In the days between Christmas and New Year it can be so easy to just slip in to a pattern of mindlessly eating too much and skipping those workouts. It’s the Christmas and boxing day extended hangover… And it’s nearly New Year where you’ll do it all again so why bother being healthy In-between right?… Wrong!
Well aside from the fact that it will make you feel better and less sluggish,it’s a whole 3 or 4 days where you can limit the amount of damage from the festive period! Plus it will make it so much easier to get back to normal eating again in the New Year. So get back on that wagon even if only for a day or two, eat well but mindfully, do your usual workouts or get some activity in somehow and regain a bit of normality if you can! Your body and mind will thank you!
If you still have a house full of food then freeze the leftovers (they’ll be fine!), hide the chocolate and booze and stock the fridge with lots of green stuff to help the process! All that chocolate and wine will still be there for New Year and beyond and you can indulge then if you want! 😀
Managing the amount of calories we consume can be especially difficult during the festive season. Ideally, we want to find a happy balance between joining in with the fun without going totally overboard and ruining our healthy eating regime!
This is the advice I give my clients:
#1 Spread the damage – if you have an event coming up try to cut down kcals in the days leading up or after. I’m not suggesting you starve yourself as that will result in overeating later. Instead try to save 100-200 kcals a day for a few days to buffer the social event e.g if you have a Friday party where you may overeat/drink by 800-1000 kcal, reduce your daily intake by 200 kcal from Mon to Thurs. You’ll barely notice 200 kcals a day!
#2 Cut the Booze – Drink is the biggest contributor to weight gain during the holidays. Often we drink socially over several hours so it’s hard to track. You could stick to low calorie drinks – but what if you don’t like them? The best thing is to drink what you want and control the quantity instead. Plan for a set number of drinks (e.g 4/5) of whatever you like. That way you’ll appreciate it but not feel deprived. In addition drink a big glass of water before you start (as you’re bound to be dehydrated from all the festive rushing about) to help prevent you being thirsty and knocking back the first drink too fast. Have a glass of water after every couple of drinks too.
#3 Keep Active – incorporate a little activity in to your Christmas Day. Face it – we’re all going to over eat on Xmas day (an average of 4000 – 5000 kcals). You’re not going to burn that off in one day, but it will make you feel good if you get active – maybe an early morning run, or a post lunch family walk, or an evening walk to look at the xmas lights!
#4 Don’t Stress – try not to stress too much about those extra Christmas day kcals. As long as they’re not representative of your normal intake the effects of the overindulgence will be short lived. Get back to your normal eating and training pattern as soon as you can after the festivities and you’ll be back on track in no time!
This festive season there’s bound to be lots of socialising and If you’re trying to lose fat/weight it can be a challenge to keep things under control. Here are some tips to help reduce those extra cals.
#1 Be realistic
Saying “I’m not going to have any alcohol / desserts at all” isn’t realistic, but perhaps “I’m not going to drink at every Christmas party” might be more doable?
Decide which events are worth relaxing a bit for. One event a week is a good target, so choose the special events and then don’t worry about them, just relax and enjoy having whatever you want to have that day/night.
# Make a plan
If you’ve decided which events to relax at that means there are some events where you will want to be more careful. So you need a plan. First thing to remember is the reason you’re there is to share time with people in your life. Focus on the people and the activities rather than the food and drinks. Ensuring you’ve had something to eat before going to drinks events, or have dinner plans in place for afterwards. If it’s a dinner then just try to make the best possible choices, fill up with veggies and get some protein in, and drink lots of water. Stick to lighter beers, prosecco, white wines, clear spirits with low cal mixers etc and avoid sugar-laden cocktails.
# Plan for problems
Try to think about the possible obstacles in advance. Are buffets your weakness? Are canapes / nibbles your weak point? Have some alternative plans in place; for buffets commit yourself to one plate of satisfying food only. Make a decision before you go not to dip in to the nibbles and ensure you’re not too hungry when you arrive so you’re not starving when they come round. Making an active decision before you even get there will help you to resist them more easily.
You have to be realistic about the situations you’re facing. There’s no point planning on just eating carrot sticks all evening, you will fail, no question. So be smart about your strategy and honest about what you can manage. If you have a friend going with you share your plan with them, they might be keen to help you and give you some moral support – it’s a lot easier to say no to those canapes when you’re both refusing them.
Sometimes it just seems like whatever you do you can’t stay on track or stick to the ‘diet’ doesn’t it? I see this so often with my clients. They start the week well but then something throws them off and it all goes pear shaped. Very often it comes down to one main reason – the all or nothing mindset.
You set yourself unrealistic expectations that can’t be achieved. You view every week as a new week to be ‘perfect’ and as soon as anything disrupts that you fall totally off the wagon and decide there’s no point doing anything. Common examples I see are things like exercising excessively every day, cutting out food groups or types of foods (sweet things / carbs etc), or skipping meals/fasting. Or you restrict yourself all week and then get to the weekend and all bets are off – either you totally give up because ‘there’s no way I could track this’ or you under estimate what you’re having at social events etc.
So what can you do instead? Well I often talk about trying to ditch this idea of having to be perfect. You don’t need to be – what you do need to do is not give up when something disrupts the plans. You’re going to get much better results being imperfectly consistent 7 days a week than being perfect for a few days then jacking it in all the time.
So instead of waiting to start again on a Monday and going all guns blazing instead start right now. Ask yourself what small change you could make today that would get you closer to your goals. Make it a change that you could stick to even on the worst day. So for example it might be simply to track your calories – you can do this – even when you’re over your target you can still track! It might be to eat veggies every day etc. It might be to either have a starter or a dessert if you eat out – not both etc.
Making small changes you can stick to every day will get you better and faster results than the all or nothing mindset. Something is always better than nothing – even if that something isn’t perfect!
If you want to lose weight/fat it’s very tempting to focus on exercise. But if your strategy is ‘just do more exercise’ then sadly you’re unlikely to make progress. Exercise has tonnes of health benefits and you should be doing it, but it’s pretty poor for fat loss on its own.
We assume more exercise = more calories burned = more fat loss. It’s not that simple.
To lose a pound of fat you need a daily energy deficit of 500 cals. It’s actually very hard to genuinely burn an extra 500 cals every day. For example whilst it obvs varies a general approximation is that a 5 mile run burns 500 cals. Fitting a 5 mile run in every single day isn’t that easy… plus in reality you’ll probably burn fewer cals than that.
Resistance training isn’t much better. Studies show you burn approx 4-8 cals/min so an hour of weights will burn 240-480 cals so you’d need to be doing 1-2 hrs of weight training a day. Aside from finding the time for this it’s also a great way to burn yourself out! Trying to do a load of cardio/weights to burn cals is a great way to just exhaust yourself (which will probably result in more hunger and eating more anyway).
I’ve also spoken before about the fact that more exercise doesn’t in fact lead to more calories burnt. Energy expenditure does increase with added activity, but only to a point. If you go from being sedentary to active, you see an increase in energy expenditure. But if you’re already active and add more exercise then energy expenditure doesn’t increase linearly. The body adjusts other processes to maintain total energy expenditure within a narrow range (energy compensation). Studies showed that If someone increased their physical
activity levels by 500 cals the actual increase in energy expenditure would only be 360 cal. In addition leaner individuals compensate less than individuals with more body fat – those with more fat compensated by almost 50% i.e. energy expenditure only increased by 250 cals. And in another study they found that this was even greater in those eating at a calorie deficit which explains why there are people who are doing an insane amount of exercise every week while eating in a deficit and not making the progress they think they should be.
This doesn’t mean ‘calories in/calories out’ doesn’t work. It means the ‘calories out’ part of the equation is a bit more complex. So this is why focusing on exercise only to lose fat/weight is a bad idea. Not only is it really hard to do on a consistent basis, but there are a number of other factors that can impact how many calories you’re actually burning.
Instead, you should ‘eat for fat loss’. It’s far easier to cut a few hundred calories by making small, yet sustainable dietary changes than it is to try and burn an equivalent amount through exercise. Exercise for health and well being (physical and mental) but not to burn calories. Any increase in energy expenditure from exercise is a nice bonus, but it shouldn’t be the goal.
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