December has a strange effect on fitness people.

For eleven months of the year, training and nutrition can tick along quite nicely. Then somebody puts tinsel around a supermarket doorway and suddenly we’re convinced that Christmas presents us with only two options:

A) maintain the dietary discipline of a professional bodybuilder throughout December, or
B) eat everything within a five-mile radius and promise to sort ourselves out in January.

There is a considerably easier option.

Every December I deliberately reduce the amount of training I do, simplify my approach to nutrition, and take the main Christmas days completely off.

I’ve done this for years, I’ve used the same basic tactic with many PT clients, and it turns what used to be one of the most stressful periods of the year into something I can actually enjoy.

Here’s how it works.

The Christmas Chronicles

Every December begins with confidence.

“This year will be different.”

You’re going to keep training five days per week. You’re going to continue tracking every calorie. You’ll politely refuse the mince pies. Christmas will simply happen around you, while you maintain the dietary discipline of a Spartan warrior.

Then somebody opens a tub of Celebrations.

Fuck.

Then the nan organises a family get-together.

Double-fuck.

Then it’s the work night out.

Triple-fuck.

Then your partner hands you a festive coffee containing roughly the caloric equivalent of a family-sized lasagna.

By mid-December, MyFitnessPal hasn’t been opened for six days, and you’re beginning to negotiate with yourself about whether walking around the Metrocentre technically counts as high intensity cardio.

And this is usually where things go wrong.

Because once the orignial perfect December has been “spoiled”, people tend to press the big red FUCK IT button.

“Well, I’ve ruined it now. I’ll start again in January.”

Excellent.

We’ve gone from one mince pie to a six-week bulk.

Gym visits disappear. Every meal becomes a Christmas meal. The period between Boxing Day and New Year turns into a strange annual limbo where nobody knows what day of the week it is and cheese is considered an acceptable breakfast.

Then January arrives.

Quadruple-fuck.

That wasn’t mean to happen.

Suddenly we need a detox. Six workouts per week. Two hours of cardio per day. No alcohol. No chocolate. No carbs. No happiness of any kind — just dark green smoothies consisting of kale and tears.

This entire annual pantomime is unnecessary.

You don’t need to be perfect throughout December, and you also don’t need to completely abandon the habits that got you into shape in the first place.

The solution is to simply change the target for a few weeks.

Instead of trying to power your way though endless temptation, your job is to keep enough structure in place that you can enjoy the Christmas period without feeling like you’re starting from scratch in January.

And that begins with how you structure your training.

You’re only going to train 3 days per week

I’ve worked in gyms for a very long time, and I’ve noticed there are basically two types of Christmas trainee.

There are those who try to power through December at 100mp/h.

And there are those who announce “I’ll start again in January” sometime around the 1st of October.

I’ve been the first one.

I fucking love training. In my younger years I’d happily trudge through a foot of snow for an hour just to make sure I didn’t miss leg day.

At the time I thought that meant I was dedicated.

Hardcore, even.

Looking back, there were occasions where it mainly meant I was missing things with my family because I couldn’t get bear the thought of deviating from my usual routine.

Eventually I realised something.

Your normal training schedule doesn’t need to operate 52 weeks of the year.

So during the festive period I deliberately reduce mine. The schedule I use in the Daily Trainer looks like this:

That’s it.

Two proper full-body sessions ensure all of the major muscle groups continue receiving a decent training stimulus, while the middle session gives you some extra arm work because, well, December is no excuse for having shit sleeves.

More importantly, it gives you four days away from the gym every week.

That makes this programme much easier to fit around shopping, parties, family events, travelling, school holidays, and everything else December throws at you.

And temporarily reducing your training frequency isn’t the same thing as throwing your results away. You see, maintaining something generally requires less work than building it in the first place.

Research on reduced-frequency resistance training has shown that considerably less training can maintain previously developed strength and muscle mass for periods of time. In one study, young men maintained their squat strength and quadriceps size over eight weeks despite reducing their training workload substantially; other maintenance studies have produced similar results. (1, 2)

So I’m not trying to squeeze six days of training into Christmas week.

I’m deliberately taking my foot off the gas for few weeks.

Then when normal life returns in January, I begin increasing the workload again.

Simple.

Let’s simplify your nutrition

The worst thing about trying to diet through december is trying to diet through December.

I attempted the “hardcore” approach several times when I was younger.

I’d try to eat exactly the same way on 20th December as I did on an ordinary Tuesday in March.

Predictably, this resulted in various stages of Christmas misery.

There was hunger.

There was guilt.

There was me wanting to headbutt carol singers because I hadn’t touched a carbohydrate since breakfast.

And, eventually, there was always the mother of all blow-outs.

So nowadays I do things very differently.

During December, I stop worrying about making my diet perfect and concentrate on a fe basic things:

Keep an eye on calories when it’s practical. Eat plenty of protein. Drink water.

That’s pretty much it.

I’m not interested in whether Christmas dinner fits your fucking macros, mate.

I’m not going to ask you to weigh those roast potatoes, either.

And if your Auntie Susan has made a trifle containing enough calories to keep a small fishing village alive through winter, you don’t need to quietly disappear into the kitchen with a calculator and an overwhelming feeling of sadness.

The important phrase here is “when it’s practical”.

Most days in December are still ordinary days.

You wake up, have breakfast, go to work, eat lunch and have dinner.

Those days don’t suddenly require 5000 calories simply because Noddy Holder is playing in Tesco. So keep some basic structure on normal days, and enjoy the occasions that are usually worth enjoying.

That’s very different from saying:

“Christmas is coming, therefore nutrition no longer exists.”

And the amount of weight people typically gain over the holiday period is considerably smaller than the legendary “5-10lb” Christmas disaster we’re often warned about. In a prospective study of 195 adults, average weight gain was around 0.37kg — less than one pound! — although there was considerably individual variation. (3)

That doesn’t mean calories stop counting at Christmas.

It means a handful of festive meals aren’t going to erase a year of hard work.

The bigger problem is when a few enjoyable days turn into several weeks of deliberate overeating because you’ve convinced yourself that you’ve already ruined everything.

Don’t do that.

Enjoy Christmas, just keep some structure.

Don’t track or train on the main days

This bit is even easier.

There are several days where I don’t want you worrying about any of this:

Christmas Day. Boxing Day. New Year’s Day.

No calorie tracking.

No scheduled workout.

No trying to “earn” Christmas dinner with a 6am HIIT session.

No sitting on an exercise bike in the spare room while everbody else opens presents because some luminous-toothed unqualified Instagram coach told you “champions don’t take Christmas off bro.”

Calm your tits.

These are three days.

Spend them with the people you love.

Eat the food, have a drink, and watch a Christmas movie or two.

The gym will still exist afterwards.

And if you’re somebody who finds taking days off hard, remember this:

They aren’t accidental “missed” workouts. They’re part of the fucking programme.

That’s an important distinction.

You’re not falling off the wagon, but choosing to take a little break.

And then January happens

There is one final part of the plan which matters just as much as everything above.

When Christmas finally ends, don’t punish yourself for having enjoyed it.

You don’t need a detox.

You don’t need to slash your calories to extreme lows.

You don’t need to add twice-daily cardio workouts that suck the very life out of you.

When you get used to factoring in this “downtime” over the festive period, you lose a lot of the stress that usually comes with it, and you start seeing things for what they really are.

Your bodyweight may have jumped after several large meals, because you’ve eten more food, more carbohydrates, and more sodium than usual. That doesn’t mean every extra pouund on the scales represents a pound of newly-acquired blubber — in a lot of cases, it’s merely water.

So don’t declare a state of unnecessary emergency.

Just go back to normal.

Resume your regular calorie target.

Start increasing your gym workload.

Job done.

Christmas itself was never the problem

Christmas has never been the thing which causes the issue.

It’s the all-or-nothing mentality surrounding it.

Trying to maintain perfect discipline throughout December creates unnecessary stress.

Likewise, abandoning your usual routine for several weeks creates an unnecessary mountain to climb in January.

There’s a much easier middle ground.

Train a few times each week. Keep your nutrition reasonably strucured on ordinary days. Enjoy the occasions that matter. Take Christmas off.

Then carry on as you were.

At the start of the year I like to schedule this “downtime” into clients’ programmes, so all year long they know they’ve got this short block where they can take it easy. When it arrives, they get to enjoy the festivities without worrying about losing their results, and without the usual “food guilt” that other people from the gym experience.

Better yet, in a lot of cases it actually helps people be more consistent throughout the year itself, because having this “downtime” on the horizon acts as a mental reward for their efforts.

I’ve applied this strategy not only on myself, but on thousands of PT clients over the years, and I haven’t had one single person choose to go back to their old chaotic festive habits, so I hope it works for you too.

Remember, fitness should improve your life — not miss out on it!

I’ll see you in the New Year.

P.S. If you’re looking for the location in the header image, it’s the awesome Alta’s Rustler Lodge.

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