Let’s be honest – no one really wants to follow a diet during the holiday season.
For one thing, there’s just tons of good stuff to eat! You’d have to pass on all the food you love.
Plus, there’s pressure from family, friends, and co-workers … and holiday parties … and special treats around the house … and the list goes on …
So should you just give up? Is there no hope during the holidays? Should you just plan on getting back into your routine in the new year?
The answer is NO!
See, according to a recent study by the National Institutes of Healthy, the average adult gains one pound during the holiday season. This might not sound like much … but the thing is, the average adult never loses that pound!!
This is bad news. And obviously, especially since you’ve worked so hard all year to improve your fitness, you don’t want this to happen to you.
BUT – again – it’s no fun to follow a “diet” during holiday time. So MY strategy – and this is the approach I recommend you take, BTW – is to take the “Healthy or Not” approach, ala my friend and colleague, Nick Pineault.
This strategy hinges around the idea of making healthy choices – not following a specific meal plan – and I think it’s perfect for this time of year.
I actually sat down and interviewed Nick recently – it turned out great, I learned a ton in the process – and so instead of elaborating on this idea, let’s just get right to the interview!
Without further ado – Nick P:
1. What first drove you to create the Healthy or Not program?
After reading dozens of books and watching dozens of groundbreaking documentaries like Food inc. (which I highly recommend), I realized that everything I had been taught about food was completely WRONG.
I spent a whole 5 years discovering what the independent research had to say about foods around us and how they affect our body fat, muscle mass and overall health.
Needless to say, this was a long and painful journey.
What I tried (and hopefully succeeded) to do with Healthy or Not is to condense these 5 years of reading hundreds of articles, videos and research papers into a 70 pages handbook that uses simple language and images to get the point across instead of scientific gibberish no one wants to read.
I wanted to make sure people could make smart food choices on a daily basis. But if their source of nutrition information is mass media or random Internet forums, it’s impossible.
Every day, Healthy or Not is helping more people get educated about what’s really healthy.
2. What exactly is your program all about? How does it work and/or fit into an individual’s overall routine?
My approach is very simple. I hate complicated methods that require hours and hours of adaptation for clients.
It’s all about changing your habits.
Healthy or Not helps you understand exactly what you’re eating. What to ditch, what to keep. That’s the first essential step.
For example, I reveal how diet soda isn’t so “diet” (because studies now prove that they make you gain MORE fat than regular soda) and why butter is better than margarine (unlike what you hear on TV).
The second step is applying this new info in your life, at your own pace.
It could be drinking your coffee black to cut your sugar intake; it could be skipping on more diet soda every day if you’re an addict.
Unlike crash diets that focus on rapid fat loss, my method helps you develop life-lasting habits.
3. Your approach is quite unique. What methods have you studied and how do they influence your work?
Dr Joseph Mercola has inspired me greatly. He’s a very famous alternative health doctor that always provides cutting edge dietary information.
Other great people who have taught me a lot: Jason Ferruggia, Isabel De Los Rios and Mark Sisson, just to name a few.
The simplicity of my approach comes from the work of Dr. John Berardi (Precision Nutrition). He’s all about creating habits with clients and thinking about long term fat loss and health instead of “quick fix” crash diets.
4. What type of results have individuals experienced with your program? Could you provide a few examples?
I recently helped a client who didn’t have a clue about what to eat reinvent his food habits.
The results were staggering: he lost more than 35 pounds in just 12 weeks.
Before people freak out, let me make something clear: these results are NOT typical. My friend was dedicated to change his diet completely and stayed active in the process.
Your results will depend on how many foods that fall in the “ditch this” category you swap for foods that speed your metabolism and fat loss.
What you can expect is this: anyone will feel better and lose more weight if they eat foods that help them burn fat instead of foods that hinder fat loss.
5. Would you be kind enough to provide two or three actionable tips for my readers to use at home?
Sure thing.
Here are 3 habits you probably think are healthy but that you really need to stop doing starting TODAY:
1) Drinking orange juice. Orange juice (or any kind of fruit juice) SUCKS. 3 times the sugar, less fiber, vitamins and enzymes than the actual fruit.
The result? Orange juice spikes your blood sugar in the morning and will slow down your fat loss big time.
What to do instead: eat the whole fruit.
2) Eating calorie-free foods. Aspartame, sucralose, you name it: these artificial chemicals are not what you think.
They not only guarantee you to gain more fat than if you had chosen the sugary version; they will also screw up your metabolism and make it harder to lose you extra blob.
What to do instead: sweeten your foods with raw honey or the all-natural calorie-free sweetener stevia.
3) Using refined salt, AKA “table salt”. You probably think that salt is bad and causes hypertension. The thing no one told you is: not all salts are created equal.
Common table salt you find everywhere and in most processed foods is dangerous and should be avoided.
But the unrefined salts like sea salt or Himalayan rock salt doesn’t cause the same problem, and are actually beneficial to your health.
What to do instead: use unrefined salt… and salt it up!
Changing your habits is no different than learning to ride a bike.
It takes time, trial and error, and frustrations to finally get the gist of it.
You can create your own fat-burning healthy habits, one step at a time.
Nick Pineault
Forest here again …
Hope you enjoyed the interview.
After we talked, I picked up a copy of Nick’s program … I was impressed, and told Nick that I thought it could be a huge help to my readers. So he’s offered his full Healthy or Not program to you at a massive discounted rate, for a limited time.
He also agreed to let me throw in a special body weight-only training manual as a free bonus, to help you make it through the busy – and maybe gym-less? – holiday season, when you grab a copy of Healthy or Not? – which is extra cool 
Click here to check it out:
=> Healthy or Not Friends of Forest discount
All the best in your training -
Forest
PS – Check out more about Nick’s program and his huge special offer for you HERE
