The holiday season is upon us once again! Ah! The festooning, the joyful children looking dreamily at toys in the storefront windows, the party buffets as long as the flight deck of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier!

That’s right- get ready for the Holiday Feast-Fest. That time of year when your friends bet on how much weight they’ll gain during the ‘Super Bowl of Fat’.

Seriously, the average American will gain about 12 pounds from Thanksgiving to Super Bowl Sunday. That’s about 4 pounds of fat a month or, for you calorie counters out there, about 46,000 excess calories in addition to the extra luggage you may have been holding on to since last year.

46,000 calories.
12 pounds of fat.
48 quarter sticks of butter!

Then comes the much-vaunted New Years resolution to lose weight and start an exercise program. Now, instead of trying to lose the 12 pounds from last year’s holiday guilt-fest, you have an additional load to dump off and it’s harder than ever.

I love to eat as much as anyone I know and, growing up as a little Italian boy, I understand the need to have a pound of linguini and loaf of bread at every meal, even breakfast. You don’t say ‘no’ to Mamma Ranieri!

But we’re not kids anymore. We have real-life health concerns like diabetes and heart disease that we have to prevent or manage. Let’s go over a few of the most common pitfalls of the holiday Feast-Fest, and ideas of how we can avoid the guilt that ensues after the parties are over.

Click here for pitfalls and remedies to help you manage the holiday eating frenzy!

Lifestage Fitness was created by combining the best attributes of most contemporary fitness centers with unparallelled personal fitness services.

Joe Ranieri is a 30-year veteran of the health and fitness industry, and is owner of Joe Ranieri’s LifeStage Fitness, an individualized fitness and nutrition training facility in suburban Chicago. Joe has helped hundreds of exercise enthusiasts of all ages and ability achieve their fitness goals using his simple, realistic approach to proper nutrition and exercise. Joe can be reached for questions regarding your desire for a healthy lifestyle through his email at joe@lifestagefitness.com.

Understanding that life-changes do not occur overnight, Joe Ranieri provides a real-world approach to making regular exercise and proper nutrition second nature – an easy, sustainable way to gradually, and permanantly, help you help yourself.

• 45 Day Slimdown - Part 1
• 45 Day Slimdown - Part 2
• 45 Day Slimdown - Counting Calories
• Surviving Fad Diets - The "Lose Weight Fast" Scheme
• Get Rid of Excess Fat - Part 1
• Get Rid of Excess Fat - Part 2

• Childhood Obesity - Leading by Example
• Childhood Obesity Step 1- Portion Control
• Eliminating Childhood Obesity - Do's and Don'ts
• Eliminating Childhood Obesity - More Do's and Don'ts

• Manage Holiday Eating - Part 1
• Manage Holiday Eating - Part 2
• Manage Holiday Eating - Part 3