How to keep your calories down and your strength up

By Dr. Mitchell Kahn, M.D.

From the five extra pounds of flab to the Christmas tree catching fire, the holiday season — Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day — brings challenges and risks as well as celebration. The most ubiquitous American family tradition is overindulgence.

How to enjoy the holidays and stay healthy? The key to surviving the season is partaking moderately of the caloric delights and partaking as thoroughly as possible of exercising and taking care of yourself. Of course this is the same prescription for a healthy life throughout the year, but the temptations of the season so often push us off course.

Give yourself these gifts this holiday season:

Get enough sleep. A good night’s sleep is a necessity. Productivity, mood and resistance to stress decline with decreased sleep — and the tendency to overeat shoots up. Who has time to sleep eight hours? We all do. The extra hour of sleep can increase what you can get done during the other 16 hours. If you’re shopping, cooking, traveling, visiting family or friends or welcoming guests yourself, you’ll need the extra energy provided by a good night’s sleep.

Get enough exercise. Don’t let the holiday party schedule get you off your program. Not only does exercise keep the fat at bay but it helps to reduce stress, increase endorphins and may diminish the risks of SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Try jogging from store to store in the mall. Or power-walk.

Relax. No matter how hectic your life, it will work better if you schedule down time for yourself. Meditating, practicing yoga. Soaking in the bathtub or even curling up with a book can help you rejuvenate and de-stress. If nothing else, try 10 minutes of deep breathing exercises. As the days grow shorter, so grows the risk of SAD. Add the stress of the emotion of the holidays and you have a recipe for depression. Exercise regularly. Get outside and expose yourself to some sun (within reason). And if you really feel bad, seek medical help.

Eat, but not too much. Don’t go to parties hungry. Have a few celery sticks and a big glass of water before you go. Contrary to popular opinion, the calories that you eat standing up, do count. By all means, enjoy a few canapés, but a lot of canapés followed by dinner leads to post-holiday misery.

Same is true for alcohol. A glass of wine is fine. A few glasses are too many; a bottle is way too much. That can not only make you fat and poison your liver, but can lead to drunken table-dancing with its attendant risks of embarrassment and injury. Eggnog alert: Limit yourself to a taste. A glass-full contains half of your calorie input for the day. Never drink and drive.

Moderation is key to keeping healthy during the holidays. If you can’t ever have a piece of chocolate, what is the purpose of staying healthy? On the other hand, eat too much chocolate and you won’t stay healthy to enjoy the holidays in future years. Also, don’t skip meals to make up for the extra calories. It doesn’t work.

If you do over-indulge and under-exercise, forgive yourself and get back on track. Accept the slip-up and then get right back with the program. It doesn’t help to beat yourself up about it — that’s excessive and counterproductive. Just remember: Extra pounds go on faster than they come off.

Mitchell Kahn, M.D. is Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at Columbia Medical School and is Director of the Miller Health Care Institute at New York’s St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital

©Longevity Alliance, Inc. 2006