The Holiday-Feast Fat-Burn Plan

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Despite your best intentions, all the holiday dinners and parties (not to mention the gifts of cookies, pies and other treats that come your way) mean that there's a good chance that you'll be eating more this season. But even though you might be convinced that those extra calories mean that a bigger belly is on its way, you're not destined to gain weight, or at least not as much as you might fear.

A 2000 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the average weight gain from mid-November through early January was only one pound. The bad news? If you don't exert damage control, those measly pounds do add up over the years.

But it's easier than you may think to battle the calorie surge, and the beauty is that you can still enjoy those holiday feasts. All you need to do is balance out your calorie burn over the week. A holiday meal can add a few thousand calories to your day (one piece of pecan pie is around 400 calories, one cup of spiked eggnog can add another 500, one icing-topped Christmas cookie can be at least 100 to 200 calories). If you ate this much more every day, you'd definitely gain weight. But you can stave off seasonal pudge: Simply rev up your body on big-meal days and counteract splurge days with days where you eat less and exercise more. Here's how:

The days before and after your holiday splurge

Consider a typical winter-time week: Let's say you eat an extra 1,500 calories on the day of a big meal, and you stack on an additional 1,000 extra calories at a holiday party on another evening. If you burn off that surplus 2,500 calories on the other five days of your week, you're likely to keep your weight in check. That means you need to create a caloric deficit of 500 calories on non-feasting days.

If you have the time (and are fit enough) to squeeze in a 60-minute cardio workout on your non-party days, you're covered. But if your schedule is jam-packed or you need an easier exercise load, you can split it up by burning 250 more calories through exercise, and cutting out 250 calories from what you eat.

Shaving a few hundred extra calories from food each day can be as simple as skipping butter on your toast, drinking a diet soda or water instead of a sweetened drink, and choosing leaner cuts of meat. Find more tips here.

An easy way to burn a few hundred extra calories is by spending 30 to 40 minutes walking briskly or using a cardio machine. If you're too busy to devote this much time all at once, break up your exercise quota throughout the day. Do two to three of these mini-workouts (they each burn around 100 calories a shot):

Tune in your MP3 player and dance to four or five fast-paced songs.
Walk the dog a mere 15 minutes or so longer (and pick up the pace!).
Using moderate-to-heavy dumbbells, do at least one set of 15 reps of moves such as biceps curls, lunges, squats, chest presses, etc. Log onto MSN's Fit Zone and pick six to 10 exercises.
Do your chores: Crank up some lively music and scrub the floors, wash the windows—and don't forget the tub! One speedy cleaning for 20 to 25 minutes zaps around 100 calories!
At home, turn up the radio and walk up and down your staircase for four to five songs (about 15 minutes).
While you're waiting for a pie to bake, march in place (three minutes), then alternate jogging in place, jumping jacks and pretend jump-rope (six minutes—about 15 seconds of each). Then, march to cool down (three minutes).
Take the stairs anytime possible at work or in malls or office buildings. Five or six two-minute flights in a day can blast around 100 calories.

During the day of your feast

If you can fit in a vigorous cardio workout earlier in the day, you may minimize some of the fat overload from a giant meal later, according to a 2003 review of the effects exercise on fat metabolism in the Journal of Biochemistry. But if you're not fit enough to work this hard, your best bet is to rev up your system periodically through the day.

When you wake up, do this 15-minute fat-blast routine:

March in place and move your arms around (two minutes)
Lift your knees, alternating legs (20 times; one minute)
March in place and reach your hands out and in (two minutes)
Kick, alternating legs and swinging your arms (20 times; one minute)
Jog in place (one minute)
Do 20 jumping jacks (one minute)
Jog in place (one minute)
Do 20 jumping jacks (one minute)
March in place and reach your hands up and down (two minutes)
Jog in place (one minute)
March in place at a slower pace to cool down (two minutes)

When all that family togetherness starts making you stir crazy, head outside with the kids and cousins for at least 20 minutes. Play jump rope, hopscotch and tag for the maximum calorie burn.

After eating (before sinking into the sofa in a stuffed stupor), grab a relative and power walk around the block instead. Walk quickly and pump your arms briskly for 15 minutes or longer.

When settling in to watch a sappy Christmas movie or a slew of football games, pop up during each three-minute commercial break and bust one of these moves: March in place quickly, alternate kicks and jumping jacks, switch between back lunges and alternating knee lifts, jog in place.

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Martica Heaner, Ph.D., M.A., M.Ed., is a Manhattan-based exercise physiologist and nutritionist, and an award-winning fitness instructor and health writer. She has a Ph.D. in behavioral nutrition and physical activity from Columbia University, and is also a NASM-certified personal trainer. She has written hundreds of articles for publications such as Self , Health , Prevention , The New York Times and others. Martica is the author of eight books, including her latest, Cross-Training for Dummies. (Read her full bio.)