How to eat a FEAST and stay lean
It seems that Thanksgiving week every year, all I keep seeing everywhere in the media and in online fitness articles is how you need to control yourself this Thanksgiving so you don't pack on the pounds from the feasting.
These articles and news stories tell you how you need to "control your portions", or eat "low-fat gravy" (and other garbage fitness advice) and be disciplined on this holiday where you'll be tempted to stuff your face with stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, yams, and all of the pies and desserts.
Well, I have a WAY different opinion on this. In fact, why should we restrict at all? After all, in the US, it's only 1 day per year that you have this enormous Thanksgiving feast. Why not just eat as much as you want?
Seriously, 1 day of feasting out of a full year is NOT going to make or break the results you're getting with your fitness routine, as long as you make sure a massive feast like this is a VERY rare occasion.
As a matter of fact, even if you decide to feast on every holiday that you celebrate throughout the year, this is still only going to be 5 or 6 feasts per year.
That's only about 1 feast every 2 months... certainly nothing that is worth worrying about in terms of your fitness results.
In fact, as you know, I've written about a similar topic like this many times before, when we talk about having a weekly "cheat day"...
Now keep in mind, I would consider a weekly cheat day to be a step below a Thanksgiving feast in terms of calories... but the fact remains that OCCASIONAL overeating can actually have surprising benefits to revamping your metabolic rate via the leptin hormone response (this triggers your body to "crank up" your metabolism again if you've been restricting calories previously).
I will stress though, when it comes to the scale of feasting that typically comes with Thanksgiving meals in the US, that this really does only mean occasional feasting. This means that you still do have to control your caloric intake the majority of the time if you want the lean body you're looking for.
But my main point of this email is that I think it's downright silly to sit there on Thanksgiving or any other holiday for that matter and try to restrict yourself too much when these holidays are really only a few days out of the entire year. Just make sure to get your normal healthy diet back on track the very next day after the Thanksgiving feast.
So I say... go right ahead and eat as much as you want... Just be sure you make it to the gym the day after Thanksgiving for a SUPER high intensity resistance training workout.
In fact, training hard with weights the day after Thanksgiving will give you the best pump you'll feel all year long from the super-saturated muscle glycogen in your muscle cells. I actually LOVE to do a really high volume "muscle pump" style workout the day after thanksgiving to really get that cool pumped up feeling and help utilize all of that stored muscle glycogen.
Alright, enjoy your Thanksgiving feast! And if you do this right, you can actually benefit from the T-day feast by boosting your metabolism (via leptin response) and also get the best pump of the year in your weight training workout the day after Thanksgiving.
Feast hard, train hard!
Want to see a really cool daily trick you can use to "crank up" your metabolism? This particular trick has nothing to do with overeating on occasion...but is a very unique tactic. Check it out below, and you'll see at about the 2 minute mark how to do this:
A very unique daily trick to "crank up" your metabolism
Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
These articles and news stories tell you how you need to "control your portions", or eat "low-fat gravy" (and other garbage fitness advice) and be disciplined on this holiday where you'll be tempted to stuff your face with stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, yams, and all of the pies and desserts.
Well, I have a WAY different opinion on this. In fact, why should we restrict at all? After all, in the US, it's only 1 day per year that you have this enormous Thanksgiving feast. Why not just eat as much as you want?
Seriously, 1 day of feasting out of a full year is NOT going to make or break the results you're getting with your fitness routine, as long as you make sure a massive feast like this is a VERY rare occasion.
As a matter of fact, even if you decide to feast on every holiday that you celebrate throughout the year, this is still only going to be 5 or 6 feasts per year.
That's only about 1 feast every 2 months... certainly nothing that is worth worrying about in terms of your fitness results.
In fact, as you know, I've written about a similar topic like this many times before, when we talk about having a weekly "cheat day"...
Now keep in mind, I would consider a weekly cheat day to be a step below a Thanksgiving feast in terms of calories... but the fact remains that OCCASIONAL overeating can actually have surprising benefits to revamping your metabolic rate via the leptin hormone response (this triggers your body to "crank up" your metabolism again if you've been restricting calories previously).
I will stress though, when it comes to the scale of feasting that typically comes with Thanksgiving meals in the US, that this really does only mean occasional feasting. This means that you still do have to control your caloric intake the majority of the time if you want the lean body you're looking for.
But my main point of this email is that I think it's downright silly to sit there on Thanksgiving or any other holiday for that matter and try to restrict yourself too much when these holidays are really only a few days out of the entire year. Just make sure to get your normal healthy diet back on track the very next day after the Thanksgiving feast.
So I say... go right ahead and eat as much as you want... Just be sure you make it to the gym the day after Thanksgiving for a SUPER high intensity resistance training workout.
In fact, training hard with weights the day after Thanksgiving will give you the best pump you'll feel all year long from the super-saturated muscle glycogen in your muscle cells. I actually LOVE to do a really high volume "muscle pump" style workout the day after thanksgiving to really get that cool pumped up feeling and help utilize all of that stored muscle glycogen.
Alright, enjoy your Thanksgiving feast! And if you do this right, you can actually benefit from the T-day feast by boosting your metabolism (via leptin response) and also get the best pump of the year in your weight training workout the day after Thanksgiving.
Feast hard, train hard!
Want to see a really cool daily trick you can use to "crank up" your metabolism? This particular trick has nothing to do with overeating on occasion...but is a very unique tactic. Check it out below, and you'll see at about the 2 minute mark how to do this:
A very unique daily trick to "crank up" your metabolism
Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
posted by Mike Geary at
1:01 AM
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