Edit: The 12 Days of ChristMASS competition is over. Thanks for reading and be on the lookout for any future competitions.
You are who you hang around with.
This isn't just something your mom told you when you were younger to keep you from hanging out with the rough crowd. This is actually a principle known as homophily. People hang around with people similar to themselves. When a person is forced into a group of people who are very different than him or herself, it is very likely that he or she will adapt to fit into the new group. This is why it is easier to become overweight when in a group of overweight people. Hang around with fit people and it is more likely that you will maintain your fitness or become fit if you aren't already.
Go out. Don't blow out.
I will never tell you that you can't go out with your friends or family. Just have common sense. Just because you are going out doesn't mean you can just say "Today doesn't count." I promise you, it most certainly counts. A pound of fat contains approximately 3500 Calories. Believe me when I tell you that you can easily consume more than that in one meal at a restaurant. Splitting a blooming onion and eating a burger, loaded mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and coke to wash it down clocks in right at 3500 Calories in one meal! On top of that, there's no reason to think that way in the first place. In almost all restaurants there are healthy, low Calorie options available. In the same restaurant mentioned above, you could have a house salad, grilled chicken, grilled veggies, and water (or a diet soda) for 500 Calories.
Ain't nothing like a home cooked meal.
When visiting relatives or friends, what you have available to eat will likely be out of your control. The easiest way to handle this is to just select what you put on your plate more carefully. If there are grilled, boiled, or steamed options, fill most of your plate with those because they are lower in Calories. If that's not an option, simply don't go back for seconds.
Chug that drink.
When going out, an often overlooked trick to keep down the Calories is to drink more water. Diet soda is even better. There is a hormonal response to the stretching of your stomach that tells you that you're full. (I touch on that more in this article.) This is why the carbonation in diet soda helps to make you feel full faster.
Don't chug that drink.
Before I say anything else, I am not here to discuss whether drinking alcohol is moral or immoral. I understand that people drink alcohol; therefore, I will address it.
Regardless of your opinion on the morality of alcohol, I will say it's a bad idea to drink it if you're concerned with your weight. It is common for a beer to be 200-300 calories. Let's assume you have one beer per day and three on Friday and Saturday. That's an additional 2,750 Calories per week. This doesn't even factor in if you go out specifically to drink where the drinks and the foods that naturally are associated with drinking, can easily put you close to 10,000 Calories. If you're going to drink, consider drinking a light beer or mixing your drinks with a diet soda instead of a regular one.
Thank you so much for reading. If you found this article helpful, share it with your friends on Facebook! It helps us out more than you know. I will be back next week with another fat loss topic. As always, God bless you AND your family and I'll see you next week.
