I'm glad the holidays are over. I don't have to be home with my mother anymore. It's nice for a while, but after a week or so I want my own place back, where I can do the things how I want to do them. And you can actually go buy something without being a) trampled by people doing last-minute christmas shopping b) trampled by people returning all their unwanted gifts There are no real rituals I have, but this is usually the time of the year I have a lot of thing to take care of, and I'm pretty busy all day long. So far it has been relatively smooth sailing, we'll see how it goes.
1.) Return half my gifts* and get gift cards for places I'll probably never go. 2.) Figure out what my tax return is going to be. 3.) Think up creative ways to spend said return. 4.) Put off doing taxes until March** *My mom loves watching people unwrap gifts so she ends up getting a bunch of things I don't want so I have a lot of stuff to unwrap. Did I mention I'm 28? **I got burned once by filing in early February, then got an amended 1099 from Sharebuilder so I had to refile. It was probably a one off thing but I'm paranoid and just hold off now.
I always end up drinking far more than what I feel is healthy or even reasonable during the holidays so I usually take a couple weeks to detox. I drank a LOT over the holidays this year and I may have to push that couple weeks out to a month. I realize a month is not going to happen but the longer the break I give my liver the better I'm going to feel.
I need to lose the 12 pounds I gained over that holidays along with the other 30 pounds I just need to lose. Tax season is starting so at least I have 3 months that I am not going to be doing much of anything besides working and working out.
Yeah, I think the common theme is "stop being a fatass." I'm there with y'all. I love cooking, so I think to aid that I'll spend some time introducing some new, interesting, and healthy recipes. I've already started doing that and it is going well. For the most part, I am happy that the holiday are over. I love seeing friends and family and eating retarded amounts of disgustingly rich food, but I am happy to get back to reality. I sort of hate that the "holiday season" is so long. How did all of these major holidays end up smashed together? We get Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's all within spitting distance of each other.
My birthday's on Saturday, so the holidays aren't over for me yet. Yay! After my birthday, I turn into a hermit until it's Spring.
Procrastinate until the last moment on returning some gifts, anxiously pray for my W-2s to show up, suck some dick to make rent, and feel the depression on the holidays fade a bit.
It would save my time if people were more honest with themselves and took this position. Just took the tree down. Now it's time for the uber-busy time at work, with the college kids out of school, new budgets coming out, and tons of foot traffic and busy time, not to mention the challenges of running a gym and a program that's not really designed for resolutionaries.
Ignoring people telling me about their New Years resolutions and moving my gym visits back by a half-hour/hour so the crazies can flop around for their token 3-4 weeks. Planning a warm weather trip than realizing I have no time for it due to a preponderance of weddings and wedding related activities by the time it gets warm enough where I start worrying about spring.
I'm thankful for this thread because I HATED the holidays this year and wanted to rant a little about the inconveniences that are imposed by convention. From now on... No more than one holiday party in a 12 hour period. I'm done running from party to party to satisfy the requests of out of town friends, visiting family, neighborhood parties etc. I'm going to pick the best party and enjoy it from now on. If the family has a brunch and then there's a second party that night fine, but never again am I using my navigation system to plan out a driving route so I can see a bunch of people I didn't need to see. No more last minute pop-ins from visiting family. I'll see you all at (insert family function/meal here). I'm in the middle of cooking, wrapping gifts, certainly not cleaning the house and now you want to "stop in"?! Etiquette dictates that I offer you a drink, of course you'll accept, and now I have to entertain you. Ugh.
This. Oh, this. I gained about 15 lbs. over Christmas and I just feel like the biggest fat ass that I've ever been. I'm glad the holidays are over, no more spending all my money on gifts, running back and forth from store to store, awkward and uncomfortable family gatherings, and the overall added stress level. That being said, it was a pretty enjoyable holiday...just glad to see things are settling down now.
You guys that are complaining about weight gain from holiday food know it's pretty much all water weight, right? And even putting in zero effort you'd lose 85-90% of the weight you put on from the food just by going back to your normal habits. Thinking that you can put on 15 pounds of fat from a couple days of bad eating is laughable.
Actually, the biggest reason I'm happy the holiday season is over is because Christmas (and, to a lesser extent, New Year's) comes at the tail end of it. I've genuinely wondered during the past couple of years if the holiday season would have a more positive viibe to it if Thanksgiving and Christmas were reversed. That way, people could get their shit-ton of presents, which is pretty much what Christmas has become anyway, and then give thanks for what they have a month later. The way it's set up now, I think people tend to overlook that "I'm happy for what I have part" in favor of the "I hope I get this or that" part. Kooky theory, I know, but I like thinking about things in unorthodox manners like that.
It was nice having a birthday around Thanksgiving growing up. The out of town family would bring birthday and Christmas presents. Though the gifts tapered off as I got older. Now I have my own job and can just buy all the shit I really want and Amazon will have it shipped to my door within the week. I'd like to get back into the gym again as I haven't had a membership since Ive been back in the states. Hopefully my routine will normalize as everyone gets back to work and I can focus on that and finding a better job.
Actually, I've read that the average weight gain during the holiday season is about 1 pound. 3,500 calories. Pretty easy to shed if you put a little thought and effort into your diet and exercise. The problem is that most people don't lose the weight; they just accumulate a few pounds year after year. I'm happy to say that I kept the damage at a minimum this year. My resting heart rate over the last week has been between 50-53 bpm. My clothes still fit the same way. I've been pretty faithful to my workout plan, except holidays and unexpected conflicts. I'm not a big fan of sweets. I'd rather go to town on dressing or green bean casserole. I don't think I had any cake or pie over Thanksgiving or Christmas. I'm counting that as a small success. I'm ready to get back into a normal routine. Half of my friends are out of town. I feel worthless and purposeless without classes or clinicals. I'm ready for everything to get back to normal. I wish we could spread the holidays out a little bit more so that we didn't have a solid 4-6 weeks of Holiday Extravaganza. My only ritual consists of re-organizing my closet.