Following New Year’s Eve is when we usually start to feel the consequences of our over-indulgence and vow to make good on those promises of clean and healthy living from now on.
While there’s nothing wrong with indulging a little over the holidays, there are fortunately lots of ways you can both enjoy your time off and look after your body – having a fun and guilt-free time.
Share the goods
Receiving gifts of chocolates, homemade foods, giant snack hampers, and bottles of wine is a great feeling. Consuming everything within a few days doesn’t leave you feeling great. If you’re doing a lot of socialising over the holidays or know someone who could use these treats more than you, get into the gifting spirit and bring them along to share at parties and people’s houses.
Don’t ‘save yourself’ for the big feast
It’s not the festive season without the giant smorgasbord of delicious foods to stuff yourself with on the big day. A great way of avoiding the binge eating session is to treat the day like any other and eat breakfast and snacks as you normally would instead of deliberately avoiding food to ‘save yourself’ for the big one. If you don’t go into it hungry, you’re much less likely to eat until you can’t move!
Take it easy on the alcohol
The holidays can typically be filled with amazing social occasions where you might have a drink or nine with family and friends. Unfortunately, this can result in a pretty nasty day (or couple of days) following. A great way to avoid overdoing the booze is to regularly consume water in between drinks, and to make sure you’ve eaten some food before indulging so you avoid that low-inhibition binge eating session and absorb the alcohol at a steady rate.
Ramp up the exercise
If you know you’ll be consuming lots of extra calories over the holidays, raise your exercise level to match. We usually have a bit of extra time over this period which means you’ll have some extra time to burn off some of that food and alcohol either before or after you’ve consumed it. Plan your exercise regime ahead and commit to it – your body will thank you for it later!