Reading Time: 6 minutesYou worked hard to keep yourself healthy and fit this year, didn’t you? Congrats! There’s no better way to celebrate all the positive choices you made than by adding a ton of holiday weight between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve!
And we’re not talking about muscle mass — we’re talking about good, old-fashioned fat. After all, doesn’t everyone want to get nice and squishy during the holidays?
That’s right, we’re officially declaring the holidays a health-free zone. It’s time to throw out everything you know about nutrition and fitness. Instead, follow these top five tips for the best way to gain a ton of weight between now and January first.
1. Fast All Day Before a Celebration
There’s no smarter strategy for kicking off the holidays and setting the foundation for gaining a ton of weight than by waking up on Thanksgiving morning and forgoing your healthy and normal-sized breakfast. When you starve yourself all day long, you will be sure to binge on the stuffing and mashed potatoes. And what better way to add all sorts of weight than by shoving boatloads of starchy carbs into your mouth?
If you really want to commit to adding another ten, fifteen, or even twenty pounds to your frame, do not eat anything before you hit all those Christmas parties or Hanukkah meals either. After all, your hosts will surely be serving nothing but rich desserts and carb-heavy feasts. You don’t want to miss out on a chance to overeat by showing up anything less than starving.
Pro-Tip: Avoid eating sensible, pre-party dinners at home. That’s a surefire way to kill your temptation to binge on party food. If you eat a reasonable portion of lean protein with green veggies before you hit all those parties and dinners, you won’t have any room for appetizers and brownies.
2. Drink Calorie-Heavy Holiday Drinks Instead of Water
Be sure to drink some beer while watching the Thanksgiving football games. And some wine while getting ready for that office party. And then some holiday cocktails when you get there. And eggnog is a great go-to option throughout the holiday season. If you’re serious, you should really just fill your CamelBak and start swiggin’.
Alcohol is a terrific double-weight-gaining-whammy because in addition to being full of empty calories, it also tends to spark cravings by triggering both a blood sugar crash and the hormone ghrelin, which signals your body to get hungry again. Bascially, it’s a sure-fire strategy to keep yourself eating all day.
Pro-Tip: Some people make the mistake of drinking water throughout the day to buffer the effect of food and alcohol. Big mistake! Water is like kryptonite to your weight-gaining plan. It has the annoying quality of making you feel satiated and suppresses your appetite.
3. Eat Your Meals as Quickly as You Can
The famous competitive eater Joey Chestnut once ate 9.35 pounds of turkey in ten minutes. I bet if you set your mind to it, you could use the holiday season as your training period and put Joey to shame.
Eat as though you will never again see another plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing for the rest of your life. And while you are at it, try to eat an entire can of cranberry sauce. Just check out the back of the can — that stuff has no nutritional value other than 25 grams of carbs and 21 grams of sugar. You have hit the jackpot. And that jellied goodness is undeniably delicious, too.
Pro-tip: If you want to get fat, don’t make the mistake of eating slowly. It takes your stomach twenty minutes to let your brain know it is full. If you relax, chat with your family, eat slowly, and sip some water between bites, your stomach and your brain might catch up and you’ll miss out on another chance to gorge yourself.
4. Cancel All Your Exercise Sessions
Have you ever started an exercise habit and found that it not only makes you want to exercise more, but also eat well and get more sleep? It’s called a feedback loop, and it means the positive results you get from living a healthy lifestyle make you want to continue living a healthy lifestyle.
That sounds like a giant recipe for failure on our weight-gain plan! If you choose to exercise on a holiday on instead of shoving it to the back-burner where it belongs, you will be less likely to make all those subsequent unhealthy choices that result in gaining weight.
Pro-Tip: Some people wake up on Thanksgiving morning and participate in a Turkey Trot or attend an 8:00am group fitness class. Some people even take their families hiking or sledding on Christmas Day. Can you imagine? These poor fools are getting sucked into healthy feedback loop. Bless their hearts.
5. Always Keep Holiday Snacks Close By
You know what I’m talking about — all those great treats you never have the chance to eat the rest of the year. Those tins of popcorn are a trifecta of weight-gaining potential partitioned into three delicious flavors for your convenience. What about sugar cookies and peppermint bark? Lay it all out on the kitchen counter so it’s easy to grab to help you pack on every last holiday pound available.
Hey, while you are at it, put some of those red and green M&Ms in a festive bowl and stick those bad boys on your coffee table so you can nibble endlessly while binge-watching a Law & Order marathon. Make sure you have plenty of extra to refill the bowl so your whole family achieves holiday-weight gain success.
Pro-Tip: Some people decide to keep their households clean of junk food. They figure if they stock their kitchens with healthy fruits and veggies, good fats, and lean protein, they will limit their unhealthy choices to outside activities. These people limit their indulgences to true celebrations while keeping their homes free of temptation. Those people are missing out on their true weight-gaining potential. They are probably only going to gain a pound or two, max. Don’t be these people.
What’s Your Holiday Weight Plan?
So there you have it — five guaranteed strategies to gain weight from now through to the new year. Are you ready to get started? Doesn’t this all sound like so much fun? Aren’t you going to feel awesome, energetic, and confident by the time you complete this plan?
Okay, you’ve probably figured out by now that we’re joking. While the holidays probably aren’t the best time of year to try to lose weight, they don’t have to be a free-for-all either. Go back and read through the Pro-Tip sections of this article for the real strategies on how you might approach your holiday parties and meals from a healthier perspective.
But, most of all, remember that the holidays are a time of celebration and joy. Don’t make it all about the food — either eating it all or eating none of it. Enjoy yourself, enjoy your family, and enjoy the parties. Treat yourself sometimes, but not all the time. Be kind to yourself, both in how you treat your body and how you (don’t) judge yourself for your choices. You may find that if you make the choice of eating holiday food mean less, you may eat less of it, as well.
Holiday popcorn (CC BY 2.0) by PersonalCreations.com.
Andy is a certified CHEK Practitioner and holistic lifestyle coach. He holds a spectrum of certifications from CrossFit and is also a Vivobarefoot certified running coach. He has trained as a Zen buddhist and graduated with a Master’s degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica.
Andy founded CrossFit LA one of the first and most successful CrossFit training centers in the world and the first to be featured in national media. He is the co-founder of the Whole Life Challenge, Inc, currently its president, and is also a consultant and life/business coach. Andy lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Julia, and son, Dashel.
