New Year, New You! ~ Haley Oscar

If you’re anything like me, keeping weight off in the winter time can be hard! With all the pie, cookies, sodas, eggnog, and every other fattening food it’s hard to keep your weight from going up. The average American can gain 5 to 15 pounds in the holiday season alone from all the sugar and fatty foods! Gaining that much weight in that small of a time frame can take a horrible toll on your body, and can be hard to lose! From Halloween to New Year’s Eve we eat and eat and eat like we’re preparing to go into hibernation. Sure some people can lose the weight, but most people don’t, we go out and by a new pair of jeans cause the other ones don’t fit, or we pretend those stretch marks aren’t there. And the older you get the hard it is to motivate yourself to keep off the holiday weight. So why not get into the habit now, how about we lose weight this season instead of gaining even more?!

This holiday season let’s do these things to lose weight together!

1. Skip the soda, or holiday drink for water. You will not believe how refreshed and better you’ll feel if you drink 8-10 full glasses of water a day.
2. Also, try drinking a full glass of water 20 minutes before you eat. This will help you to not eat as much.
3. Take small bits of food and eat it slowly. Did you know that it takes your stomach 20 minutes to tell your brain that it’s full? So take your time there’s no contest to win!
4. Skip the French fries or any other fried food, these are horrible on your heart and take your body forever to digest, and once is does digest is turns straight into fat. Try substituting fried foods for a side of fruit or vegetables, you’ll get more energy from these foods and you’ll feel great and burn fat this way!
5. Have control over your calorie intakes – calories mean energy, and so taking calories is very important so that our body would always have full of energy. But when the amount of calories inside our body exceeds over the maximum, then it is now time to burn them out. Always have a control on your calorie intakes, and through that, you can lose weight fast.
6. Cut down the sugar, try limiting yourself to a sugary treat once a week. Trust me, I personally cannot have sugar that often anymore because of health issues. So if I can hold off on the sugar you can. So try to hold off on the sugar and have a planned day to eat it. But on your set day DO NOT OVER DO IT! Over eating sugar can cause your body to go into shock and you get the sugar high and then the crash. Limit it to one piece of pie or two cookies, whatever it is watch your portions! (I know, it’s HARD!)
7. Work out, the one thing many of us (Even me) are ‘To busy’ or to ‘lazy’ to do. Did you know that your heart needs at least 20 minutes of cardio a day? To keep a healthy weight (or to lose it)many of us need to work out at least twenty minutes each day. I personally like to jog or dance. But since it’s the winter months it’s too cold for many of us to get out and jog (Unless you have a gym membership). If you live in a state or country that gets a lot of snow like mine does, shoveling can make for a great cardio work out! If you’re one of the luckier ones who rarely or never get snow another work out you could do for free or fairly cheap is Pilaties. Pilaties is one of my all-time favorites, it’s easy on the body but it’s one heck of a work out! Pilaties is a lot like yoga but works out the in more ways. Pilaties tones and stretches the body to be more flexible and flat. You can find all kinds of work out videos on Youtube or anywhere else on the web!

     8. Eat more! Yep, you heard me right! Eat more…fruits and vegetables, that is.

     Here are 6 ways to add veggies to your daily food plan:

Try a V8 or Naked Juice for your 3 p.m. afternoon snack. This will count as a full serving of fruits or vegetables!

            Toss extra veggies into your soups, stews, and salads.

Use pre-bagged baby spinach (Organic is always nice!) just like you would lettuce, toss it into your soups, or wilt it on top of pasta.

Buy vegetables that are already cut up. I know it costs more, but if that's the only way you are going to eat more veggies, it's worth it. (Skip the $4 cup of coffee!)

Did you know that vegetable soup counts as a serving of vegetables?

Lettuce, tomato and sprouts--oh my! Pile up layers and layers on your sandwiches. You can add a layer of cucumber, too

1. Keep yourself active any way you can. In the winter a lot of us are content sitting on our butts watching the holiday specials or staring at Facebook for hours on end. Get up and move! Play with your siblings, crack out that Just Dance game that has been sitting on your shelf since last Christmas, go sledding, make a snow man, volunteer at a local soup kitchen, homeless shelter, animal shelter, ect! Point is, DO SOMETHING! You need to move in order for your body to lose any kind of fat!
2. Your weight, your diet, and your exercise plan are from just one slice of your life’s pie. Permanent weight loss is about living a balanced life always. It’s about looking at all areas of your life – health, relationships, finances, career, fun, creativity, spirituality, physical environment – and creating them so that they support you to have the life you want.
3. Focusing only on weight loss will not serve you well. You may lose weight, but you will most definitely find it again later.
4. Make a commitment to YOU, all of you, every aspect of you. Losing weight won’t fix what’s wrong with your social life, relationships or happiness, just like gathering buckets of money won’t help you gain REAL friends or happiness. Seek balance. Enjoy every aspect of your life!
5. The most important tip to losing weight is to truly love your body, make healthy steps to better yourself and body but don’t hate on yourself for gaining weight. Pray to God about struggles you might have with the way you look and ask him to help you see how beautiful you really are! Remember you are fearfully and wonderfully made! Hating your body will only cause depression and stress which will make you gain more weight.
6. Be comfortable in your own skin, love every inch of you and thank God every day for how beautiful he made you inside and out.
7. Every time you look in the mirror don’t look at the things you hate about yourself, but thank God for something you like. After doing this for a few days I promise you’ll have a better outlook on yourself and your body!
8. Have a VERY blessed and happy Christmas and New Year’s you beautiful woman of God!

Did you know that Haley loves super hero movies but hates chick flicks?!