Most of us enjoy the holidays by indulging in our favorite foods.

Experts say meals with all the trimmings can top 3,000 calories and that's before dessert.

Skipping a meal may actually hurt your post-holiday weight loss plan.

With those lingering leftovers in the fridge, a diet is not on many minds the day after Christmas.

Ryan Holliday says for him, working out a few times a week keeps those holiday pounds from adding up.

"It's just too hard and too many temptations. Just don't over do it and you come here for damage control if nothing else," said Holliday.

Dietician Jodi Floyd says indulging for the holidays is okay, if it's followed by a healthy diet year-round.

"You can eat unreasonably during the holidays if the rest of the year your diet is pretty moderate. That means not overeating portion sizes and not overeating in any particular food group," said Floyd.

A National Institutes of Health study finds most of us add about one pound to the scale after each holiday season. Researchers say that's weight that doesn't usually go away and accumulates every year.

Floyd says eating three meals a day will actually help you lose weight faster than starving yourself. Not eating slows metabolism, making it harder to shed pounds. She says exercise is the other component.

"Even people with the best diets who don't exercise are not always slim because exercise burns a lot of calories and it helps to increase the rate at which you process the food that you eat," added Floyd.

Floyd says its always best to think of nutrition as a lifestyle, and not a condition that needs to be treated.