Surviving The Holidays

Welcome everyone to another...

Energy Bulletin


Ahhh holidays, don't you love em. Like Chistmas snow ball fights with the kids across the road, warm mulled cinamon egg-nog with a touch of rum, opening christmas presents by an open... Wait a second, forgot where I was. E'r hum, I meant shoeing the fly's away from the BBQ while cracking open a bottle of sparkling burgondy.. Ahh yes, Christmas is great.

Unless of course you're a personal trainer, which means you get to watch most of your clients not only slow or stop training but actually reverse a lot of the conditioning we've worked so hard for. It happens every year.

Now don't get me wrong, from a business and personal perspective it's not too bad as we trainers need a holiday as much as anyone, so the couple or weeks off is great and our clients usually come back extemely desperate to get back what they've lost in the way of conditioning
and good habits. So the fact is, is that it can actually be quite good for business.

Not bad then for us... Not so good for our clients though and here's why.

Firstly it seems really silly to blow out that badly over Christmas or any holiday for that matter when maintenance is so darn easy. It takes waaaay more effort to aquire a result than just having to maintain it. Where you needed 3-4 hard sessions of training a week in order to get that body fat shifted, it only takes 1 hard session and 2 light sessions to maintain what you have. If you don't feel like going hard then 3 light sessions will certainly get you through 3-4 weeks of holidays.

The difference between adding that hard session in each week or not will make itself known to you when you attempt to get back into that regular routine post holidays and believe me, the difference that that 1 sessions intensity will make is actually quite noticable. Especially
if your training at least at a moderately high intensity, which all of our clients at The Energy Clinic do.

So here are my 10 top tips for surviving the holidays.

#1 Do some exercise- Maintain a bare minimum of 2 training sessions a week. They need only be 20 minutes each but keep up the intensity. 3 is better.

#2 Watch your carb intake- If you know you're going to have a few drinks then keep carb intake from food very low to none leading up to your social event. Think veggies, veggies and meat.

#3 If you've had a really bad day/evening then don't dispair- 1 day of crappy food or too many drinks won't hurt, it's the 3-4 days in a row that nail your coffin. So, pick yourself up the next day and minimise the carbs again to try and reset your insulin sensitivity. Have another meat and veggies day.

#4 Remember that you have one opportunity to eat sugary food and not have it go straight to your waist line. That's right, 20-40 minutes post exercise is your window of pleasure to indulge that sweet tooth and actually have it do you some good. Use it wisely.

#5 Don't let your partner, friends or family con you into thinking you're a health nut just because you feel the need to go for a quick run before dinner- Even though they love you, people sometimes (I'm sorry for this but.. Especially Australians) tend to want you to perform at their level because your motivation unconsciously makes them feel guilty and it's not a nice feeling, so they will often 'jokingly' make fun of you and that's fine, smile, nod your head, make a comment about running down the road to visit your shrink and be on your way knowing that you are possibly more educated and motivated to do the right thing in this area of life than they.

#6 Drink lot's of water- This is especially true if you are having alcohol or planning a big dinner. A large majority of people will unconsciously use food or alcohol to replenish what is actually thirst. By staying well hydrated, you are far less likely to over consume these calorie rocketing nibbles and meals.

#7 If you're a beer drinker and you're watching your carb intake or if you should be watching your carb intake, then go Low Carb. There are some really good beers out these days that have virtually NO Carbs. That's right, none at all. I don't mind Pure Blonde's but that's me, there are a few out that you can try.

#8 Don't go hungry- We hear of/see this all the time when it comes to cooking that big family dinner and you or someone who's dear to you, is slaving over that hot stove all day, then the last thing they/ you generally want to do is eat. This is bad for two reasons. Firstly it sets up a fat storage response to the lack of incoming nutrients and secondly, it makes you really hungry, which most people will try and cure by either over-eating or getting blind drunk and abusing the
in-laws, which can be rather amusing as long as it's not you, in which case the apologies over the next few days can be quite embarrassing. So do yourself or your loved one a favour and make sure you/they eat.

#9 Buy small- We get our clients to do this all the time. Buy yourself something really cool or cute to wear, just before the silly season really kicks off, that is just a little bit too small. This
cool/cute piece of clothing has a tendency to stick in your mind a lot better than something like this bulletin when that extra beer or serve of ice-cream is being offered around. If you're already at your ideal weight or size then this won't work but you can always just measure your waist line on the 5th of December and promise yourself to do it again on the 5th of January. Your mind once again will remind you of this little self wager when it's most needed.

#10 Reality rears it's ugly head- Sometimes a little old fashioned research can help us stay on track during a break or holiday. A recent study I read found that if you lighten up on exercise for a while you may gain a kilo or two, but if you stop altogether or close to it, it get's much, much worse. The study showed that the closer the subjects got to no exercise the more weight they were likely to gain, no surprise there. But the kicker was that just returning to their regular routine was not enough to burn away the extra kilos gained. The reality was that they had to work nearly twice as hard to lose the weight the second time around than they did the first time!This means that the work done originally was more than twice undone. It makes me quite sad to think that all my... Er, I mean, all your hard work and possibly your money is gone, undone, reversed, squashed, wasted, thrown away and for what???

Hmmmm, you tell me!


duncan