It’s that time of year when our well-intentioned healthy habits fall by the wayside because of all the festivities. So how do we go about maintaining a healthy lifestyle and not let our previous 11 months of healthy habits disappear down the plug hole.
Keep on track with your workouts
Treat your exercise the same way you would an important meeting. It’s easy to skip your workout because of an indulgent evening the night before. If you find you have missed your gym class or morning walk because of a sleep in, then reschedule it as you would an important meeting.
Set yourself some limits
Be mindful of the number of alcoholic drinks, make a conscious decision before you go out to set a limit on the number you will have and be mindful of this throughout the evening. If you have a plan then you stand a better chance of achieving it. No plan means you will most likely consume more than you would have preferred and apart from it not being good for you, it will affect you the following day. Perhaps even take the car so you don’t drink at all.
If there is food on offer, again set yourself a limit, stick to your normal healthy habits and choose fresh fruit and veg over chips and dip or better still have your normal healthy meal before your go out.
Have a departure time in mind, so you know when you plan to leave otherwise your evening will continue longer than is necessary resulting in lack of sleep and/or excess alcohol etc.
Make up for it
Have fun. It’s Christmas after all so you should still enjoy yourself. If you find that you have had a couple of big nights out then don’t stress over it, make up for it. Do an extra workout or stay longer at the gym, cut back on some of your “sometimes food” to make up for it. Remember that a small glass of wine (150 ml) is about the same number of calories as two Tim Tam biscuits. Which means an extra 15-20 min of moderate to fast passed exercise to burn off that one glass of wine. (a bottle of wine would equate to roughly 1 ½ hrs extra of moderate to fast passed exercise on top of your usual routine)