Monday Brain Exchange - Staying Fit and Healthy During the Holidays

This Weeks Question from Jill at Finishing is Winning: How do you manage diet and exercise during the holidays?

What a timely question since we are heading into week 1 between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  One of the easiest things that I do to stay fit year-round is to maintain my group workouts with the Rush Running Team.  Monday nights are our speed workouts and Wednesday nights are fun runs.  At a minimum, I know that I can count on getting these two runs in each week.  The speed workout ensures that I have a quality workout too and that I don't get too complacent in my running.  I also set monthly workout goals that I try to achieve.  This keeps me accountable to my fitness and gives me something to strive for.  I'm still working on setting my December goals but for November I had goals for the number of running miles, minutes on the bike trainer, and times I go swimming.  I don't always make it to my goals but it keeps me motivated.  For example, I made it to last Monday with out getting on my bike trainer at all in November so I learned that I can actually push myself to get 180 minutes in during one week!

Nutrition is probably the one thing that I am weakest at during the holidays.  I have a major sweet tooth and love all the holiday cookies and candies.  Luckily I don't have an office with lots of cooks so there aren't treats around all that much.  One of my co-workers does keep a candy dish fully stocked and I tend to visit her for snacks.  I have found that if I have a bigger breakfast then I don't have as many morning snacks. 

This year I signed up for Amanda's Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge for a little extra motivation.  It will be fun to track my workouts and accumulate points over the next few weeks!