A New Year – a fresh start

The Christmas decorations are down, the leftovers are all gone (thank goodness!), the visitors have returned home and it’s time to get back into good habits again.

How did you fare over the Christmas period? Did your discipline go out the window, along with your best intentions of regular exercise and drinking alcohol in moderation only? Don’t worry – it happens. I’ll put my hand up to adhering to the see-food diet over Christmas and New Year! Now it’s time to work on strategies to get back into the right frame of mind again.

Here are some suggestions:

• Clean out the fridge and pantry and remove any treats or food you know won’t be good for you to have around. If it’s there, it will be eaten.
• Plan your food for at least one day ahead and know what you will be eating for all your meals and snacks. That means having the right food in the house, so get to the supermarket if necessary.
• Start your food diary – and enter everything that goes in your mouth that has calories. Be totally honest so that there aren’t any mysteries as to why that extra flab is not shifting. It’s always a surprise to find out just how many little picks we have during the day.
• Measure your portions. This seems like such a basic step, but being complacent about portions sizes is one of the main reasons for weight gain.
• Drop the excuses – you do have time to exercise, to grocery shop and to prepare healthy meals. You just have to make those things a priority. Drop the excuses to drop the fat.

We all have the desire to ‘be better’. Those who succeed are unwilling to quit when the going gets tough. Every goal you desire will take effort and perseverance and at some point you are going to hit a bump in the road or take a detour. Then you begin to doubt your ability to reach your goal.

When that happens, acknowledge your feelings of frustration and disappointment, but know that it happens to almost everyone. The important thing is not to give up – start the next day with a clean slate and make as many good choices as possible. It might take a few days, or even a week or two, to get properly back on track again, but that’s okay, you are still doing better than if you’d just packed it in and gone back to your old habits completely.

My most successful clients all had setbacks along the way, but they just picked themselves up and kept going. Perseverance, not perfection, will get you there in the end.

Make 2012 the year that you decide to give it your best shot to improve your health, fitness and wellbeing.

Last year Shalome changed her life by dropping 20 kilos – read her story here: http://www.nutritionforlife.co.nz/testimonials/

The MRI scans below show the distribution of fat within two female bodies. One, that of a female of normal weight and the other, that of a morbidly obese woman.

The obese woman has a grossly enlarged liver (probably infiltrated with fat, making it a fat storage organ instead of a fat burning organ) and a large amount of fat in her abdomen surrounding her internal organs. You can also see how the fat between her thighs is forcing her hip and leg bones into an abnormal posture which will probably contribute to her developing osteoarthritis of the knees.

Fat isn’t just a cosmetic problem, it is a serious health issue. Did you know that abdominal fat in particular produces estrogen and inflammatory chemicals? So the more abdominal fat someone has, the more likely it is that their body is in an inflamed state. Inflammation has been shown to be the cause of various cancers and many other health conditions. Excess estrogen also causes many health issues and unbalances other hormones. Both men and women produce estrogen in abdominal fat.

Excess abdominal fat also likely means higher insulin levels in the body and higher insulin levels not only make it more difficult to lose fat, insulin also feeds the growth of cancers. Carrying extra fat around the middle substantially increases your chances of becoming diabetic and having cardiovascular disease.

If you are a woman and your waist measurement is more than 80cm, you need to work on reducing belly fat. If you are a man and your waist measurement is more than 94cm, likewise, it’s time to do something about it. Don’t wait until that belly fat causes you serious health issues, let’s work on it now.

Some things to ponder:

• In the United States, one of the fastest growing industries is the oversize coffin business. The standard size of a coffin is 24 inches wide, but the trend now is the double oversized model which is 38 inches wide. With our growing rate of obesity in New Zealand, perhaps there is an opportunity here for an entrepreneur?
• There are now as many overweight people on earth as there are underweight. How things have changed in the last 30 years.
• Hangovers – what actually are they? The Swedish translation for the word hangover is ‘smacked from behind’ and the Danish translation is ‘carpenters in the forehead’. Hmm, I wonder if any of you felt like that earlier this week?

  While dehydration used to be thought of as the reason for a hangover, scientists now believe that alcohol withdrawal and chemicals formed in the body when our livers break down alcohol also contribute to the hangover symptoms. Toxins pass through the stomach into the bloodstream and from there go right throughout the body, irritating and probably damaging cells and cell membranes. Sore heads, sore eyes, woolly mouth, nausea……no more need be said! Now is a great time to give your liver a break and have a few weeks alcohol free.

• Figures I read today show the average ‘crash’ diet lasts just 15 days and 35% of people who do a crash diet end up putting back on more weight than they lost in the first place. Nothing works better long term than learning how to eat for your body and lifestyle and doing it most of the time.

Kitchen notes:

I haven’t included any recipes in this month’s newsletter because really, after all the excesses of Christmas, it really is time to get back to basics with eating again. (check out my recipe index here for ideas though) http://www.nutritionforlife.co.nz/recipe-index/

Fire up the barbeque, use your portable grill, eat clean, real foods like lean steak, chicken and fish, served with big salads consisting of a wide range of brightly coloured vegetables. Make the most of the warmer weather and good supply of reasonably priced vegetables while you can. Eat simply, use interesting dressings and chutneys to jazz up the flavours and above all, make your meals colourful and tasty.

Appointments

My normal hours commence this Saturday 7 January. Make an appointment now so that we can set goals, write a new plan and get you fired up to get in the best shape of your life this year. Don’t put it off, thinking that you need another week or two to lose any weight you gained over Christmas, because in that week or two I can guarantee you will find ‘reasons’ why you need another week or two to get yourself sorted. It’s time – let’s do it!

Let’s make 2012 the year you fulfil your health and fitness goals.

Lynda

PS: That is my new assistant, baby kitten Harley