Muscle for Life

Every holiday season, you see the same kinds of articles make the rounds: “How to avoid holiday weight gain” “How to keep off the pounds this Thanksgiving” “20 tips to avoid weight gain during the holidays” Each article follows the same stock format, sharing stats about how many pounds of weight you gain between Thanksgiving and New Years, and then giving you a long list of hackneyed weight loss tips like “ditch the added sugar,” or “chew your food slowly,” or “drink water before meals.” It’s not that the stats are wrong or the tips are useless, but at this point, you probably know that eating more calories than you burn is the root cause of weight gain, and the only way to not gain weight is to not eat so much. Of course, during the Holidays, this is easier said than done. You’re surrounded by a cornucopia of delicious, calorie-dense food and separated from your normal routine, which makes it remarkably easy to overeat. So, what should you do about it? What’s the “hack” for avoiding weight gain over the holi