Holiday season 2015 is rapidly approaching and with that comes the dreaded and inevitable weight gain. Knowing that the enemy is nearby — the attack of the groaning table and the onslaught of festive fare — we have the power to seize the day and launch a preemptive strike.
Did you know that the typical Thanksgiving meal runs about 3,000 calories? So if you start a 30-day program of burning just 100 extra calories a day, you could burn off your entire holiday meal before you even take your first bite. Now that would be a great accomplishment, wouldn’t it?
What does 100 calories look like? According to the packaging on my can of toasted peanuts, that’s about 15 extra large nuts. It’s one ounce of mini pretzels. Go for the fruit; a medium-sized apple has fewer than 100 calories.
What does burning off 100 calories look like? For most people, that’s walking 12 to 15 minutes, or about 2,000 steps, or about one mile. Aside from looking at your watch or measuring a mile in your neighborhood by driving it, you can measure off the steps on your Fitbit, if you have one.
I am now on my second Fitbit, having lost the rascally first one, which slipped out of its band, unbeknownst to me. Some people I know are absolutely addicted to this little device, which counts out your steps during the day. Some of you may remember the column I wrote about the extra motivation that surges when competing with your friends and yourself to accrue the minimum daily recommendation of 10,000 steps and more.
Humorist Dave Sedaris wrote the seminal article on the Fitbit Life, titled, appropriately enough, “Stepping Out — Living the Fitbit Life,” for the New Yorker magazine. The man is not just a Fitbit addict — he’s crazy. He’s gone from averaging 30,000 steps a day to 60,000 steps a day, which is 25 and a half miles. My own personal record is just shy of 25,000 steps, and it was on a day that I attended a wedding and danced like a banshee for several hours.
Accumulating steps is one easy-to-achieve fitness metric, but unless you go Sedaris-crazy, you’re really not going to make a serious dent toward losing pounds or inches quickly or dramatically.
This is why Molly was able to cajole me into joining Planet Fitness, which opened earlier this spring in Plainsboro, yet another entry in the local fitness wars. The price was right: a $5 initiation fee and a $10 (plus 70 cents tax) monthly fee thereafter. There are no cancellation penalties, as long as you give notice by the required day of the month. As with any new exercise endeavor, I’m still in the wow and enthusiastic phase, but my problem has never been enthusiasm, just staying power. Still, no pain, no gain. I can do this.
The holidays this year are also going to be tricky for me to navigate — not only in terms of food temptations, but literally where we will be as a family. Katie is in San Francisco, and she will be doing a lot of travel for work in the next couple of months, so it will be hard for her to come home for Thanksgiving, though she may be home for Christmas. Molly leaves for France in a couple of weeks and then goes right into her internship in January, so it doesn’t make sense for her to fly back for either holiday. Will is sizing up the opportunity in the situation and angling to spend Thanksgiving in San Francisco and Christmas in Paris. Gee whiz. Nice life if you can get it. Who will stay home to make the money to buy the tickets for this travel extravaganza?
Oh, and Yeon Soo, our Korean cousin’s cousin, would like to fly home from Emory University in Georgia with her roommate so they can spend American Thanksgiving with us. And that will be wonderful, but even better if all of us were here to spend it together.
Sigh. I remember the good old days when all the kids were on the same schedule and we were assured of family down-time together to play board games, go ice skating or bowling, and of course, scarf down yummy holiday fare. We are at a different place in our lives right now, with kids literally flying all over, not just for school any more but now for work in the real world. They’re growing up and in Katie’s case, have now flown the nest.
No matter where we are or what we are doing, we just have to remember that time together is getting to be more of a rare thing than I thought it would be so soon, and we have to grab those opportunities and cherish them deeply.
This weekend I’m going to dust off the Halloween decorations and go all out to festoon our house in the scariest and liveliest manner I can. I’m late getting them up this year. But it’s something I have to do in a nod to the great times we used to have on what used to be and still is one of my favorite times of the year.
I say bring on the candy corn and pumpkin pie; bring on the mashed potatoes and gravy. The holidays are a comin’ and time flies, so I’m going to eat and step out in style. Happy autumn! Hang on tight as the fastest and most festive time of the year whirls quickly toward us faster than fall leaves can fly.
