Maintaining that healthy lifestyle and routine during the Christmas period can be tough.   Maintaining your Personal Training sessions, Gym Class attendance and/or Nutrition Coaching Check-ins can be harder as you have more commitments and stressors around this time.

So what do you do?

Do you just let yourself off the hook fully, put a pause on your routine and commitment to your fitness and health and enjoy the time?

Or

Should you go full strict mode, try to hit every class, attend all sessions and eat super strict?

Neither are a good idea.

TODAY, I want you have a think about YOUR strategy for how you’re going to approach this season.

November, December and January is the time of the year when you tend to face the most amount of challenges when it comes to fitness, nutrition and health. You are faced with more social events, more opportunities to eat out, drink alcohol, later nights, less sleep, less time to workout, going away, more stress, less focus on preparing meals at home and the list could go.  So your first instinct is to put a pause on your goals. Which we all know doesn’t end well. As you find yourself right back to where you started this same time last year.

What if you tried something different?

I want you to adjust your approach slightly to allow for the extra commitments and change in your routine and set up a plan that will help you stay on track. And I want you to choose the option that requires the least amount of time commitment possible.

1. Don’t over commit. If you’re saying, I’m going to hit 5 classes this week (in the middle of December) but you know full well that this is going to be hard, then reduce that. Say to yourself, I am going to attend 3 sessions this week and if I get a 4^th in, I’d be super happy.
2. Determine the perfect frequency of attendance for you….it might be instead of training everyday, you might train 3 days with a rest day then 2 days and rest. Or train twice then have a rest then train twice. Rest days are golden and when you give yourself permission to do so, it is even better.
3. If you want to stay relatively healthy on weekends, then plan to do a Sunday class and start your week on a Sunday. BUT, don’t tell yourself you’re going to train on a Sunday if you have no intention to. If you continually tell yourself you’re going to do something and then you don’t….you lose trust in yourself and what you’re telling yourself.
4. How can you make this season work for you? What kind of routine is achievable and will ensure that I still feel successful.
5. Determine what social eating looks like for you. You don’t have to switch off from your nutrition goals for 4 weeks just to get through. You can still enjoy the big days Christmas day, boxing day, new years and still be on track the days around it.

Some of you may want to continue with your usual structure and keep it as normal as possible through the entire period. However, if you know yourself well and you know that you always try to keep the same routine and pace but always fail, then don’t set that goal this time.

Key point: address your goals for the upcoming Christmas period. Be honest with yourself and your coach if you have one. Set realistic and achievable goals. If you find you’re the kind of person who makes appointments or “commitments” at this time then consistently cancels, then don’t be that person anymore. Don’t book appointments that you know you might not want to or be able to keep. This comes down to starting to be that person who can trust that they will do what they tell themselves.

There’s 60 days in December and January. If you over indulge on the main Christmas days and a few other social things here and there, you tend to focus on how bad you ate on these 5 days. But what you fail to do is acknowledge how well you stayed on track in the other 55 days in those 2 months! It’s about what you do consistently that counts.  

In my experience as a Nutrition Coach, these methods above, are what I’ve found works to keep clients engaged and compliant. You don’t have to be perfect through this period. You CAN reduce expectations on yourself and are therefore less likely to go into pause mode and lose control for the entire month or two.

If you would like to receive support and accountability from a Tribe Coach then book your free No Sweat Intro here.