Want to look and feel great this winter? It’s all about consistency…
Winter’s coming… Are you ready?
The autumnal bloom, hot chocolate, cosy nights in, shorter hours and comfort food. All after a summer of indulgence, holidays, and parties (even if it wasn’t the best weather we’ve ever had) can be a recipe for disaster when it comes to how we look and feel come Christmas and the new year.
So how do we ensure we don’t let the cold weather set in followed by the inevitable indulgence of comfort foods and a comfort lifestyle to compliment? Luckily October and November give us a strong period of time where we can focus on ourselves without the usual distractions of an overly packed social calendar.
Fact: Those who are most successful on their health and fitness journeys don’t wait until January to start.
So if you want to start 2024 in better shape than you did in 2023, and not have to worry about what to wear come the Christmas party season you are going to have to think and act a little differently to what you have done in previous autumnal periods. Just because the next few months will see the layers increase and the hoodies and Oodies come out of storage doesn’t mean it is time to switch off when it comes to our health and fitness.
Let’s get started today.
Put your party dates in the calendar
Nobody goes through the Christmas party season without having to get out the ‘little black dress’ or a slim-fitting suit at least once, and rather than freaking out about it not fitting a week before the event, let’s do something about it now.
Put the date in the calendar (even if you don’t know the exact it, you will have a rough idea of when), put it somewhere you will see it as a reminder to stay on track and have a goal to work towards, hopefully letting you shop for a little something that shows off your shape rather than something to hide your perceived ‘squidgy’ bits.
You will be amazed at the impact a simple reminder, put somewhere you can see it, will have on a date that will sneak up on you quicker than you thought.
Don’t put off until tomorrow something you can do today
Check your food intake.
It can be easy to fall into more indulgent and opulent food choices as the nights draw shorter and the weather colder and whilst I am not encouraging you to head off and obsess about entering all your food into some form of calorie counter it might be prudent to track your food in some way.
Maybe five days at the start of each month (Include the weekend in these five) write down everything you eat, you don’t have to weigh or measure everything, just write down an honest account of what you are eating. This will serve two purposes…
Firstly, it will keep you mindful of your food choices, allowing you precious time to think before consumption – leading to food choices more congruent with your goals.
Secondly, you will be able to identify times you are vulnerable to making choices that don’t align with your goals, as well as identifying foods you regularly eat that are preventing you from the long-term success you desire.
Identifying this information once every thirty days or so will have a large impact on your ability to keep accountable to what you want to achieve and how you want to look and feel come the party season.
Keep Exercising
With shorter days, it can be really easy to stop exercising, to stay in bed when the early morning alarm goes off for the gym, or to head straight home after a long day at work. But this is where all those annoying people who stay fit and healthy all year round have one-up on most people.
They don’t just exercise when it is easy… they put in the work when they don’t want to.
^^ This is the most potent piece of advice I can offer (and not just in terms of exercise) – stick to your commitments even when you do not want to.
Take your Vitamins (and eat your veg)
Look, you can try and get around this any way you want but our bodies need nutrients in the forms of vitamins and minerals and whilst you will get the building blocks to repair, and the energy to live from protein, fats, and carbohydrates, the longer you lack vitamins and minerals the sicker you will feel, and the less energy you will have.
Protein is like the bricks that build a wall, and fats and carbs are like the builders, but the vitamins and minerals are the cement that holds it all together, allowing it to last forever and enabling you to build on what you already have. Without adequate consumption, it won’t be long before everything comes crumbling down.
And whilst the government’s advice is to eat five per day, this is based on nothing other than what they felt was reasonable to get you to eat healthier without you feeling it was too much – they were hedging their bets. The truth is you need to be eating closer to ten per day (fruit and veg); three is better than two, and seven is better than five… just eat them wherever you can and find ways to add them to your diet.
To supplement this, a good quality multivitamin is essential, especially during the winter months; few people on the planet would not benefit by bolstering their defences with a good quality multivitamin and it is nigh on impossible to overdose on most outside of the fat-soluble vitamins…
After all, if you don’t worry too much about the overconsumption of alcohol, why would you worry about your overconsumption of nutrients?
So do like your Mum told you eat your veg and take your vitamins.
Get your sleep
Any advice about energy, health, and looking and feeling great that has not at least got a footnote about sleep is not giving you the full picture. It is not just where we regenerate our energy, and get some respite from the inevitable and relentless stresses of life, it is where everything is repaired, from our organs to our mental state, from our muscles to our skin.
Injuries improve with greater quality of sleep, so does your skin, so if you want to look, and feel much better – go to bed!
As the winter draws in – we need more. We are a product of evolution and as of yet we have not adapted to our ability to change the light in our environment, we are still programmed to wake and sleep with the cycles of the sun and moon. Yes, I am aware this is not possible in the modern world – but we can do better.
Do we need to stay up to, and beyond 11, watching relentlessly mind-numbing garbage on TV? Could we not try and get settled a little earlier, plan to watch maybe no more than an hour of TV before bed – get off our mobile devices, does your partner want to sit while you doom scroll – would you not feel better connected together without the devices sharing an hour in front of the TV, or something a little more fun?
I do wish writing this column that I could share with you more groundbreaking and exciting advice but the truth is – solid health advice IS boring, sorry! And those who do the most mundane and boring things well and consistently have the greatest results and look and feel the best year-round and year after year.
Ben and the SSA Team