At The Wolf Studio we often notice that our clients have two phases of training and diet. Clients will train and diet in order to get fit for their summer holiday, and at this time of year clients are often trying to loose weight to look good for the office party season.
While it is a great idea to get into the gym and start looking at your diet to get fit and healthy, whether it is to look good on the beach or to look good in that little black party dress, it is important to remember not to throw away all of your hard earned gains. Particularly at this time of year our clients are literally working their butts off to look good, it seems a shame for them to binge during the holiday period and get unfit and overweight.
A much better and more healthy approach is to look after your diet throughout the year and to exercise regularly. By doing this then you can maintain a higher level of fitness and the need for high intensity training and more severe dietary change is lessened. At times of the year when you want to add more training into your schedule, to look good on the beach or at the Christmas party, then these changes can be added much more easily as you will be working from a higher base of fitness and vitality.
What we often see is that clients will achieve their goals of looking and feeling better for their holiday or party season and then will stop training. They will go on holiday or overindulge at Christmas and will feel guilty about not training and will feel bad about getting back to training. Guilt is a major factor in many peoples training, it is a motivational factor but it is also a major obstacle. Just imagine that you have spent a couple of months working hard to achieve that weight loss or get those bulging muscles, you overindulge over the holiday period and the thought of getting back in the gym come January is just too much. A much more sensible approach is to accept that you are going to have a good time on your holiday or at Christmas, life is for living after all, but once the Christmas period is over then you are going to go back to eating sensibly and exercising regularly.
Exercise and diet are habitual, both good and bad diet and exercise. The problem at this time of year is that once you start indulging at Christmas parties, a few extra drinks or whatever then this becomes the norm. We have clients for whom Christmas parties start in mid November and end at the end of January. Obviously it is not possible to over indulge for this period of time and maintain health without some discipline.
Here are some tips to help you through this time of year;
- Keep exercising. Too many people just stop training over the Christmas period. Even if it is just one training session per week it will make a difference and will make going back in January easier.
- Prioritize your parties! Don’t over indulge at every party or Christmas lunch that you attend. Pick which parties are important for you and let yourself have a good time. At other events limit your alcohol intake, or don’t have a desert. Don’t blow all of your training at events or with people whom you don’t really like!
- Watch the alcohol. There are loads of hidden calories in alcohol and alcohol is really easily broken down to fat. Limit the amount that you are going to drink. Even better to take the car and stay tee total, especially at events that you are not too bothered about.
- Quality not quantity. If you are going to indulge, which you should at this time of year, treat yourself with high quality food and drink rather than masses of cheap crap. You will find that good quality food will taste better and will last longer, especially if you have been denying yourself over the build up to Christmas.
- When it’s over it’s over. Set a date when you are going to start exercising again and when the partying ends. If you know that you are going to be good from a specific date then you will be more disciplined.
- Tell everyone about your New Years resolutions. It you shout your intentions from the mountains so that everyone knows what you are going to give up or even better achieve in the New Year then you are much more likely to actually do it. Write your New Years resolutions down and stick it where you can see it, it really does work
Enjoy this Christmas and New Year and we hope to see you all in 2011.
Alan
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