Christmas Greetings!

I just want to take 2 minutes to talk to you about the silly season, it’s well & truly arrived. I was walking through the city this week and even on a Wednesday night it was clear that many a Christmas party was occurring in every restaurant & bar we walked past.

We don’t have a lot to celebrate as Australians, a few sporting events, Australia Day and the highly anticipated Christmas holidays. After the year we’ve had, I say grab it by the horns and party! Eat the amazing food, have a drink (or two) and laugh with your loved ones & colleagues.

Can I tell you one of my biggest bugbears? This ‘I’ll start eating healthy again on the 1st of January’ malarky. This stems from the deeply rooted diet culture we have in the west.

Can I challenge you to think about it differently?

Christmas & New Years are two days in the calendar, throw in a secondary family do, a work do and maybe a friend do and you’re looking at 5-6 events tops. What if you were to attend the events, enjoy the feasting and then come home and continue to nourish your body at the next meal? Do you really need to write off 6 or so weeks? When you get yourself into the all or nothing mindset you can do some real damage to your relationship with food and your health.

I teach my Metabolic Balance clients to approach food mindfully as an adult, not with our child-like or judgmental parent selves. The adult understands the consequences and can make rational decisions whereas the child or authoritarian parent want you to either binge until you’re sick or bring on the guilt for even daring to consider eating the trifle. This perpetuates the diet mentality and keeps you stuck in an immature relationship with food, continually frustrated with your health & inability to maintain a healthy weight.

Here are a couple of tips if you want to feel good during and after Christmas parties:

• Listen to your body & stop when you are full.
• Chew slowly and pay attention to the taste on your tongue.
• If it’s a grazing dinner, fill a plate with the amount of food you know you need and stop there, there is nothing worse than lying in bed clutching your stomach late at night.
• If possible, select a protein as the base of your meal and add the trimmings; vegetables, complex carbohydrates & good quality oils. This is a principle you can always apply to your meals whether they are home cooked, a la carte or a shared grazing platter.
• Enjoy the dessert, drink the wine and don’t deprive yourself.

I invite you to employ these simple steps to help you feel not only happy and festive on the outside, but inside your body too!

If you’d like some support in this area, you can book a discovery call at anytime or gift yourself my Metabolic Balance program for Christmas or as a kickstart into 2022 (only a couple of spots left!).