Ms Bliss Fit

Tips For a Healthy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving does not have to be the start of your 10 pound holiday gain! Use these tips to keep your cool and to keep those numbers on the scale steady!

• If you are visiting someone else, offer to bring two dishes. These dishes can be healthy and tasty at the same time. You want to consider other people but also yourself when preparing these dishes. You can clean up any dish without sacrificing flavor. Bring a salad or green bean dish. When you eat, fill most of your plate with your healthy food.
• Exercise on Thanksgiving morning. Hit the weight room and do heavy cardio in the morning to get your metabolism burning those calories. You can also sign up to do a Thanksgiving race. Many cities have 5k races on Thanksgiving day. You don’t have to run, you can walk or jog/walk.
• Eat breakfast, lunch, and snacks as usual. Do not wait until dinner to eat. You will wreck your metabolism by doing this. You will also prevent yourself from overeating when you see all that delicious food in front of you. If you are going out-of-town, take your breakfast and snack foods with you (protein shake, oatmeal, protein bars, sandwiches etc…). Try not to eat fast food on the way. You are already going to indulge in a Thanksgiving meal. Why add more fat on top of that?
• Take a small bite of everything. This will keep you from feeling deprived. Just get a spoonful of casserole, pie, cake etc…you will have satisfied your need to try it. If you fill up on veggies and turkey you will be less likely to eat a lot of the other foods. (Beware of the salt and fat laden collard greens. Most people turn these healthy greens into a very fattening side…just get a little bit)
• Drink a whole lot of water before you eat. It will help fill you up.
• Do not take a “to-go” plate. If you don’t take it with you, you can’t eat it.
• Use this day as your cheat day. Eat SUPER clean for the rest of the week. This will soften the damage. Enjoy yourself. This is a day to be with family and friends. It is only one day out of the year BUT it is not an excuse to be a glutton. Don’t fall into the trap of holiday weight gain. It is all marketing strategy to get you to spend a whole bunch of money on food, gain weight, and then spend a bunch of money trying to lose it.

Here are some websites for healthy recipe ideas. If you are the cook, you have control. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Clean Eating Magazine

Eating Well

Kalyn’s Kitchen 

Paleo Diet Lifestyle

Cooking Light

Yummly

Natural…and T-Walk Music

When I made the decision to compete, I intentionally sought out a natural show. We are all tested to ensure that we prepared drug-free. Not only does this put all competitors on the same playing field, it proves to skeptics that you can build a spectacular figure the natural way. Many people have negative views of the bodybuilding and figure world. Yes, there are people who cheat but there are many who don’t. For those people who do take steroids, they still have to eat right and train hard to get their physiques. They just get an advantage because they can recover faster. When I step on that stage,  I will have the confidence in knowing that I did it the natural way and maybe I can inspire another woman to do the same thing! For anyone who thinks this prep is easy, they don’t see the hard work that it takes. Not only do you have to maintain a strict diet, you have to eat your foods at certain times and in certain ways that are advantageous to your body. Your body does not want to burn its own fat stores, so you are forcing it to do the opposite of what it is designed to do! If we could all look like figure competitors everyday, then no one would struggle with diet and exercise. This is a scientific fact. In addition to the diet you have to train hard.

You have to get in the gym even on days when you don’t feel like it. Even when you had a rough day at work and just want to go home and lay on the couch. You have to be in the gym when others are not. You have to make yourself lift heavy when the trainer is not there to watch you. You have to work into the burn and pain of the lift knowing that it takes pain to get stronger and see the results you need for the stage. Mentally, you have to be solid as a rock.

After you get over the time when you slip and mess up on your diet, binge on cake, eat a snickers bar and devour the entire row of Doritos in the vending machine, you have to pick yourself right back up and tell yourself that you can get right back on it. You have to develop the mind to realize that you are going to be hungry but you can’t eat until you are supposed to. I had to stop being upset about the fact that I can’t eat what everyone else is eating….everyone else is not preparing for a figure competition where they will be half-naked on stage in heels in front of a panel of judges and a bunch of strangers. Everyone else is just doing what they do but I am doing something out of the ordinary…so my actions must match this. Eating improperly will not get my body in peak form! The mental aspect is the hardest part. Everyday, I pray for strength, encourage myself, and repeat affirmations to stay strong.

If anyone ever tells you that it is easy to train and prep for a natural figure competition, they are lying to you. The 90 second walk across the stage is the culmination of months of training and diet! I am doing this because I always wanted to, not to get an award. No panel of judges is going to tell me that I am not first place in my world because I am doing this for me. Yes, it would be great to win but you can’t go into it for the trophy. This sets you up for depression and disappointment if you don’t win. Anyone who is considering doing a competition must keep this in mind. You can’t control who you compete against, their genetics, and the amount of time they had to prepare. The only thing you can do is compare yourself to YOURSELF. You know how hard you worked and that is all that matters!

So off of that soapbox. 🙂 I am trying to decide on the song I want to use in my T-walk. These are the songs I am considering. These songs really get me pumped up and I know that it will show when I walk my walk! 🙂

What do you guys think?