Celebrity Trainer Erin Oprea Shares Her Best Tips for the Holiday Season

Erin Oprea is the trainer behind some of Nashville's best bodies — she trains Carrie Underwood, Kelsea Ballerini and Maren Morris, to name a few — and she stopped by the PopCulture.com studio to share a few of her best tips for sticking to your fitness plan through the upcoming holiday season.

With so much to do during the Christmas season, it might seem like an extra task to stick to your fitness regimen, but Oprea maintains that keeping a healthy lifestyle is important all year round.

"Your health doesn't take a holiday," Oprea said. "Your organs don't know it's Christmas — you gotta keep moving and you gotta keep eating clean."

"The more you move the better you feel," she continued. "And you relieve stress — this time is full of stress — so keep moving to relieve some stress."

Oprea extends that same advice to her celebrity clients, revealing that she doesn't modify their regimens just because things get busy.

"I try to encourage them to keep doing what they've been doing," she shared, adding that even if you can't get your normal workout in, there's always time for fitness, with Oprea recommending short Tabata workouts or even getting some exercise in while holiday shopping.

"Everyone gets busy, gets stressed out, and maybe you can't get your hour workout in," Oprea said. "Maybe you can't get your 30 minutes in. Everyone's got four minutes though. You can do a Tabata. You can do a Tabata, you can shop and sprint walk. You might look kind of funny, but it makes you squeeze your butt when you're doing your shopping and walking, so you can burn your booty."

As for those holiday parties, Oprea has plenty of tips to use if you don't want that plate of cookies to sabotage your healthy track record.

"Take something to share that you don't feel guilty about eating," she said. "Eat mostly that and have little bits of all the bad food."

Oprea also advised filling your plate with healthy options and standing away from the food table, so you'll be less tempted to snack on something yummy you happen to spot. When it comes to cocktails, drink a glass of water in between each cocktail to slow yourself down, because it's easy to forget that drinks have calories too.

"When you're hovering around the table, you're just gonna keep picking, but take a plate, go sit down, have your portion, and call it good," she said. "Don't go back, because if you go back, you're just gonna keep on eating."

And while some might be tempted to wear looser clothes to maximize snacking potential, Oprea recommends doing just the opposite.

"Don't wear elastic waist pants to the party — because then that's a free for all," she said.

Another pro tip from Oprea? Chewing gum.

"After you know you've had enough, put some mint gum in your mouth," Oprea suggested. "That'll ruin the flavor of anything that you're eating, because who wants to have a chip and take a piece of gum out and put a chip in your mouth?"

Once the holidays are over, New Year's resolutions are officially ready to be made, and Oprea has the perfect way to kickstart your fitness journey in 2019. The trainer's book, The 4x4 Diet, offers healthy eating tips and quick workouts that are easy to implement and will give you the results you want in just four weeks — a perfect way to start off the new year.

Along with the previous tips, the biggest takeaway Oprea has to offer is to simply keep moving.

"Our bodies are made to move. Our bodies are a machine. Our bodies are made to go," she explained. "If you put bad food in your body, just like a car. You put bad gas in a car, it's breaking down. Our body's gonna do the same thing. If we don't move our body, it breaks down. Same thing with a car. If you don't move a car for a long time, it doesn't want to start. So it's the same thing. So keep moving."

Photo Credit: PopCulture.com