How to Use Holiday Calories for Fuel (not a setback)

This is a transcript of a recorded podcast

Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of Strength, the podcast for women. Last week we talked about the bare minimum method, essentially how to win on your worst weeks and create momentum through the holiday season so that you don't feel like absolute trash coming out on January, right? But this week I wanna flip the script a little bit. So what if your holidays are actually giving you something helpful? What if those extra calories could be used for extra strength? So you can coast through utilizing something like the bare minimum method

Or if you're in the right head space, you could actually use this season as a mini strength building phase, so to speak. And so I want to talk to you today about how to level up from survival mode to strategic mode. Now, disclaimer that neither one of these strategies or modes or however you want to think of it is right or wrong. In fact, you can use it interchangeably, right? So depending on where you are in this season or where you are from year to year, different methods might work better for you in different times, right? And they might work better for some people and better for other people. So I myself have used the bare minimum method for sure many times. Once I realized that this was actually a strategic and beneficial thing to do was to really just like focus on those bare minimums and those non-negotiables. It actually was very freeing and helped me, you know, do exactly what it's meant to do, which is. maintain momentum so I don't feel like absolute garbage and I continue to keep that identity intact of being a fit and healthy person. But there's times where I'm beyond bare minimum, right? I'm in a really great head space and I don't need to do the bare minimum. I'm actually in a place where I can keep running what it feels like, you know, on all cylinders. And so how can I still use the same concepts of being able to really enjoy everything that the holidays have to offer in terms of food and yummy yumminess, right? But how can I maybe utilize this into gym that in a way that's also going to help me maintain them that momentum, but in a positive way, right? So sometimes we can really get caught up in our head. Like I'm firing on all cylinders. I'm feeling really great, but the holidays are going to screw me over because I can't say no to these things. And so it's almost like we beat ourselves up and we beat ourselves into submission. Like, okay, fine.

I'll stop caring and I'll gain weight and whatever, you know? So we can also go into that space as well. And so this kind of concept of leveling up and using those holiday calories to get stronger and really lean in has helped me also, you know, maintain momentum in a different way when I'm in a better space and a better head space and kind of ready to level up. So this episode is really for women who feel...

Less stressed, right? More relaxed, a little bit more well-fed, well-rested, and ready to train. And not really those who are feeling overwhelmed, overstressed, or mentally maxed, or those who really have barely time to breathe, let alone lift, right? That's where the bare minimum method is really gonna help you. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to this, because it's really good to listen to the different ways that you can attack different seasons of life. But you don't have to force this phase, right? If you're available for it, then it can really be magical.

And so the reality is the truth about muscle building and calories, right? Muscle is expensive for the body to build. It's not something that our bodies just do naturally, which is one of the reasons I always kind of laugh to myself when women tell me like, well, I want to lift. And I like the idea of like getting more tone and having more muscle definition and all the health benefits that having more muscle comes with, but I don't want to get bulky. I don't want to look like a bodybuilder. I'm like, honey.

If only it were that easy, right? Muscles expensive. Your body doesn't want to do it naturally. You have to really put it in the right environment. In order to grow muscle, you need enough protein. You need enough training stimulus and the right training stimulus. You need enough sleep and you definitely need enough calories, right? And what does the holiday season naturally bring? More calories, more carbs, more sodium, of course, as well, and often more frequent meals. But it doesn't have to be a setback. you can view it as fuel and you can kind of think of it as like a built in mini bulk without really intentionally trying to bulk. Now the mistake I wouldn't want you to make and the mistake that I have made in the past many a time and many women have as well is leaning too far into this right now. If it happens, it happens and there's ways to obviously, if you gain a little bit more fat than you wanted, you can reverse that. You have all the control and the ability to do that and we can have conversations about that on future podcast episodes, but

In general, if you lean in too hard and just start thinking of every cookie and piece of pie and glass of wine as like extra fuel for your workout and you're bulking and it's fine, then you're not gonna be super happy with the results. But if you can continue to balance a whole foods, 80 to 90 % whole foods diet with these fun treats built in and maybe a little bit extra on top of that, then it can absolutely work in your favor.

Okay, now for women specifically over 35 and that 35 to kind of 55 age range, estrogen starts to change, right? It becomes harder to build and maintain muscle and our body tends to under utilize the protein that we have in our body. So we're not using it as efficiently in order to build and maintain muscle. So this is why it becomes even more important for women as we get older to consume not even necessarily more protein, but at least adequate protein because most women are not consuming adequate protein for their goals. And another huge issue is that most women are chronically under eating nine months out of the year, right? And so we can use these times of the year where more food is available. If you can kind of get out of your own head and get out of that anxiety and stress space of that yo-yo dieting mindset, right? Then we can actually utilize this as like a shorter, higher calorie phase that can help restore glycogen in the muscle, which is gonna help with your strength and muscle building. You can increase training so that you can increase your strength and your muscle. You can use those extra calories to help improve recovery and even reduce cravings and improve your sleep. So one of the issues with cravings is that we're constantly cognitively restricting ourselves. So cognitive restriction is the idea of we're constantly telling ourselves we can't have something.

And very rarely is cognitive restriction actually linked to actual restriction. Think about it. The more you tell yourself you can't have something, a lot of times the more you end up eating of it. So women who are more cognitively restricted actually end up consuming more calories overall than women who don't constantly have that cognitive restriction. and that's ironic, right? So the more you tell yourself not to eat, sometimes the more calories you end up consuming. So if we can actually just release ourselves from that, that cognitive restriction mindset, allow ourselves to have the food and lean into the season, it can actually help reduce the cravings that keep you constantly coming back for more. Okay, so if we can switch our thinking from, we're not gaining holiday weight, you're giving your muscles and your body a rare opportunity and your mind, you're giving your mind a rare opportunity as well. So some reasons why or how holiday calories can make you stronger. Number one, I touched on this a little earlier, more carbs equals more glycogen, which is going to naturally lead to better lifts. Glycogen is stored carbohydrate essentially inside your muscles and more glycogen is going to lead to more energy, which is going to lead to your body being able to lift heavier weight. So this is a great time to lean in to trying to actually get stronger on your squats, your deadlifts, your pull-ups, your push-ups, your bench presses, your rows, all of those heavy compound lifts. This is a great opportunity to lean in on that, okay? Higher calories are also gonna lead to better and faster recovery. So a lot of people who notice they're constantly sore, higher calories are gonna help you work through that quicker, you're going to bounce back a little quicker and you'll find that you can train harder and more often because you're not having the setbacks of feeling sore or injured. So something that I always notice when I'm in calorie deficits, especially when I push that calorie deficit a little bit too long, is I start to not only feel tired and more drained, but I start to get these eeks and tweaks and torques and things all over my body that they don't stop me from training, but they really kind of start to bring me down and they make it so it's harder to bounce back. Like I'll get these little shoulder pains or hip twinges or things like that. And when I'm eating enough calories, my body doesn't have that issue because I'm, you know, have the fuel to be able to recover faster and not have those things happen. So this is a great opportunity to push that weight a little bit as well because you have the calories in order to recover a little bit better. another possible benefit is better sleep, which better sleep is naturally going to lead to better muscle growth and better fat body, fat composition as well. So our bodies really don't like to let go of body fat when we are not sleeping well.

So not to say that you're gonna lose fat on the holiday season. You might though, if you're sleeping well and you're training really hard, even if you're eating a little bit more, your body might actually lose a little bit of body fat in that process as well if all these conditions are right. So something to keep in mind. A lot of times holidays can mean...A little bit more food, sometimes leads to better sleep, but also maybe later mornings or slower evenings gets getting dark a little earlier. Maybe we're getting sleepy a little earlier and sleep plus carbs are going to be better for growth hormone release and overall hormone balance. So if this is true for you, cause I know that better sleep at this holiday season is not true for everybody. If this true for you, this is definitely a huge benefit that I would not sit on, like take advantage of the fact that you're getting better sleep and use that fuel and that fresh energy that you wake up with to put into some intensity in your workouts. Okay. And then the increased sodium. I know that sounds like just a bad thing. It doesn't necessarily have to be just a bad thing. Increased sodium can actually give you kind of like a better pump and a little bit more strength and energy.

You can think of it as like one of the pieces of electrolytes, right? Is sodium. So if we have natural, you know, higher sodium diets right now, you're going to have an increase in blood volume. You might have better pump, more strength and better hydration because you're probably more likely to want to drink water. cause your body's just going to be craving that a little bit more. So again, the, want to like put a blanket that this is still assuming we're aiming for at least 80 % of our foods to come from whole foods, lean proteins, whole grains, high fiber, right? All of that stuff. So this is not a situation where we're going all out, it, I'm having mac and cheese for every meal and cookies after that. Like that's gonna send you backwards. But if we're still prioritizing those whole healthy foods and a 80 % whole food diet with high fiber and high protein,

And we're also being a little bit more loose with treats, you know, higher sodium, higher calorie things. That's where you might notice some of these benefits or you might be able to utilize what you're naturally getting and kind of change your mindset to view it as a possible benefit instead of all negative. Right. And then of course, a huge benefit is the mental relief of allowing yourself to go there in your mind. So that mental relief is not only going to help you, like I said, like release some of that cognitive restriction.

So that idea of switching it to, can't, into, of course I can, is actually going to be really transformative, but it might actually help you focus a little bit better in the gym as well. So when you're not real stressed about eating perfectly or making sure everything's perfect, and then if it's not, you're saying, screw it, why am I working out anyway? Maybe you're a little bit more relaxed and you're like, no, this is very intentional. I'm gonna use all this for good. I'm gonna put all that you know, those extra sugar, extra carbs, extra whatever into my workouts, I'm gonna get some intensity and I'm really gonna, you know, go in with this mindset is it's really beneficial and transformative for your own mind year round, not just at this holiday season, okay? So some tips on how to turn those holiday calories into strength, the practical part really, like, so what does this really look and how can I really make sure? Cause I like this idea, right? So you're listening, you're like, This makes a lot of sense to me, but what does that actually look like? So one, I kind of already touched on, which is prioritizing those big compound lifts, your squats, your hinge, like a deadlift, a Romanian deadlift, a hip thrust, barbell hip thrust, your pushing pattern. So bench pressing, overhead pressing, your pull pattern, just gonna be like a pull-up or a barbell row. You're really gonna wanna focus on these heavy movement patterns. If you haven't yet...you know, really perfected your skill in these, or if you've never actually pushed to see what you can actually lift in these patterns, then this is the time to do it, right? So focus on these heavy movements, keep those big lifts early in your week or early in your training day so that you can put a lot of your energy towards those before you move down through the other exercises. Another one is gonna be really training with intensity. So this is what I want you to do. And I want you to do this all the time, by the way, this is something I talk about a lot of how you should go in to train, but especially right now. So if you're somebody who you've kind of always worked out, maybe you lift weights, but maybe you've never really crossed that threshold into really pushing yourself in terms of progressive overload and what your body's capable of. Maybe you've still kind of questioned yourself in terms of form or like being scared you're gonna get hurt, et cetera. This is a time where if you haven't done that yet, this would be the time to really make sure you're doing that. I want you to focus every single workout on going in with a goal.

And it's like a mini goal, okay? So looking at those main movement patterns that I mentioned before, a squat, a hinge, a push or a pull, and looking at each of those exercises and coming at, okay, what did I do last week? And what do I want to do this week? All right, I did eight reps of a squat and then it was a pretty heavy. So I only did six the next one and six the next one. Okay, what's your goal this week? I'm gonna try to do eight, using that same weight. And then next week I'm gonna try to do nine. And then next week I'm gonna try to do 10 And then that week, once I'm doing 10 consistently, I'm gonna increase the weight so that I can only do eight or six again, and then work back up to 10 using that heavier weight. Like literally every single week, barring, you know, times where you're just not feeling it, or you're just going through the motions, because you gotta get through it, or you're on your menstrual cycle, whatever. But like 80 % of the time, I would love to see you going into the gym, having those intentions with your training. What did I do last week, and how can I improve this week in a small, micro way?

And it doesn't actually shouldn't be every single exercise. Really do this with your squat hinge push pull, like those big compound movements that should be at the beginning of your workouts. And the rest of them, you can still kind of come with that mindset. Like, is there an area I can prove here, but it doesn't have to be every exercise, nor should it be, because that would be a little bit much, okay? I also want you to be pushing one to two reps from failure. So if you, again, if you have never actually pushed yourself to see what you're capable of, I want you to try something…no matter what your workout program says, I don't care if it says to do six reps or eight to 10 or 12 to 15 or 30 plus, I want you to stop and ignore that advice completely. Look at the weight that you did last week. So let's say you did 25 pounds. I want you to just do as many reps as possible. Do as many reps as possible and then look at how many reps you were supposed to do or the reps that you did last week. So what I find a lot of times is the guidance might say 10 to 12, right? The guidance might say eight to 10, but then, I will tell somebody to do this and all of sudden they did 20 reps and I'll say, what did we learn? Right? We learned that we can definitely do more weight. So I want you to be choosing weights that get you one to two reps from failure or technical failure. What is technical failure? That means that your form is falling apart. So even if the muscle hasn't necessarily gone to failure, your form has gone to failure. So one of those two things, if it's a smaller lift, like a bicep curl where we're a little bit more isolated, then it's going to be muscular failure. But if you're doing, let's say a heavy barbell back squat, your muscles might not feel like they're actually a failure, but you might start to feel like your form is going to break down because a squat is also very neuromuscular. And we're talking about strength building. So I really want you to push yourself. The point is that intensity. So getting to one to two reps from failure and using those AMRAP sets to figure out what is a good weight for you. Right. And then I want you to use your carbs for fuel intensity. All right. Like I said, carbs equal more glycogen stored in the muscle and your muscles use that glycogen for output, for, you know, intensity and for being able to go one to two reps from failure. So we use it. All right. another tip for you is keep protein solid. You don't have to track in order to do this. I do recommend having a food scale because every time you go into a meal, you can read food labels and weigh out your portions just to make sure you're hitting a 30 to 40 gram of protein per meal target. So if you're having three meals a day, having 30 to 40 grams of protein per main meal is going to be very likely sufficient, if not at least laying a really strong foundation for getting enough protein in throughout the day. So aim for 30 to 40 grams per meal. You don't have to be tracking. I actually don't recommend you track during the holiday season unless you have specific reasons you want to, I'm not gonna deter you from it. But a lot of people feel like they have to, or they feel guilty if they're not. And I say, no, if that's where the mindset you're coming in with, this is a time to relax those rules. It's like that cognitive restriction, like release yourself from it. Use this as an opportunity to practice your ability to eyeball portions, right? Use it as an opportunity to rebuild fuel for tracking later, because we're gonna want to be able to track really diligently when we're going in a fat loss phase, and you're gonna wanna like build up the willpower to be able to do it again, right? What you're not gonna be able to do if you're tracking 24 seven, 365 or telling yourself you should be tracking 24 seven, 365. Cause that's kind of like that cognitive restriction too. Like if you keep telling yourself that you can't eat things and you want it more, if you keep telling yourself you have to be tracking, even if you're not tracking, well, then you're just, you're still tiring yourself out from tracking, even though you're not tracking. Like what sense does that make? So release yourself of the burden, tell yourself, nope, I'm taking a break from tracking, but utilize it as an opportunity to practice that portion control and that eyeball your ability to eyeball things and get that 30 to 40 grams per meal. And that's really going to set you up for success. So 30 to 40 grams per meal, as well as making sure there's a lot of produce present in each main meal. Holidays often have plenty of rich protein, rich foods. think of like holiday hams and turkeys and roasted chicken, right? So like lean into that. Okay. Your visual cues are going to work fine for this season of life. Okay.

And then here's a really practical tip. Use this idea of like a heavy holiday leg day, okay? Let's think of it like that, like a strategy, okay? So whenever you have a really heavy meal, so it's not gonna be every day, but those kind of big, the biggest carbiest meals, train your legs like 24 hours after that meal, okay? So like Thanksgiving, know, leftovers or Christmas dinner or whatever, this is gonna be perfect for like a squat and deadlift day. And if you think of your lower body, it's almost half of your entire body and so your muscles are really storing a lot of glycogen there and you can utilize that those carbs, those calories, really well doing like a heavy squatter, heavy, heavy deadlift day. So that's a great practical strategy as well. another one would be to keep your weekends or your social events as like quote unquote fuel days. so don't restrict yourself. Don't punish yourself, use those big meals as like performance boosters is kind of goes in with the other one. But so instead of thinking of weekends and social events as being like potentially diet ruining, think of them as, all right, this is, this is an opportunity to kind of fuel up and then getting ready for my holiday, you know, heavy leg day. Okay. Um, so again, just like a mindset shift there. And then the other one is just to make sure you're hydrated. So having a little extra sodium, not a bad thing, but you're going to need water to balance that out.

It's also going to help your performance and your recovery and your pump. So please make sure you're staying hydrated. So making sure you're getting two and a half to three liters of water per day minimum. that, you know, recommendation is going to adjust a little bit based on your body size and et cetera. But two and a half to three liters is a really great starting point for almost everybody. Okay. So remember that this is not an excuse to binge. This is not an excuse to go into an all out like, I'm bulking, right? I'm just gonna eat everything. Cause it's going towards the muscle. It doesn't work that way. Actually recent studies show that there's a very small amount of a surplus over maintenance that you can eat that will go towards extra muscle building, right? But it's maybe 100, maybe 200 calories over maintenance.

And after that point, you just get diminishing returns. So after that point, your muscles aren't going to continually see get bigger. The more calories you eat, you're instead going to end up gaining more body fat on top of that. Okay. So something to keep in mind, something else to keep in mind is this does not seem to be true when it comes to protein. So let's say your maintenance calories, and I'm just going to throw random numbers out there. Let's say your maintenance calories are somewhere in the 2000 range.

If you eat 2100 to 2200 calories, so we're 100 to 200 calories over that maintenance, most likely you're going to be able to utilize a lot of those extra calories towards muscle building, especially if most of those 2000 calories are coming from whole foods, protein, high fiber carbs, et cetera. And you know, 80 to 90 % of those, you know 2,021, 2,200 calories are coming from the cookies and the wine and the cakes and the mac and cheese, right? So if we can kind of minimize it that you're gonna get really great response from your body in that scenario, right? But if you increase those calories, 22, 23, 24, 2,500, and it's coming from carbs and fats, then you're gonna notice that yes, you are still building muscle, but not at a greater rate. You're actually building it at the same rate you would be at 2,100, 2,200 calories, but we're adding extra body fat, okay? That's what's gonna happen unless all those extra calories come from pure protein. So let's say you do the 21, 2200, but then you go up to 2500, 26, 27, 28, you could literally go up to almost 3000 calories if you wanted, if it was pure protein and it seems to have a different effect. Cause I brought is a whole bunch of reasons why I can do a whole podcast on protein alone. But if you're going to massively overeat, try to have it be in protein alone, which is actually really, really hard to do.

I mean, most of the time we overeat because the food we're overeating is so addictively good that we keep eating it. And that's usually not the case with pure protein. Like who just overeats chicken breast because it was just so delicious. Like nobody, right? But it's something to keep in mind. So I want you to remember that this is not like a, know, I'm bulking, I can eat everything. Or this is not like an excuse to just binge and throw in the towel. This is not like a license to abandon your healthy meals entirely. It's simply when life or seasons give you extra calories,

Lean in, right? Put it to work. Release yourself of the mental burden that a lot of times we put on ourselves at this time of the year and put it into that intensity and training in the gym, right? So you will know if this approach works for you if you are having better sleep. Like I mentioned before, like if you're somebody that didn't, you know, that did not speak to you, you're like, no, I am not sleeping better. Thanks for thinking I am, but it's actually more hectic.

I'm like, okay, but if you're employing this and you're having higher energy or maybe less soreness or you are feeling stronger in your lifts, like, hey, I'm actually going to the gym and I'm feeling good. If you maybe are craving a little bit fewer sweets, if you're feeling more confident and more capable, maybe your clothes are fitting the same or better, okay? Maybe you're excited to train again. That's how you know that this approach is working. But signs that maybe you should you know, utilize the bare minimum mode or that bare minimum method instead. Maybe you feel overwhelmed, sleep deprived, anxious about food. Maybe you're traveling nonstop, you're constantly busy. You're more tired, not less tired. You're very mentally tapped out. You're struggling to fit in the things you already need to fit in, let alone workouts. That's going to be a time where you're in bare minimum mode. So I myself have been in these situations. I mean, every year is different. Last year I was in a place where I was all over the place. I was traveling. I was trying to get workouts in, you know, at all, let alone ones that were like very intense or using heavy weight, right? I was not in a place where I could really use calories to good use because I wasn't using them well, right? I would eat a lot and be like, this is going to be great for my training session. And then the next day what happened? like, I can't even get to the gym today, let alone the day after that. I'd finally get in the gym and I'd have like 30 minutes to do something small and that this method that I'm talking about today would not have worked. I needed to be in bare minimum. Now this year, I've kind of been in bare minimum just because of a mindset phase, but actually, I don't really have a lot going on. I have my gym available to me. The weather has been pretty decent here in Texas. I'm getting great sleep. I don't feel anxious about food. We're really not traveling that much, I don't feel that mentally tapped out or overwhelmed. This would be a great opportunity for me. You know what? Lean in a little bit. Let's switch up my exercise programming. Let's bring back those squats and deadlifts that I have kind of not really been prioritizing as much. Bring those exercises back and really put some intensity into them. So both modes are wins. Both modes can absolutely lead to progress. Just pick the one that honors your season, right? So just remember the holiday season isn't a setback. never should be a setback. It's just a season and it's one that repeats every single year. So until you learn how to manage it properly, you're constantly going to be overwhelmed and frustrated by it, right? So all seasons can and should be used intentionally. That bare minimum method is really going to help keep you stable when you need it. But if you're ready and able, this idea of leveling up and using holiday calories as rocket fuel could really boost your metabolism and your mindset going into January and 2026.

So let your muscles eat, let your body lift and utilize those calories and let this be the season that maybe you surprise yourself. Okay. Thank you guys so much for being here. I will see you next week. I don't know. What is this? This is the, this is like two weeks before Christmas, right? So next week will be the week before Christmas and holy moly. It is just, we're just rolling right into 2026. That's very surprising. If you found this helpful or useful, I would love it if you shared it with a friend, share it on your socials, make a comment, leave a five-star review.

All of those things help the algorithm push my content out to more people that might benefit from hearing it. But it also just helps me as a small business owner reach more people. Cause my goal is and has always been to help women create strength from the inside out or the outside in as sometimes I say. So we're building strength on the outside and it's really helping build our strength on the inside. That's my passion and the more people I can help deliver that message to an easy understandable way, the happier I am. So thank you for being here and I will see you next week.