Holiday Eating: Keeping a Positive Body Image
Liz Lucas, fitness advocate, body builder, Miami University graduate student, and owner of Instagram fitness account: up.lift.yourself — shares her fitness and self-love advice on how to decrease your anxieties around holiday eating and maintain a positive body image.
The following content is from Liz’s fitness Instagram account, up.lift.yourself
“Let’s talk body image on eating holidays. While Thanksgiving and Christmas is a wonderful time to be with family and friends, it comes with its challenges. For those who struggle with body image or specific goals, it can be a source of anxiety. I weighed myself before and after Thanksgiving festivities and there was a 3.6 lb difference. A lot of our favorite festive foods come with a lot of salt and preservatives, which hold on to a lot of water. Add some wine and apple cider, and you have the perfect recipe for bloating! A lot of us feel like this one enormous meal will lead to a several pound weight gain, but the reality is that you will slowly shed most of that excess water over a few days. If you are feeling anxious about your holiday meal, there are a few things that you can do to help expedite the water loss system and restart your body!
1) TAKE A DEEP BREATH. Odds are that you probably didn’t eat as much as you think you did. If you did eat enough to feed 13 elephants (like I did), still take that deep breath! One meal will not be the downfall of your progress. Pick up where you left off, you’ll catch right up.
2) WATER YOUR BOD. While it seems counterproductive to drink water to lose water, it will help to flush out some of that salt that the water in your system is currently bound to.
3) PUT THOSE POTATOES TO WORK. Carbs are a great source of energy! Use that glucose by going for a family walk or squeezing in a heavy lift. The more you move around, the faster you’ll feel like yourself.
4) DON’T try to diet down and “make up for calories”. You’ll mess with your metabolism and will feel more stressed out than you did before. Your body will try to store the extra food for later and that’s how we gain fat tissue!
Don’t panic and trust the process. You won’t lose all of that excess water in a day, but you’ll definitely see progress. Don’t be too hard on yourself! Eat all the food and make all the gainz! You’re all beautiful and worthy of enjoying a holiday meal to the fullest extent, whether you’re counting your macros along the way or eating pounds of potatoes.”
Liz is such a great example of pursuing fitness based off of health, strength, and confidence. Her fitness account really represents what it’s like to work towards improving your physical and mental health, while loving yourself at the same time. She inspires my fitness and self-love journey, and she may also just happen to be my best friend…
So I have a quick interview with her to share Liz’s inspiring fitness journey and her empowering words of wisdom.
- What inspired you to start your personal fitness journey and eventually your Instagram platform of up.lift.yourself?
“I had always been active because I played soccer and ran, but when I started my fitness journey in high school it was for the wrong reasons. I had ultimately decided that being extremely thin was the only way I could like myself. When I went to college, I no longer played soccer or went for runs and basically ate anything I wanted. I quickly went from 100lbs to 135lbs. This was a big deal for me. I didn’t like who I was when I restricted myself to get to 100lbs, but I didn’t like being the person who didn’t care about their health either. I slowly got back into going to the gym for the sake of feeling better and more like myself. When you change your motives from a number to a feeling, it’s amazing how much faster you see progress in your overall health (physical and mental). I eventually created up.lift.yourself to serve as a resource for women (or men) who struggle with loving themselves from the inside out.
I’ve personally found that giving yourself the gift of a healthy lifestyle is so incredibly conducive to your own happiness.
It’s up to you to decide how much work you want to put into this lifestyle, but even something as small as drinking more water and stretching for five minutes can change your mindset for an entire day. On a platform like Instagram, it’s easy to get caught up in crazy diets or waist trainers. I try to encourage the concept of “put good in, get good out” to encourage people to work hard for a feeling rather than for a smaller pant size. It’s obviously a lot more difficult than it initially sounds, but it’s amazing how many people have reached out to me with questions about the fitness world.”
2. What’s one of the biggest lessons you’ve learned on your fitness journey?
“The biggest lesson I’ve learned on my fitness journey is that no one is perfect. No one is motivated all the time. You can’t realistically eat perfectly clean every day of the week or always have the energy to lift heavy or make it through your cardio session. You are going to make mistakes. You will want to quit. However, we need to sacrifice that idea of perfection to life a full life. It’s okay to need a break. As one of my favorite fitness influencers, Whitney Simmons, says, ‘this is a lifestyle, not a diet’. It’s also important to acknowledge that there are multiple ways to be fit. Your definition of fitness might not match someone else’s, and that’s okay. I’m into lifting weights, but I have plenty of other friends who run, take dance classes, or do yoga, and those are all equally beneficial to overall wellness.”
3. What’s your charge for women?
“My advice for any woman who wants to empower themselves is to remember that you are blessed to be a body with a soul in this universe.
Out of the 7 billion possibilities, you were born with a unique purpose. Take advantage of opportunities to better yourself, even if they might be uncomfortable initially. Nothing worth having comes from a place of no work. Embrace challenge and embrace change!”
Liz, thank you and I love you hot mama. ❤
