AUTHOR: Aiofe Mcauliffe (Online Coach and Sports Nutritionist)
Is it even possible I hear you ask... well yes it is! And no it doesn't mean avoiding all the delicious Christmas goodies!
The festive season is the best time to put your knowledge and habits to use by being sensible around food choices!
Here are a few tips:
🎄Take the focus away from food - spend time with family and loved ones, creating memories, and sharing precious moments.
🎄Enjoy your food - eat slowly and mindfully. You will get the same enjoyment out of one piece of Christmas cake as you would by eating the entire cake. Savour every mouthful instead of scoffing the whole thing.
🎄Listen to your body - be aware of fullness signals. Stop eating when you start to feel full. The food will still be there tomorrow, you don’t have to eat it all.
🎄Own your decisions - if you do overeat or overindulge, recognize that you made that choice and then move on. Don’t let it spill over into several days or weeks or overindulging.
NEW YEAR NEW YOU - WHAT NOT TO DO
If you, like many others, are excited to make 2021 your best year yet - remember to be realistic and don’t try to be a superhuman!
Here are a few tips that will ensure your New Years resolutions last longer than the first few weeks of January:
❌ Don’t try to change everything at once! Taking an approach like this will only set you up to fail. You’ll set unrealistic restraints and expectations and feel disheartened when you can’t meet them.
❌ Don’t buy into quick fixes. They won’t give you long term sustainable results!
❌ Don’t be afraid to work hard! If it were easy everyone would be walking around with 6 pack abs. It takes hard work and discipline to achieve any goal but the process of getting there will challenge and empower you at the same time.
❌ Don’t overestimate what you need to do to achieve your goals. Results take time. But by giving yourself that time to get there, you will achieve your goals in a much more sustainable way. Take for example a fat loss goal - if your deficit calories were 1800 why would you try to stick to a 1200 calorie low carb diet when that extra restriction is not needed? Drastic measures like this are what causes most diets to fail.
