Staying On Track In December

Ah, December. The most wonderful time of the year. Well, when you discount the dark nights, the pouring rain, the freezing cold, the madness at the office, the endless coughs and sniffles and of course, spending the GDP of a small African nation on Christmas presents. Aside from all that, it’s ace, isn’t it?

With so much pressure and stress at this time of year, it’s incredibly easy to put your health and fitness at the bottom of the priority list. Who has the time or energy for the gym with all this going on, right?

And that’s exactly how most people think. They “pause” the gym, cancel their memberships, save some money and once this busy time is out the way, they’ll start up again. That works great in theory, but once you’ve made that decision it’s a slippery slope to the bad old days of low energy, low mood, putting weight on, feeling rubbish and watching your health decline.

This article is going to explore the consequences of throwing in the towel in December, and how to turn things around if you’ve already let things slide.

If you’ve been hitting the gym all year, you’ve likely been seeing some good results which works wonders for keeping you motivated (and if you haven’t, maybe you need some direction). Either way, you’ve been in a fantastic and healthy habit of keeping yourself active. When you allow yourself to break that habit, you break the psychological dam holding your health and fitness programme together.

The gym isn’t just about exercise. It’s a psychological signal to yourself that you are the kind of person who values their health (both physical and mental), that you care about how long you live and the quality of those years, and that you set an example to those who look up to you about how important it is to take care of yourself.

When you break that habit, you send a signal to yourself that your health isn’t as important as whatever else is going on. Usually your diet is the next pillar to fall, as you slip into old habits and before you know it, you’re telling yourself “sod it, it’s Christmas” on the 3rd of December. Then your alcohol consumption goes up to deal with the stresses of this time of year (because the gym used to be your stress outlet), and as a result your sleep quality suffers. Now you’re not sleeping great so you’re feeling even worse in the daytime, making you reach for extra cups of coffee and more sugary snacks to get you through. This makes your blood sugars spike and crash causing an energy rollercoaster, the extra caffeine further disrupts sleep at night, and now you’re back in the vicious cycle you’ve worked all year to get out of.

You might be reading this thinking it sounds hyperbolic or exaggerative, and while it’s true that this downward spiral doesn’t happen overnight, it can and often does happen much quicker than you might expect. If you throw in the towel on the 1st December, by the time the new year rolls around you’ll really wish you hadn’t.

One of the things that often trips people up when it comes to staying in their healthy habits around Christmas time is the desire to be perfect. In the 12 years I’ve been coaching ladies towards a healthier life, I’ve never seen something kill someone’s progress faster than perfectionism.

Let me be clear – you don’t need the perfect workout to get a benefit from the gym. You don’t need to never eat a chocolate bar or have a glass of wine to stay on track with your nutrition. You don’t need a 7pm bedtime to get a good night’s sleep. The likelihood of you ever getting your health and lifestyle perfect is incredibly low, and during the busy and stressful month of December it’s basically zero. So why are you aiming at perfect?

A much better approach to your health and wellbeing in December (and every other month for that matter) is to define what I like to think of as the “minimum effective dose” for success. This essentially means getting clear on what the essential baseline standards are that you need to hit every day to keep moving forward (or at least not move backwards) during December.

This doesn’t mean setting your sights on the athlete-level workouts you see on social media. It doesn’t mean trying to become a 21-year-old gym bunny overnight. It means defining some realistic expectations of yourself that even on your worst and most stressful week, you can still hit.

I’m talking 4000 steps per day, 2 workouts per week, a sensible eating and fasting window and not drinking yourself into oblivion every night. Some realistic standards to keep yourself healthy and energetic throughout these cold, dark winter months.

This approach will help you to stay consistent and stop the “all-or-nothing” mentality that has seen you stop and start diets and fitness regimes since the 90s.

Now, there’s no getting away from it, December is a particularly social month for many of us. We have Christmas do’s, family get-togethers and special occasions seemingly every weekend. Nobody wants to be labelled the boring one eating a salad at the Christmas party.

This is why you must allow yourself some freedom and flexibility. Just because the point of this article is to stay consistent in December, doesn’t mean I’m expecting you to be a robot. We are the most social creatures on the planet, and maintaining a good social life is a vitally important part of staying healthy.

So go to that Christmas do. Have a few glasses of what you fancy. Indulge in a few foods you wouldn’t normally choose – and don’t feel guilty about it.

But here’s the kicker: when you wake up the next morning, get right back to your usual health and wellbeing routine.

Special occasions are special because they’re out of the norm. Having a definite routine that you stick to every day allows you to be flexible when these special occasions come up. It isn’t the one-off night out that you should worry about, it’s allowing that one-off night out to affect the rest of the week or month.

Keep your standards high at home, and you can let your hair down when you go out.

The point of this article wasn’t to tell you off or make you feel guilty if you’ve “fallen off the wagon” at this time of year. I get it, it happens to the best of us.

The point of this article is to nudge you to realise that the longer you stay away from health habits, the harder it’s going to be to turn things around in the new year (or whenever you get around to it again).

Now is the PERFECT time to pick up some health habits, because if you can prove to yourself you can do it in December – when everything and everyone wants your time and attention, then you can definitely do it when things settle down in January and February.

If you need help, we have a small group health and fitness programme specifically designed to help ladies in Doncaster aged 40-75 drop weight, build strength, tone up and revitalise their health.

Right now we’re taking on a limited number of new members, so if the link below still works, you still have a chance of joining us before the January rush in a few weeks. Tap the link below to find out more:

Thanks for reading.

Andy Clements

Head Coach & Owner

DC Personal Training