How to get back on track after the festive feasting, without dieting!
Let’s talk about how to get back on track after all that festive feasting, without any dieting bullshit! So, you’ve spent the past few weeks or maybe even the whole month eating non-stop, having lots of treats & alcoholic drinks to celebrate. All the healthy habits have gone out the window and you’ve been contemplating going on a diet. Maybe you’ve even started one, but it’s not going well. There’s still chocolate in the fridge and a few mince pies hanging around the house. After a day of trying to follow the strict diet-plan you find yourself stuffing your face with the leftover chocolate all evening…
Forget all that dieting mentality, it will only make it worse!
And there’s no need to beat yourself up for how you’ve been eating – that’s not going to help you either. You’ll get no judgement from me; I’ve been doing my fair share of eating more than normal. The last thing I’m going to be doing is feeling guilty about all the extra treats I’ve been having – I enjoyed myself!
If you’ve enjoyed yourself too, but you know to be healthy you can’t carry on as you are then keep reading. Here’s my guide to getting back on track after all the festive feasting. This is exactly what I’ll be doing myself this month. Check out my tips to get back to eating better and feeling healthier with zero dieting bullshit!
Step 1 – Be honest with yourself about your current habits
What healthy habits have slipped – the ones that make the biggest difference to everything else that you do? For a lot of people, the thing that makes the biggest difference is sticking to regular balanced meals starting with breakfast. You can find out more about eating a normal healthy balanced diet in my free course – especially check out the 3rd session for how to make it simple. By eating regularly & giving your body what it needs, straight away you’ll find you don’t want to snack & pick between meals as much. Sitting down to eat a proper balanced meal, helps you feel satisfied so you don’t crave the biscuits or cheese.
Or it could be about getting back into a decent sleeping routine. This one definitely makes a big difference for me! I find I snack more & I don’t always make the most helpful decisions about food when I’m tired. Maybe it’s about getting moving again as a lot of people find this helps them feel better and sleep better. When you feel better, you feel more like looking after yourself. When you feel good, you feel more like doing the things that help you to keep feeling well. It’s like a positive cycle. Ask yourself; what do I need to change that would help me to feel well?
Step 2 – Just tweak it!
Think about the habits that you want to change, the things that’d make a difference. Then pick one little thing you could focus on to start with. What’s your first step? The thing you could do straight away coz it’s the easiest place to start… that’s where you start.
Make it easy for yourself. If you know that having breakfast would make all the difference, but you can’t quite face having a full balanced meal first thing, try grabbing a piece of fruit or a yoghurt to start with. Take things step by step. If you know you need more fruit & veg, start by making sure you have a portion at each meal, then build it up from there. When you’re used to the first tweak and it’s become a habit, then start on the next step.
Step 3 – Be kind to yourself
Recognise how well you’re doing when you’ve made a start, instead of beating yourself up with how much you need to do. Give yourself credit for your achievements and when things go well. We need to do more focusing on our strengths & wins to feel good. Give yourself a pat on the back for any steps you make towards your goals, no matter how small.
But if things don’t go to plan, don’t think you’ve failed, or you can’t do it. Changing habits is HARD! It takes time & effort. Little slip-ups are a normal part of trying to make changes. Instead of guilt-tripping yourself, try looking at what you could do to help yourself. Ask yourself why things didn’t go to plan & how you could tweak it to make it easier to keep going. Is there a strategy that could help you with the habits you’re trying to build? Do you need to focus on a different tweak first?
Remember changing habits is a marathon, not a sprint; slow & steady will get you there eventually.
And of course if you need help with this I am here for you.
Need help to ditch dieting forever? Want to eat normally again AND lose weight healthily ..? While still enjoying the cake & chocolate? Hell yes!
I can help you ditch dieting forever, either with my 1-2-1 support. Or if you prefer to work independently, you can learn all the skills I teach my 1-2-1 clients, on my ‘No More Diets’ online course.
My Weekly Round-up! AKA; what I’ve been up to recently…
- This blog post has been powered by Teapigs Earl Grey Strong – yum! I’m not sponsored by them at all, I just got a pack of them in a goody bag as a birthday present and I’ve been drinking it ever since. It’s so pretty with the little blue cornflowers in the fancy tea-bags!
- Yesterday was the first day back at school for Genevieve so as a family we’ve been trying to get back into a better sleeping routine this week. As I said above, getting a decent night’s sleep makes ALL the difference for me and we’d been going to bed later and later over the festive season. We’re not quite back to normal, but getting there… (even though I help people change habits, it still takes me effort & practice too!)
- Another habit I’m working on getting back into is going for a walk after the school run most week-days. This morning was the first and I feel so much better for it. I wandered along the brook and even though it’s all a bit bleak over winter, it was just what I needed. Will definitely be doing it again tomorrow, even if it rains!
- The rest of our week before the school term started was fairly chilled like the week before. We’ve watched a few films; the new Disney release ‘Encanto’ has been on repeatedly coz we all loved it (so the songs are currently stuck going round in my head!). We also enjoyed ‘Robin Robin’, which was really sweet. I’m undecided about ‘Don’t Look Up’ though – there was something about it which left me a bit depressed about humanity’s greed & apathy. Although I did think it was funny in parts in that satirical, cringey way.
- One of the things I’d love to do this year is to get back into walking up hills at the weekend. We have about 50 hills around here in Shropshire and there are loads we’ve never been up. So I’ve set us a little family goal of walking up 22 different hills in 2022! With a 6 year old in tow it will be a bit of a challenge, but we’ve already been up The Wrekin on New Year’s Day (and survived, just!) – so 1 down, 21 to go!
- Even though I’ve not been out walking as much as usual, I’ve still seen a few interesting birds. I’ve seen woodpeckers a couple of times when we’ve been at the park and once there was also a Jay. I saw a load of those little cuties the long-tailed tits this morning. As well as a chirpy little goldcrest in the bush near school. Plus yesterday a sparrowhawk briefly visited our garden (or as Sam calls it The Murder-Pigeon!).
