Come ‘silly season’ and even the most dedicated of people can come unstuck. No doubt you’ve already had some anxious moments, thinking about how to manage your exercise and eating plans through the maze of office parties, family dos and general ‘let it all hang out’ festive attitudes. Fear not! There’s a relatively simple way to handle all this without gaining weight or detracting from your health…
My top tips for the season are as follows:
- Drink enough good quality water every day (0.033 X your weight in kg = litres of water daily) and be sure to add good quality salt to your food (my personal choice is Universal Vision’s Himalayan crystal salt). This combination of salt and water will help keep the body hydrated.
- Eat plenty of good quality fat and moderate amounts of protein. Doing this will reduce sugar cravings and help to control blood sugar levels. Protein helps release your fat burning hormones, while good dietary fat ensures less potential for body fat storage.
- Eat less processed carbohydrates since these foods release sugar at a much more rapid rate than the non-processed alternatives. High processed carb intake = high blood sugar = high insulin output = body fat storage.
- Assuming you’re not diabetic or insulin-resistant, skip breakfast! Try and exercise on an empty stomach and wait at least 14 hours between dinner and your next meal. See the unbelievable results of my experiment with this on www.thehappybody.co.za or on our Facebook page.
- Don’t drink alcohol on an empty stomach – eat a meal/snack with protein/fat foods like raw nuts, biltong, boiled eggs etc. before you drink. Alcoholic drinks are carbohydrates, which significantly affect blood sugar and thus body fat storage, not to mention liver function.
- Do something physical daily and make physical movement more common in your day, in general. Offer to look after someone’s toddler for a few hours, get stuck into gardening, spend more time cooking good meals, go for a walk first thing in the morning, play beach bats, drag a friend to gym with you etc.
- HAVE FUN! Make sure that whatever it is you’re doing, you’re living in that moment instead of feeling guilty or remorseful … make conscious choices but allow for some spontaneity too.
Have a great festive season and see you again in 2014.
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Tanya Wyatt
Owner at The Happy Body
Tanya started out as a professional ballet dancer. Swopping her pointe shoes for takkies, she decided being a hip hop dancer was way cooler, so chopped off her bun and joined a street dance company. For many years, she also taught dance and fitness classes in Cape Town before deciding that nutrition and lifestyle coaching was the way to help people change their state of health for the better. So, while writing two health and fitness books, she moved to London to study and began her ‘real life’ – that as a health and lifestyle coach. She’s been in private practice for 10 years now, is a mom of a 7-year old pig-tailed ball of energy, writes for various national and local health publications and is a health presenter when the occasion arises. Oh – and once a dancer, always a dancer – she’s also taken up ballet pole dancing 🙂
Click here to contact Tanya.
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