How To Keep it Healthy While Cheering On Your Team

Football playoffs are well under way. And even if you haven’t developed an addiction to watching those football players… er, watching football, you certainly aren’t one to pass up a chance to cheer and chant with drink in hand, your celebrating fueled by all that bar and party food.  

While the temptation to eat and drink with wild abandon cheers you on (you can hear that 7 Layer Dip yelling for you), you do not have to throw up the flag of surrender. Yes, you’ve made some penalties eating and drinking choices these last two weeks, but you’re not out of the game yet, your own health and fitness game, that is. 

For a few winning, comeback ideas—relevant to football season  or anytime—let’s take a game plan from our friends at FlyBarre- here’s what instructor Christie Moquin recommends: 

Focus and awareness. Any exercise can be performed without really engaging, without really being present. Unfocused exercise rarely leads to maximal results. Now, when you eat and drink without awareness—mindlessly—there is a tendency to overindulge, which can maximize your waistline. Try eating before you head to the bar, or waiting to eat until halftime, when you can direct your full attention to the task in hand. 

Small movements, pulsing as we call it, amount to big change. Small portions amount to less (weight) gain. Yes, there’s an entire pound of guacamole in front of you. Trust me, I could eat 2 pounds, but a serving of guacamole (alone) is just 1/4 cup, comprising 99 ‘good fat’ calories. Any more and that fat turns not-so-good. And you might be able to proudly drink a whole lot more than the recommended daily intake of alcohol, but more is not recommended. Not only can imbibing lead to mindless eating, and mindlessness in general (we’ll save that for a different Blog post), it leads to dehydration. Dehydration does not play well with Flywheel and FlyBarre. If you do make it to extra rounds (of beer), be sure to take an H2O timeout between each drink. 

Just as every pulse makes a difference, every eating and drinking choice makes a difference. If you are going to eat 2 servings of guac, you don’t need the buffalo chicken dip too. If you’re going to eat pizza, try throwing on a few veggies to assist in the balancing out of your Mega-Meaty-quadruple-cheese pie. Then only eat 1 or 2 slices instead of the whole pie. You can choose to overindulge or you can choose not too. And you can decide that your health and fitness goals are more exciting than that extra helping of fried whatever. They really are. I’m not the only Fly instructor cheering you on! 

Article credit: Christie Moquin. Christie is an instructor at FlyBarre Buckhead. To learn more about FlyBarre, including how to get your first class free, go here. Learn more about Flywheel instructors, their nutrition tips, amazing success stories and more on the FLY Blog: http://blog.flywheelsports.com