Indulge in Halloween and the Upcoming Holiday Season, But Find Your Balance Trick!

We love Halloween, but it’s also frequently the kickoff to putting on the extra pounds through Christmas. So today, we kicked off a quick 10-minute upper body cardio and strength training workout with Excy as a portable stationary upper body ergometer. It wasn’t much, but the key is to keep moving and to do something vs. nothing.

As the leaves fall off the trees, the air gets cold, and the rain and snow start to come, it can be really easy to turn to comfort foods or cozy up and put off exercise until January. The challenge is that research shows that the extra pounds we put on between Halloween and Christmas can take more than five months to lose.

Now, the media often leads us to believe that we slap on 7 to 10 pounds, but research shows that the average weigh gain during the winter holidays is just one pound. Doesn’t seem like much right? The challenge is that most people don’t ever lose the pound of weight they put on during the holidays, according to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine. Since the average weight gain during adulthood is about one to two pounds a year, which means much of midlife weight gain can be explained by holiday eating.

We’re not trying to rain on the awesomeness of Halloween and indulging in some holiday eating, because lets face it, eating is an important enjoyment in life. It’s seriously punishment to only look and not eat delicious food. But, like everything in life, it’s about finding a balance of not overeating, which requires self-control and discipline. One day of overeating (like today), can be easily solved by eating less tomorrow or more exercise today, but overeating between now and Christmas, with a mindset of “I’ll just lose it in January” can lead to that 20 pounds in your 40’s, another 20 pounds in your 50’s and all of sudden you have a big increased risk for heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

The cool thing about Excy is that you can squeeze in a quality upper body workout or lower body cycle whenever you want, but it takes an awful lot of exercise to cancel out overindulging. For example, it takes an estimated 12 minutes and 12 seconds of jumping jacks to burn on one Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. So, find a balance that works for you! Even if that means you gain half a pound vs. one!

Embrace indulging once in a while, but try not to go overboard. Here’s a great article with 12 tips for avoiding weight gain during the holidays.

Here’s the Live Upper Body Work with Excy as an Upper Body Ergometer