New Years Resolutions - are you going to set some?

Picture the scene...

You have had a great Christmas and eaten what you want, drank what you want and lay about doing nothing. You are feeling really bloated and you have set your new years resolutions. Am I right?

When setting new years resolutions, guess what the most popular one is? Yup you have guessed it - to lose weight and/or go to the gym. The first one that will spring to mind for most people will be to lose weight because of how they feel the week after Christmas!!

In a study of 2000 people around 54% of people will make the new years resolution to lose weight, around 71% will say that they want to eat healthier or diet and around 65% will say that they want to exercise more!!  Aren't those numbers strange - they are all interlinked but the numbers aren't equal!

Can you see a wee trend here?

Now what happens, is that the general public are flooded with images/article/offers and information about people losing weight, going to the gym and eating healthily. But did you know that most people who make a new years resolutions to lose weight FAIL!!

Companies pray on how delicate we feel after Christmas and know that they can reel people in when they are at their weakest.

However, only 8% of people achieve their new years resolutions and a whopping 80% of people have given up by the 2nd week of February!!

This is not good!

We are setting ourselves up for failure! This is not good for our mental health and it is not good for our physical health either.

How is it a good thing to start a new healthy eating regime on a day like the 1st January?

Think about how you are feeling on the 1st January – you are most likely exhausted from celebrating New Years Eve, you may even be a wee bit hungover. You start the new year by having a lie in and then not eating properly on the first day of the year.

If you are a little bit delicate after the celebrations, the chances are that you may make food choices that you wouldn’t normally make – a take away, left over nibbles from the party the night before, for example. Failure straight away!!

The other thing to take into consideration as well, is the fact that you most likely have lots of food left over from the Christmas celebrations – boxes of Celebrations/Heros, boxes of biscuits, cheese and crackers etc. You may have been given chocolates for Christmas and you haven’t finished them. Are you going to be ok with them sitting in the cupboard – calling your name every time you open the cupboard door? Again we are making things very difficult on ourselves.

Then, because we are feeling really delicate and with all the subliminal messages from advertisement, we tend to make a snap decision to go on another diet BUT that this year it is going to be different!!

But will it??

If you keep doing the same thing each year you really should ask yourself – Is it really working?

If you go on a diet every single January, you are a in fact a yo-yo dieter!! This should not being happening.

Dieting is actually really bad for your health. Most people who diet, end up failing and then gaining the weight that they lost and sometimes a wee bit extra for good measure.

What I encourage you to do is to decide to change your life from yo-yo dieting, to one where you are living a healthy lifestyle continually. One where you won't need to worry about going on a diet on the 1st January anymore.

Does this mean that you can’t enjoy life?

Most certainly not!! Living a healthy lifestyle is not just about the food that we eat. When you start the journey towards living a healthy lifestyle, YES, you will have to give up the unhealthy things that got you to where you are today. However, when you understand what a healthy lifestyle can do for you and what your body requires, you will not want to eat those types of foods on a regular basis.  You will be energised and understand that by living a lifestyle based on 90:10, you will not need to ever diet again.

Create a Healthy Lifestyle for your long term benefit.

A healthy lifestyle is all about moderation. I most certainly enjoy my Christmas holidays – I don’t over indulge but I have a little of what I fancy and love it. Christmas to me is all about being with family and spending quality time with everyone. It is fabulous! I will also continue to exercise over the Christmas holidays  (cue people rolling their eyes) because this is part of my life! I feel fabulous too when living like this, so why would I stop doing it.

Have a look at my post here to see some of the photos from our Christmas in 2018. (the kids are getting more fussy about being on social media nowadays, hence the old social media post). Most of the food you will see have been homemade. Yes, you will notice some very luscious desserts in the photos. They are our family favourites and made every year.  I really enjoy my homemade desserts but these days my portion size is a lot smaller - otherwise I would be in sugar coma on the sofa!! I also made shortbread with Christian for Santa Claus! He loved making it and it was delicious and much nicer than the store bought ones.

I have since "smashified" our traditional desserts to make them healthier. They still taste amazing, but now they don't damage our health. If you fancy having healthier Christmas desserts that are so quick and easy to make, you can get your hands on them here.

When you live a healthy lifestyle you can do this – enjoy Christmas (without guilt) and go straight back to living a healthy lifestyle like before.  Your body actually craves it!! So many clients don't believe this when they start their journey with me but they totally get it in the long run.

This is true freedom!  And no silly new years resolutions - just because society says this is when you should change your life!

Take control of your health and make a decision to improve your health and this time next year you wont be worrying about what you are going to eat at Christmas time either and not need to worry about setting any new year's resolutions.

Add something in, rather than take everything out

Something different that I do is, to add something positive into my life, rather than to take something away from my life. For example, reading more, spending more quality time with my husband, trying something new. These are decided upon well before the new year and implemented at the start of the year, rather than panicking on the 1st of the year and choosing something just for the sake of it. I highly recommend taking time out now to think about something like this for this year.

I also pick a word for the incoming year that I can focus on. It can be linked to my personal life or my business life. When you focus on a positive word, it can create all kinds of positivity in your life. If you were to pick a word for next year, what would it be?

Finally, don't be pressured into making a New Years Resolution, just because everyone else is. Do what is right for you.

Give me a shout if you would like to discuss your options on having a healthier lifestyle long term (not just up until mid February). If you are thinking of changing your eating habits, check out this blog for some advice on choosing the right plan for you.

Yours in Health and Happiness