How to survive January
‘I was really bad over Christmas.’ This is one of the first sentences that came out of several of my client’s mouths when we met for the first time in January.
But what’s the point of feeling guilty? Or labelling the fact that you relaxed, socialised and feasted, as bad?
Without times like Christmas and holidays, life would be an endless, monotonous slog.
Why we overeat in December
Abandoning structure and boundaries for a week or so gives us a new appreciation of the routines that we default to for most of the year. Many of us enthusiastically welcome the return to them when Christmas is over. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who was gleefully taking the tree and decorations down on 6th January. I love Christmas, but I also welcome the return to normality.
The trouble is we often feel guilty for our festive indulgences and this leads us to take a more extreme approach to January. Instead of simply returning to our normal routines, we tend to punish ourselves for what we’ve eaten during Christmas.
There’s no need to give yourself such a hard time. We knew this was going to happen anyway. We were the ones who bought most of the food we ate for God’s sake!
We bought it because we’ve been bombarded with advertising and exposed to tempting displays of Christmas special offers in supermarkets for the last 3 months.
The Advertising Effect
Yes, three months. That’s how long food manufacturers and retailers groom us for seasonal indulgence. We are the targets of their sales campaigns. And their tactic? To persuade us to make Christmas special for our loved ones - by filling our trolleys full of sugar and additive-laden foods. Their goal isn’t for us to have a wonderful time. It’s to hit their sales targets.
We bought it because we’re usually the ones responsible for making sure everyone has a good time over Christmas. It’s up to us to make sure everyone feels special, loved and appreciated. Besides, our loved ones have seen the same adverts and products in store as we have. They are expecting us to do what the advertisers tell us. We can’t win.
Then there’s the challenge of spending more time with family and friends. While the TV adverts show extended happy families celebrating together, for many people Christmas isn’t like that. For a start, these TV ads conveniently gloss over the hard work that goes into Christmas and ignores the fact that families are complicated. Expectations and tensions can run high and, as family dynamics change over the years so do our Christmases. If we’re not fitting the model Christmas then we can feel excluded and judged.
Eating in social settings is also proven to make us eat more. Whether we notice it or not, the amount of calories we consume when eating with others increases. Subconsciously we want to fit in with the crowd, so if everyone else is going for it, you’re likely to follow suit.
If we do try and restrain ourselves, family and friends can sabotage us when we refuse what’s on offer. Sometimes it’s well-meaning other times it isn’t. Women are often people pleasers. We find it hard to say no, so we eat what we’re given because we don’t want to hurt others’ feelings or draw attention to ourselves.
So all things considered, is it any wonder we eat more than normal?
Let go of the guilt
Can you see how many factors influence the way we eat at Christmas? Don’t underestimate how powerful they are.
I want you to accept that overeating at Christmas isn’t a measure of your willpower or weakness as a person.
And with that, I want to absolve you of your guilt and give you my full permission to let it go and move on.
EAT worse, feel worse. Eat Better, Feel better
One of the reasons we feel bad after a period of eating and drinking more than usual is that physically, we feel do actually feel worse.
Rich, processed food and eating more frequently than normal makes us bloated and sluggish. We might suffer from indigestion or reflux, experience gastrointestinal issues and disturbed sleep. We know we’ve overdone it and crave lighter foods.
But when we try and eat lighter foods, we get powerful cravings for the food we’re trying to give up. This isn’t a sign of your non-existent willpower. It’s a sign of how sugar, alcohol and ultra-processed junk foods affect our brains, providing hits of intense pleasure, which we crave.
Cravings can increase when our mood dips. We don’t enjoy feeling down and look for ways to lift ourselves up. Snacks give us that instant high, temporarily making us feel better.
January is a tough month to get through as it is. Making it even more joyless by cutting calories and going hell-for-leather in the gym only serves to make us hungrier, exhausted and deprived.
We can’t plough through January and punish ourselves at the same time.
Take a different approach
Forget about cutting calories, creating strict rules about what you can’t eat, or trying to fast. Doing this straight after Christmas is going to leave you feeling hungry and deprived. And this is something many women struggle with, especially if they are hitting menopause or have stressed, busy lives.
Stabilise your energy & bring cravings under control
A better approach is to stabilise your energy and bring your cravings under control.
This is easy to do and all it takes is eating three, hearty and nutritious meals a day.
The goal is to stop cravings and the need to snack. As long as your meals are based on natural ingredients and homemade, it’s likely you’ll eat fewer calories than normal, simply by eliminating snacks.
Each meal needs to include protein, plenty of vegetables, a moderate amount of fat, and fewer carbohydrates than you normally have. You can find some example meal plans here.
Well-balanced meals stabilise your blood sugar which avoids cravings and are digested slowly, keeping you fuller for longer.
Whatever you eat, you must really enjoy it, and feel satisfied after eating it. Allowing yourself to get pleasure from food is also important, otherwise, you’ll still experience cravings.
For the first week or focus on discovering what meals work for you. We are all different, so what keeps me feeling full and satisfied might not be as effective for you.
Be prepared to experiment until you find a repertoire of favourites which you can use to form the basis of your everyday diet.
Eat 3 nutritious meals a day
Some of my clients use this as a mantra. However stressed their day is and whatever they are dealing with, they just remind themselves to eat ‘3 nutritious meals a day.’ Just sticking with this is enough to make them lose weight, and the best bit is that it feels really easy.
If you take this approach and stick with it for a few weeks and find that you aren’t losing weight (and want to), then your portion sizes could be too big. Again, keep it simple, just cut back slightly on the amount of fat and carbs you are using.
More energy
It might surprise you to know that my clients say that the biggest benefit of eating like this is having more energy. They sleep better, they don’t have energy crashes during the day. Suddenly life doesn’t feel so hard anymore. With that extra energy, they want to exercise and find it less of a chore to cook healthy meals for themselves.
With more energy, they can ramp up their efforts to take care of themselves. The results become more profound and their motivation increases.
Why calorie cutting fails
The old way of cutting calories and doing more exercise will make you even more exhausted and will feel like an impossible slog. You’ll be obsessed with food and think about eating constantly. After a couple of weeks like this it all feels too much. That’s when we give up.
An easier way
But taking a simpler approach by committing to three nutritious meals a day, reduces overwhelm. This means you need less willpower and think about food less, which brings a wonderful feeling of freedom.
Watch the pounds disappear
Maybe you think this seems too simple to be effective. When I tell my clients to follow this method, they all lose weight. This works. Dieting doesn’t need to be more complicated than this.
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