Jillian Michaels shared her go-to rule for avoiding holiday weight gain.
During an interview with Fox News Digital, the 51-year-old celebrity trainer explained that her secret to staying fit while still enjoying the festive season is “practicing balance.”
“One of the ways you can do that is by incorporating what I call the 80-20 rule,” Michaels said.
“It’s notoriously a nutrition rule because it’s so basic and common sense,” she continued. “Anybody can understand it and everybody can do it.”
“The Biggest Loser” star said that the key to implementing the 80/20 rule is to track and manage a “calorie balance.”
“So let’s say you’re a guy, you’re 44 years old, you work out a few times a week and you burn 2,500 calories a day, you’re not trying to lose weight, but you’re trying to gain weight, then you’re gonna eat what you burn,” Michaels explained.
She continued, “It’s like balancing a checking account, except with calories, right? Energy in, energy out, same game. So if you have 2,500 calories, 80% of those calories, I want you to think about consuming common sense stuff.”
“And 20%, you can have a real good time,” Michaels added. “You can have the glass of wine, right? You can have the piece of pumpkin pie. And then you’re not going over your calories, but you’re still incorporating some of those things that aren’t good for you, per se, but there’s room for a balanced, common sense diet.”
Michael noted that the long-term impact of holiday weight gain isn’t about a massive spike during one season but rather it is the small, steady increases that are never corrected.
“The reality is we don’t put that much on over the holidays — It’s really only a few pounds,” she said.
“But if you put on a few over the course of the year and a few over the holidays, and you never end up taking it off, those few pounds equal a lot of pounds over several years — 30, 40, 50 pounds. And it goes on 100 extra calories a day at a time, a few pounds over Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s.”
“So the idea here is to counterbalance any indulgence at the time,” Michaels continued. “So if you go to an office party and you have a few glasses of champagne and some of the fried crispy rice, whatever the heck, hors d’oeuvres that look so good, you know, we’ve all been there.”
“But that simply means the next day, you do need to go to the gym,” she explained. “You need to pay the piper. Or the next you eat a little bit less. It’s absolutely robbing Peter, paying Paul. I do it all the time.”
The fitness expert compared managing holiday indulgence to sticking to a budget.
“Think of it as though you’re purchasing something, right? If you’re thinking, ‘OK, I wanna make an expensive purchase on an item of clothing, whatever it may be, something that’s out of your budget — but you cut back on other things,” she said.
“I’m not gonna spend $10 a day on Starbucks this week and I’ll have that extra $80 to spend on whatever it might be,” Michaels continued. “It’s simply, if you’re gonna spend the money tonight on calories — literally — or the calories on calories, tomorrow, don’t spend, cut back. Have the egg whites for breakfast, not the bagel and cream cheese. It’s that simple.”
Michaels warned that “all or nothing” thinking is one of the major stumbling blocks to maintaining a healthy weight long-term.
The Daytime Emmy Award nominee shared that her advice is to aim for steady habits year-round.
“The reality is that consistency over time is critical,” she said. “Because if you’re all in, you’re ultimately going to be all out. And the swings are what throw people off. We all know it as yo-yo dieting.”
“If you can just manage consistency with regard to — all right — if I eat a little bit more tonight, I eat little bit less tomorrow,” Michaels said.
“If I eat more today, I’m gonna move a little more tomorrow. These consistent checks and balances are what will essentially keep you healthy over time. If it’s like, ‘I’m going all in over the holidays and then Sober January.’ Then, when you hit February, you’re all in again. Like this is the yo-yo that everybody fails at, inevitably.”
Michaels told Fox News Digital that she, along with her wife DeShanna Marie Minuto and their kids, Lukensia, 14, and Phoenix, 13, will be spending the holidays at their home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which she was “so excited about.”
In 2021, the “Keeping It Real” podcast host and her family moved out of Los Angeles and relocated to a ranch in the Cowboy State.
“I cannot wait. Can’t wait to go snowboarding. I can’t wait,” she said.
However, Michaels explained that they would be traveling back and forth to L.A. due to family obligations.
“I have a family member who I have to be around for more than I used to need to be around for,” she said. “We can get in and out of L.A. in a matter of hours. So I can literally be in Jackson in two and a half hours, back in LA in two-and-a-half hours.”
Michaels also reflected on what she was most grateful for this Thanksgiving.
“My wife and kids,” she said. “I know a lot of people that have been through a lot and lost a lot and I honestly don’t know how.”
“You hear these stories and it’s like playing Russian roulette with life,” Michaels continued. “Anything can happen at any given time and just every day that I wake up with my immediate family intact is a day that I am thankful for.”
“Truly, deeply thankful,” she added.
