, hey, I'm going to have two or three. I'm okay with having two or three. Awesome. Then it's not that big of a deal. On the second day of Christmas, we bring dinner with the in-laws and the pressure to eat more. On Christmas Eve, you're at your in-laws. Your wife, it's always going to be at the in-laws, right? Can't be at your own house.
[laughter] Your your wife's father, your father-in-law kept offering more food. He's he went for second or third. And why shouldn't you? And every time you finish something, he would just try and refill your plate for you. And it's not cuz he wanted to new sabotage you. It's just his way of showing that he cares. And his childhood home, feeding people was an expression of love.
We do have to understand food is love. It's happiness. It's sadness. It's excitement. It's fear. It's stress. Food is a lot of things to a lot of different people. Once you can step back and understand why food is the way it is, then all of a sudden it makes sense. You're able to then understand where their motivations and desires are for trying to keep giving you more food.
Now, to set up some good boundaries without disrespecting your father-in-law, a simple action plan. You're going to eat a salad proteinheavy start to the meal. When you get there, you will even before that will want to drink a big tall glass of water to help slow down the hunger and increase fullness in your stomach. Start with protein. Balance out the plate.
We want to have plenty of vegetables on there because they're higher volume, lower calorie. Then we're going to do maybe a spoonful of carbs, maybe two. Not the big ladle spoons, but the smaller spoons. And why? Because then that's going to fill our plate with tasty little, say, appetizer servings of this that will make it more enjoyable for you to get through that meal and be successful.
Now, every time the hosts, your in-laws come around and ask, "Hey, this was excellent." And I just I'm full. I This was so good. I already ate so much. I'm I'm pretty good. The the other thing that you can always do with this is if you eat slower, it might appear that you have had eaten more food because it took longer for you to eat the food.
It's a a simple strategy to do that. Now, if you're also if your hands are occupied, holding a drink, say if you're standing and it's say an appetizer thing, if you're holding something, then and there's maybe some food on the plate, then it it looks like that you've already have food available. This keeps people from maybe asking frequently or wanting to put more food on your plate.
Or you could always say that I already had an extra round before you even started. On the third day of Christmas, the day after Thanksgiving, cold cut turkey sandwiches. Let's jump into this one cuz it's coming up here. Thanksgiving is a little over a week away as I record this. And who doesn't love the cold turkey sandwiches after on those famous analy rolls? The day after Thanksgiving is a dangerous one for a lot of guys.
There's food readily available. There's tons and tons of leftovers because father-in-law or mom or maybe you or your wife made a feast. So many good things. and you open up the fridge, we see tons of leftover turkey. And back in the day, you would open up the fridge and put on two or three sandwiches full of of the turkey, of the rolls, maybe a little bit of stuffing on there, maybe you drizzle some gravy on that as well.
Each time you add something to the sandwich, you're going to add 50 or more calories to that sandwich, which a cold turkey sandwich could end up being easily 500 calories or more by the time you put that thing down into your belly. And then you end up having another one later that night and then the next day because again, there's so much food available.
Well, the solution here to enjoy that tradition without letting it stretch across so many days is number one, decide that the turkey sandwich is a one-time meal or it is part of your meal plan for the day. All right, I'm going to have my protein with the turkey. I'm going to have my stretchy carb with the sandwich or stuffing.
And then I will have some of the leftover green bean casserole as well, so that I don't have another sandwich, per se. Now, if you do load a little heavier with turkey, say instead of 4 oz, you have it at 7, then that's going to be a much more filling sandwich for you to last longer. And we just need to make sure that you don't have two.
So, we have one roll because they're an Sally's famous rolls. We have about six, seven ounces of that turkey. Pile high with the vegetables on the plate because that's important to slow down hunger. And we drizzle gravy on. We want a little bit on each bite, but not everywhere. Or if you do mayonnaise, that's a popular one to smear on the bread.
We want to smear it, not slather it on. Then we turn turn down any other leftovers right after that. You need at least three or four hours of time before you were to be able to eat another one. After you get done with, say, the leftovers on Thanksgiving, they need to get planned out into subsequent meals over the weekend or maybe put them in the freezer to save for later.
All right, this will really help you manage those after Thanksgiving enjoyment. On the fourth day of Christmas, we have sneaking into the kitchen for late night pie. Who hasn't done this? Yeah, I have. Amber and I, we used to before we had kids, we would go to Sam's Club, get a monster pumpkin pie, have a tub of Cool Whip, and that would be our default carbohydrate for the next day or so.
And we would just keep eating it. It would just be sitting there and one fork full at a time dipped with plenty of cool whip. It was delicious. So good. So I have done this myself and pie. You have to have this perfect crust to filling ratio. At least I do. I constantly am pulling off part of the crust involved with the filling to have that great ratio.
And maybe you just like the center and that's more your style, but man, I need that that that that crunch or that that chew from the dough to make it taste so good. Now, we go to bed, but then my bedroom's off the kitchen. It's really easy to pass by food as I'm getting ready to wrap up the evening. If there's pie there, it's just looking at me. It's staring at me.
It's actually calling my name. Brian, come have a slice. Just one slice. And then you end up going over to just look at it, right? I'm just looking in quotations. But 10 minutes later, you might end up having that slice of pie because it just keeps calling your name. What's the solution here, right? To to stop the pie from calling.
One, make sure that you order enough. Actually, literally after we're done, this is just a good reminder, but I need to order pies from Gardener Pie. It's a local pie baker that amazing amazing pies at a really good price. I need to order it because last year I didn't order it and I stood in line for an [clears throat] hour the day before Thanksgiving because I wasn't the only one waiting too long to order.
But if I order today before 4:00, then I'll be able to get my order in. I can just go in and pick it up and not wait. That's the smart way to go about it. I guess that's another way to deter you getting pies. But also, you could just go to another place to get a pie or you maybe end up getting too many pies because you waited in line so long.
So, you can easily justify buying an extra pie or two just because of that situation. We want to think late night eating isn't really a willpower issue or problem. It's really it defers to being a habit or routine of constantly going back at that time to reinforce eating food. The solution, it could be very cut and dry when the kitchen is closed and you're done eating for the night. That is it.
We need to turn off the lights, clean the counters, put the food away, even putting the food inside the microwave, the oven, or on top of the fridge. But, I mean, most guys are, you know, 510 to 6 foot or so. Reaching up there isn't that big problem, but putting it somewhere else makes it a little bit more challenging.
Number two is we could have a different snack. Greek yogurt, vanilla Greek yogurt with some vanilla protein powder with some pumpkin spice seasoning on top of with a little whipped cream. That could be very tasty. That' actually be really good for this time of year. But also, you could just plan a slice of pie in.
If a typical slice of pie is going to be about two-300 calories, you have to acknowledge that and make sure that that's not stacking on top of your day, maybe the solution is skipping more starchy carbs and having a, for lack of better example, a chicken salad for dinner. Skip the starch and eat the slice of pie later.
That could really work. Always we want to reinforce giving it some space. It being that craving, the desire, that urge for the slice of pie, we can say, "All right, in 10 minutes, if I can just wait, it's that delayed gratification." If you heard of the marshmallow study, if you can delay gratification, you will be more fulfilled, right? Instead of giving into instant gratification, which our culture has heavily gone to, and that's caused a lot of problems because you can have pie whenever you want because it's accessible. it's there. Whereas, you
know, go back a hundred years, you would have had to bake the pie yourself most likely to get the pie. Now, the last one to think about here is if you catch yourself in that mid temptation, you stop right away. You don't need to finish the slice of pie if you're already halfway deep and you realize, hey, this isn't actually moving more me toward my goals.
It's actually moving me away. And that interruption and stopping could be a very powerful take control back rather than letting that slice of pie, that wonderful carbohydrate and fatty concoction does for you. On the fifth day of Christmas, we've got endless Christmas cookies at work. How many times have you walked into the office to have yet another tray of Christmas cookies? a basket of pastries, a box of donuts, or the beloved fruitc cake.
Every once in a while, one of those sneaks in, right? Who eats those? I would eat them, but you know the underlying joke of fruit cakes. Till this day, people come in and they bring there's cookies and fudge and apparently someone had grandma's secret recipe bars that are just to die for. something that you actually remember from last year cuz they were so good.
Now, we have to be conscious and careful of this because every time you walk by the break room, it could be literally adding another 100 to 200 calories into your mouth onto your waistline. All of a sudden, you just ate lunch in the form of cookies because there's so many calories there from you just endlessly grabbing it.
We don't have to fight this situation. We have to decide what is going to make the most sense. Is there a certain day of the week that you allow yourself to have a treat in the break room? Uh even before that is do you even allow yourself to have a treat period? If you say I don't eat at work or I don't eat things that people bring in to work, then that's a really cut and dry.
you just don't eat it and you'll be fine and you won't be tempted. Why? Because the act of choosing to not partake in something already dampens the willingness or the the temptation to take you over and someone brings in treats, wait until the afternoon. See, the best ones will leave that space quickly. Right? If you even went on round two of everyone, then you would see that some of the best items are gone and there's less temptation. It's just not worth it.
Again, thinking a cookie is at least 100 calories or a bite of fudge is 50 calories. That stuff adds up pretty quick. Less temptation means less calories. If you want something sweet, you could bring your own sweet treat there. That could work. But you could also just decide, hey, I'm going to have some of the lemon bars that come in.
I'll have one because that powdered sugar on top of that lemon bar just tastes h so good. I love that combination. But it should be a special treat that you enjoy and you don't eat more. Or if you do, you only have one more, but you also maybe plan activity, exercise, or break to go walk.
On the sixth day of Christmas, we have over drinking at the holiday party. You know that person that's done that, right? They've just had one too many and maybe they act a little bit silly or you've done it and the next day work is just shot. You really can't get anything done. You can't concentrate. You're tired. You're bloated. Maybe there might be some level of embarrassment that you might want to take the day off and give that some space.
But the other thing that does it does wrinkle into other things. Oh, it's going to work out, but because I'm not feeling well, I am not moving at all. At the office party, you have to decide if you're going to drink or not. Do you know the person that probably should not have one and the other person that probably should so they get a little more loosey goosey and they can actually enjoy themselves and be more social and outgoing.
We do need a drink limit though. One, possibly two. We're going to also alternate with water. I would almost dare you to do the the alcohol water challenge of I'm going to drink twice as much water to the alcohol that I consume or at least one to one. If you do that, it will allow you to slow down the rate of alcohol consumption plus help with hydration and ultimately help you feel better.
In a future episode, we talk about alcohol, but just we want to go with a protein heavy, vegetable heavy type meal, not a carb and fatthe heavy meal because your body is going to prioritize burning off the alcohol, not the carbs and fats, which will cause you to gain weight. We want to make sure we have a cut off time.
There's no drinks after this certain time. Maybe in the first hour, you can have one or two and that's it. And then we always want to leave it in control. All right, that's most important. Or if you do have more, then you need to have that DD. On the seventh day of Christmas, we have Christmas Eve, Christmas Day double whammy. How many times do we have the eggnog on Christmas Eve? That's a a holiday favorite.
We make homemade eggnog, whole milk, eggs, blended up with the cinnamon and spice and some cream. And oh, it is to die for. Way better than the store-bought stuff. Now, outside of Hartsler, Hartslers has very premium dairy and eggnog, but it's also $8 for the container, and that is maybe a once in the season type beverage that I sip. Then the next day, we've got Christmas Day has cinnamon rolls.
That is a standard in our house that we homemake cinnamon rolls and have those as part of breakfast. But also then you think about depending on your family situation. For mine, we'll do something Christmas Eve and then we'll stay at home Christmas day. We are not inundated with food and and calorie opportunities.
But some people, they have to go to two places on Christmas Eve and two places on Christmas Day. That ends up being a lot of food opportunity because every single place there is going to have food and fun waiting for you in these back-toback combinations that turn into two days of heavy eating and very easy to swallow food.
We need to make sure that we're really cautious. You can't change a tradition. It's just not going to happen. But you can change how you respond in that tradition. Pick one meal to enjoy fully, maybe even on each day, and the other one you have to lighten up. Now, you can't not eat at the other one because that will just be rude.
If they made all this food, then you need to eat something that's in there because they're going to feel like you don't love them all of a sudden. If you pass on the food, we want to balance out the say the general calories. Maybe those are the only two meals that you have in the day. Or if you have the say the Christmas Eve Christmas Day double whammy, you have three possibly four total meals to help keep calories in check.
Certainly they're not going to be macrofriendly balanced meals, but they will be calorically contained meals that keep the portions in reason. And you again prioritize protein and vegetables first over the tasty carbs, fats, and pies second. Or third, make sure we walk and move if we can.
That will help just get digestion moving, manage your blood sugar levels, keep you from falling asleep in the carb coma on the couch after the holiday meal. Maybe plan to have an activity with people afterwards. Hey, love to go out on a walk and move there. That would be great instead of just sitting for hours on end on a couch watching football or something or endless Christmas movies.
But al so this is a season. Now I'll throw this one out there. If you choose to have a full go double whammy Christmas day, it just has to cool and spawn with what your expectations are. and you just know by January 5, you'll be back on schedule on target to where you were at before Christmas Eve.
And that could be totally fine on say December 23rd having a timeout until January 5 and you're back into it. So, you just want to enjoy the holiday season. So, I will always throw that out there. On the 8th day of Christmas, holiday fun food traps. We've got holiday leftovers that just keep getting in the way. How many times can you have leftovers because you've cooked so many of them? How many days? Sometimes this can go on for a four, three, four, five days depending on the quantity of food.
We have turkey, stuffing pie, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce. I talked about duck last time. Ducks are pretty small birds. They're not a lot to them. They're pretty eaten quickly for at least for me. I was one of the few that actually ate it at my grandma's and and that was fine.
What's the solution here to not have just the ongoing Thanksgiving meal Christmy Christmas day meals for days on end? Well, we number one just prepare enough food. Number two, we can freeze our leftovers. We can share it or I don't ever advertise throwing away food. They're starving children around the world and maybe even in your backyard.
So, we don't want to throw food away, but we could deliver it to our friends or neighbors. We could take it into the office the next day. People would love that. They will happily clear. Taking the leftover trays. That would be enjoyable. clearing the fridge and then make sure that you eat healthy gotos amongst them.
Also, lastly, it's just the ends of being easy meal prep. Each day for the next five or eight days, you have lunch is just going to be turkey Thanksgiving leftovers. Then make it easy for food prep, which is fine. You have turkey as your protein, mashed potatoes as your stoic carb, and then just add a vegetable that you have that would pair well with that.
On the ninth day of Christmas, food that people bring to your house, right? Every year, desserts get brought to the house, endless cookie trays, or I love it when nut rolls come. Oh my gosh, poppy seed rolls. Can't get enough of that stuff. But we need to make sure that we don't leave it around. Now, we have a couple things.
We always show appreciation. I remember one of my oldest grand my grandma's oldest things that she told me was to always accept gifts from other people. Right? They spent time, effort, energy on it. You receive their hard work, their gift, their sign of love. What you do with it after that is up to you. We say thank you.
We can just take a portion at whenever it came and say eat it in front of them. And then maybe this ends up being what you take to your next holiday party to pay it forward. When do you have too much of it? We can again take it into work, neighbors, other parties, families, pass it around. And if it's say cookies, you could always freeze them for later too. That works.
And ultimately, if it is you have just massive quantities, you could end up throwing it away. It's it's up to you to control what that is and then also guide and communicate to people, hey, I do love this that you give it to me. Uh but man, we couldn't finish the tray last year.
Maybe if you just bring half as much this year, that'll be that'll be good. On the 10th day of holiday eating, we've got family pressure to just relax. How many times whenever you're trying to pay attention to your health? Oh, it's just this one time, this one night, this one meal, this one beverage. Relax. Well, if someone says that to you in this situation, then the next situation you're at, someone says that in the next situation, someone says it all a sudden every single day someone's going to be saying, "Just relax. It's just this one
time. Bob, you weren't there the last seven days when other people said the exact same thing as you." And it it can be challenging because you might feel the need to defend yourself of wanting to feel good the next day, say for the beverages, too many adult beverages, or you just know you just don't want to have to go for an hour run because you ate too many calories. Couple things.
It could just be, hey, I'm good. Literally, it could be that or it could be no. No is a oneword sentence. It can be powerful impacting if you have said and used the right way. We can work on changing the subject. You can just push it off and start asking them questions. Right? If you ask them a question, then it changes the topic or the direction of the conversation and you stay in control.
Always something have something in hand or on a plate and just slowly consume it. That works so well. Say you just hold a beer can that is empty. And if you always had the beer can, you could always say, "Oh, shoot. This is my second one already, or this is my third that I've had. You didn't see that I've been I'm already three deep.
How many have you had?" It's a really easy strategy. Or if you know that this one person is going to put it on you, you could have a private conversation beforehand. Just simple, open, honest. Hey, I'm just I'm good. I don't need one or more or whatever and things will be just fine. Travel that throws off your routine.
This is the 11th day of holiday eating. Who visits at least in a car to drive to a family member's house or even on a plane? Right. We've got there's no gym, there's late night, very full days, a break in routine, going to fast food or airport travel, you're miss feeling like you have to start all over. We just have to make sure that while you are traveling that you have a game plan, that you move your body, that you take the adequate supplies to keep you on track while you travel, that you maybe just walk instead of trying to
do exercises. Or if you do exercises, you're not spending an hour. You're just going to do a 20 minute workout. Stay hydrated aggressively. Drink even more water than you normally do. That can help you spare calories. Just keep it one meal at a time focused. It could be also make sure that one meal in your day hits the goals.
Or maybe you only work on eating twice a day while you do that to help manage calories. All suitable strategies. If you travel for a couple days to manage the holiday food that you come across on the 12th day of holiday eating work parties filled with unlimited food drinks, right? who goes to the company party and there's buffets and appetizers and you just tell yourself that Jesus is gonna behave, but two hours later you've had more calories than your whole day's worth at that one event and you've been just constantly putting food in your
mouth. Well, how do we get around that? A lot of men overeat at these work situations. Well, we do one plate at a time. We drag it out just like other situations that we talked about. One thing I remember this one client, they had a heavy food focused schedule, especially after hours, say after the work hours, it would still have to go to client meals.
We decided that one bite of food, an appetizer or so would be 50 calories. Might sound a lot, but not really. has a suitable amount of calories for one meal or one bite, excuse me. That then you can do simple math. Eight bites of food is what? 400 calories. Wow, that adds up pretty quick. Again, other things around this is that we have a seltzer without the alcohol with a lime in it and it looks like we're having a beverage.
And then you can always again say, "Hey, I've already had two or three. Where are you at? I'm actually good because if I have one more, I'm gonna be over the edge and things are not going to look good for me later on or even tomorrow. I don't want to do anything embarrassing now." Whatever the situation is, you can come up with reasons or excuses or just flat out, I'm good, and that is sufficient enough.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed these 12 holiday situations. I hope they give you some ideas and solutions on what to do or how to do them. Let's move on to our fast five before we wrap up. Question number one, what holiday party or family event has been the hardest for you to stay consistent at? And what did you learn from it? For me, I remember New Year's Eve. This one New Year's Eve.
I just had a little too much fun and it ended up costing a bit more on the back end. I didn't feel very well, if you know what I mean, as a ball was dropping and it it didn't cause that, you know, nice romantic bringing in the new year type experience and feeling that you want to share with those that you love.
Yeah, that one year definitely left an impact on how I manage holidays around food or beverage. That was many moons ago. It's a good 18 years probably that I did that, but it's still memorable. Question number two, what leftover food has always tempted you the most the day after a big meal? And how do you avoid falling into that trap? Now, for me, it's pie. Hands down.
If there's pie sitting, it's default mode to go eat it. I just It's got a tractor beam to me. That's the one I have to be very careful with four kids. And this year, I'm not going to order seven pies. I'm going to order two strawberry rhubarbs, an apple, and a pumpkin. for six people, it's not going to go very far.
And that in and of itself, I can enjoy the experience without having to disenjoy the calories that come along with it. Question three, how do you approach drinking during holiday gatherings? And has that changed since you since the earlier years in coaching? For me, I am a social drinker. I enjoy having a Christmas ale, a spiked eggnog in a sense, but some fine holiday cocktails.
I'm not going to go over a drink though. Not even just from that one experience I just shared, but it's just not something that I enjoy. I don't like feeling unwell [laughter] the next that night or the next day. For love, I don't want to wake up and at 3:00 a.m. wondering if things are going to come up and out.
That's not fun either. Question four. What one holiday moment with your kids reminds you why you stay committed to your health? I would say the waking up at so stinking early on Christmas day after. We've gotten better. My wife and I have gotten way better at the holiday preparation, the presents and the wrapping and all that stuff.
I do it days in advance, not the day of or two days before. I remember I'd wrap till 2 am, set it up, and next thing you know, the kids are waking you up at 6 something. That was just poor planning on my part or bad systems or operations. They're not thinking through the impact. Or even more importantly, we have four kids.
There's a lot of Christmas presents that get wrapped for each kid. But in future or recent years, the kids are older. If you're a parent, you know that things cost more. They get less as a result, and that makes wrapping a lot easier and faster than it used to be. I used to watch movies and have a Christmas sale ale while I would rap.
But that that's the moment that I would say, I stay committed to my health. I want to participate that morning and really enjoy the whole holiday experience in such a good way. What is one thing you used to do during the holidays that you would never go back to now that I live a healthier lifestyle? If I think back, one thing might be just overeating too much.
Just recognizing that yes, it's enjoyable now, but then the next two days of trying to work it off or not eat so much is just not that exciting for me anymore. and I'd just rather not have to work so hard. A simple easy thought process is that I'm lazy. I don't want to have to work harder tomorrow to manage my actions today because as I love telling Levi, my oldest, your you choose your actions, not the consequences. And that is a real thing.
Consequences of overeating are added weight and a lot more effort to get it off. Well, he these are the 12 holiday situations of Christmas that most are most common for most guys to cause them to fall off during the holidays. Hopefully, you have some clear stories and clear action plans for each of them. I tried to be pretty inclusive about thinking through where the holidays get tripped up the most and give some real practical solutions.
I hope you take this away. I hope that you share this episode with someone that could use it. The goal of the season is to participate, to enjoy, to be filled with the spirit of Christmas and the holidays, of giving to others and showing love and kindness and celebrating those closest to you, not to be filled with regret come January.
Pulling it all together, the goal is to live in moderation, balance, flexibility. I have a holiday survival guide that you can get the show notes will have the link to that. It gives you really easy, accessible, clear directions on what to do, how to manage holidays and be successful. Even page six is something that is referenced all the time around making sure you understand the caloric impacts of a holiday meal, which can easily be over 2,000 with the way guys serve themselves.
All right. We want to earn the experience of the the holiday season with the love, the happiness, and we don't need to feel like we need to punish ourselves. Just find a way to consistently manage your urges and and balance those strengths and weaknesses when it comes to food. So, download the guide in link in the show notes and use it daily this holiday.
Happy holidays this season. If you need any help, reach out. I have been through 23 holiday seasons helping guys. [music] And that's what the call to rise is, the 100 day fat loss challenge. That's it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining.