Staying Fit for the Holidays

Many people complain about weight gain over the holiday season. With all the cookies, special dishes, and more cookies, it’s no surprise we tend to pack on the pounds this time of year. But no worries: I’m here to help.
Here are a few tips to help you get through December with minimum impact on your waistline:

• Instead of eating cookies, eat the cookie dough as you’re baking. Lumps of cookie dough, of course, are smaller than whole cookies, and therefore fewer calories. Also, this greatly increases your risk of salmonella poisoning, and there’s nothing quite like vomiting, intestinal distress, and kidney failure to shed pounds quickly.
  
• Stop being so darn efficient when baking. Instead of getting all your ingredients together before baking, pull them out one by one as they come up at each step of the recipe. Making separate trips to the refrigerator to retrieve the butter, then the eggs, then milk, will add at least thirty steps to your daily walking goal. (I hear people set these goals.) Thirty steps=three extra cookies! (Disclaimer: I’ve never claimed to be great at calorie math.)
  
• Get a real tree this Christmas. From the workout you’ll get walking through the lot, hauling the tree onto the top of your car, wrestling it into the house, and getting it into the stand, you’ll quickly drop weight. Digging the boxes of decorations out of the basement is also great exercise. And there’s something to be said for the sweeping and vacuuming you’ll be doing for the next eight months as you continue to find pine needles throughout the house long after the tree is gone.
  
• Make your own holiday decorations. Many find this to be a frustrating, time-consuming activity. They fail to realize that while you’re cutting, gluing, and painting, you’re not eating. It once took me three days to make a new tree topper, and I lost six pounds and invented four new curse words during the process. Imagine my subsequent delight when we decided not to bother with a tree ever again after finding dried-out needles in the refrigerator in August!
  
• Shovel snow. You people with your “white Christmas” garbage. I don’t know any New Englander who is happy to get two feet of snow on Christmas Eve. Someone has to move that crap out of the driveway and off the roads. Traveling isn’t going to be easy. Start shoveling early. You’ll burn a ton of fat, and since it’s unlikely you’ll actually make it to the holiday feast due to the snowfall, you’ll be eating boiled hotdogs and potatoes for dinner—both low in calories, by the way. Hope your pretty white Christmas was worth it.
  
• Get a cat. If you want a serious workout, there’s nothing quite like a cat to keep you moving. From cleaning up their vomit after they chew on the tree, trying to wrestle them off the tree, chasing them when they steal ornaments, and playing with them when they find the balled-up wrapping paper far more entertaining than the deluxe cat playset you spent a lot of money on and even more hours putting together … the “fun” never ends with a kitty on the holidays.
  

I hope you find these tips useful. As for me, I’m really good at giving advice, but honestly, I’ll be doing none of these things this holiday season. Because why put up a tree when you can bring your cats to visit your mother’s tree and eat all her cookies instead?

Here's my cat Wednesday "helping" decorate the Santa cow. Seriously, I'm leaving her at my mom's house this year.