It’s Thanksgiving week. It’s a great week assuming you love family, food, football and free time.
It’s a bit of a confusing week if you love your fitness and your vision of future you.
Here’s my advice. Take it for what it is, take steps to move in a positive direction, and don’t stress about what you “should” be eating and please, please don’t feel shame about what you shouldn’t be eating.
Move your body when you can. Even if you have a wacky travel schedule, I bet you can set aside 4-5 times this week that you can intentionally move. At a minimum, you can get in a brisk walk. While, no, that isn’t going to get you to a world class level of fitness, it will refine and ingrain the habit that fitness is a part of your life, regardless of how it looks.
Ideally, you can still get in the gym 3-4 days this week. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then one time over the weekend. That would be amazing.
Whatever you do, do not workout to “earn” or “burn” your bad decisions. First of all, from a thermodynamic perspective, that’s nearly impossible. Second, it honestly creates a really weird mental dynamic of “good” and “bad”.
Once you identify as a fit, healthy person, you’ll understand that the crests of these occasionally turbulent waves are hardly indicative of the steadiness of the depth of your ocean of good habits.
When it’s all said and done, it’s all said and done. Give yourself the day or the rest of the weekend to enjoy leftovers and to live outside your norm. Then by Monday, you’re back to your normal eating, sleeping and behavioral habits. No shame, no regret, no resetting of personal identity or crash diets to make up for the weekend. Definitely not quitting fitness until January.
If it’s any help or consolation, you can follow my lead. I eat like a complete asshole on Thanksgiving. Multiple desserts, drinks, appetizers, etc. Continued theme on Friday and Saturday. By Sunday I’m just over it but there’s always that one piece of dessert that still calls my name. Then by Monday we throw any leftovers away and move on with our lives. That’s how we’ve always done it. And we always will. Never have we noticeably derailed ourselves from the normal, fit and healthy life we typically live.
So there you go. Good luck and enjoy!
