Have A Guilt Free Christmas
Ok, so christmas is here and you’re piling on the pounds. Beating yourself over the head with the metaphorical stick to force to you in to the gym or to take control of your eating might seem like the only way you’ll get off your bum, but you’re actually setting yourself up for failure.
Why?
Well, No one likes to be told off right? There’s only so much abuse anyone will take before you turn around and say, “you know what? screw this!”. Even if the person doing the abuse is yourself.
The truth is that you did all that eating and drinking for underlying good reasons. To share time with friends, because the weather is cold, because you were under the weather or even cos you were feeling a bit down and wanted comfort. It happened – it doesn’t make you a bad person. Don’t beat yourself up.
In the new year, you want to get a bit more serious? Great. Ask yourself why you want to make changes. Because you loved how you felt when you were slimmer or you hate the feeling of your flesh bulging out over your clothes. Whether your motivation is towards a way of being you love or away from something you hate – it’s equally valid. Carrot or stick. If you make a list of reasons and see that most of them are to avoid something, then you are more motivated by the stick. But instead of beating yourself up, just acknowledge what it is you don’t like, be honest with yourself. and then decide what you are going to do about it.
This will generally fall in to 2 camps – eat less and move more. So simple and somehow so…. seemingly tricky!.
Below are some common areas that women want to improve. I will address each one in turn giving advice on each area.
Tummy
Want a flatter more toned tummy? Well the bad news is that doing untold crunches is not really going to help you. There is no such thing as spot reduction of fat. You cannot choose what area of the body your system will burn fat from. You need to get your body into a fat burning state overall.
The good news is that you don’t have to do untold crunches. Yay!
The way to do it is be active for 5 hours a week – dance, run, cycle, climb, weight train, circuits, workout dvd. Choose fun stuff you like that you will stick too.
To get your body into a fat burning state there are three main factors. insulin, leptin and moving around.
Insulin keeps your blood sugar level safe by controlling spikes in sugar by turning that sugar into fat. Guess what – sugar makes you fat!
The more starchy and sweet carbs you have the more insulin you release. The more you release the more your body gets used to it and so the more you have to release further! A bit of a vicious cycle which creates a superhighway in your body turning sugar into stored body fat.
Leptin’s role in the body is varied but it is very much involved with feeling satisfied. The more often you eat the more you release leptin and the more you, again, get numb to it. The result is that you don’t feel as satiated by food as you should.
Wo what are these to factors saying? Don’t eat refined startchy carbs or sweet things as they spike the blood sugar levels too much. Startchy carbs include rice, potatoes, bread – all that stuff. And sweet things include chocolate and, well, sweets.
The other take home message is – don’t snack! Just don’t. You need to retrain your hormonal system to work more efficiently for you and if that means a couple of weeks of being hungry between meals, so be it.
The idea that you need to eat 6 times a day and to eat breakfast in order to maintain a high metabolism is just an old wive’s tale. If you are the sort of person that has breakfast and then is hungry an hour or so later and all day – then don’t have breakfast! Also, if you aren’t hungry in the morning – then don’t have breakfast!! If you are trying to lose weight – why eat when you’re not hungry!
Bum
see above
Bingo Wings
see above
Thighs
guess, what? see above.
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