Have your cake and beat it too!
Tough time of year to try to lose weight - or hold onto what you’ve already lost. But you can have your cake this Christmas - and you should!
My final pre-Christmas weigh-in this week. And I stayed the same. I checked it on the scales in the Boots chemist which I use every now and then to make sure my home ones aren’t being too kind. No weight has come off now in ten weeks but... I’ve lost a lot of body fat! In ten weeks my body fat percentage has gone down by six per cent! From 39.2% to 33.6%. Slightly lower than it’s supposed to be for my age, height and sex. I'm very pleased. It means the exercise is working. As I said in a previous Substack exercise doesn’t necessarily help you lose weight but it does firm you up and it’s well worth doing for its own sake. You feel better, fitter, happier and stronger. And in theory with less body fat and more muscle it should eventually be easier to burn off calories. You just have to keep going.
However... Christmas is nearly upon us and that means inevitable feasting. There may be some people who stick to a diet over Christmas but I’ve never met any. And I’ve already started some of my Christmas eating. The shops are so full of goodies right now it’s very hard to resist. But pre-Christmas nibbling may help prevent you from going crazy once the actual date arrives. That’s the logic I’m using and thus far I haven’t gained weight doing that.
Have your cake and eat it too!
Cake is food. It’s full of sugar, true, but it also has plenty good stuff in it. It’s more nutritious than just eating sweets or chocolate. Though high-quality chocolate is good for you too as it boosts your immune system. So have the sugary Christmas foods but have the high-quality stuff. That way you’ll be satisfied with less.
No one wants to read a diet blog over Christmas. So this’ll be my last one till the season is over. If you do indulge don’t beat yourself up. You’re human not a robot. It’s normal to eat more this time of year; we’ve been doing it for centuries during the darkest days in the northern hemisphere. Even aside from Christmas our appetite increases in the cold weather and the dark nights. Accept it. You can start over in the new year.
Thanks for reading my Substack this year. I hope you’ll stay with me next year and we can carry on our weight loss journey together.
Have a lovely Christmas and I wish you and yours a very happy new year. See you in 2022!