How to avoid winter weight gain this year
Everyone knows that winter can be a tough time of year for getting into, or staying in shape. First of all, why would you want to go out in the freezing cold rain to get to the gym when you could just retire to your lovely warm bed? Then there are the comfort foods to contend with, and on top of that our moods are all over the place which can lead to overeating
So this year, prepare for the winter with these 5 tips.
1. Exercise
Having a regular exercise schedule is the key to getting into shape this winter. When you’ve just finished work and it’s ice cold outside, you are much more likely to want to drive back to your warm home than to drive to the gym. An exercise schedule that includes a variety of different exercise will make you more motivated to get the gym or go for a run on those cold dark nights.
2. Party time!
With all the parties going on in winter it’s hard not to put on a few pounds. Research suggests that we consume 40% more calories when we’re out and if there’s a wide variety of choice like a buffet, we tend to eat way too much. And most of this eating isn’t even related to hunger, it’s just mindless calorie consumption!
Before you go to that Christmas party, each a bunch of vegetables, a big salad or some fruit and this will help curb your cravings for all that party rubbish.
3. Alcohol
A lot of the winter celebrations involve drinking alcohol, but to lose weight this winter you are going to have to avoid this as best as you can and at the very least try and limit the damage. Alcohol is full of empty calories, a lot of people will manage to consume an entire days’ worth of calories in one boozy session!
If you are rewarding yourself with a drink or 2, avoid the calorie packed drinks such as beer, fizz, wine, cocktails, anything with coke in etc. and go for the lower calorie drinks like gin and slim lime tonic or Barcadi and diet coke. But beware even these drinks can add up to lots of calories, 5 drinks come in at around 400-500 calories.
Top Tip: Have a glass of water in between every alcoholic beverage. This will pace your drinking and making you less likely to overdrink and it will also help massively with the hangover.
You are at this party to celebrate, have fun and socialize so focus on doing just that and remember, dancing burns calories.
4. Get setting those goals
How many times have you tried to lose weight? Be that starting a diet, signing up to a gym or buying a new pair of running shoes with the best intention of actually using them?
Well most people that do, fail. Most people that fail haven’t set effective goals.
Although goals are not the be all and end all of getting into shape, they really do help you stay on track when you motivation starts to vaporise. So this winter, set yourself some goals such as dropping a dress size or two, being able to run 5k by Christmas, or being able to fit into that little black dress for New Years. For more information about setting goals click here.
5. Eat more protein, eat less carbs
Protein is great. Not only does protein make you feel way fuller than anything else you can eat, but you also use lots of calories digesting it, so you actually losing weight by eating it!
Carbs on the other hand, are not good for hunger. When you eat crappy carbs such as bread, pizza or biscuits, your blood sugar levels rocket upwards, to lower the blood sugar levels your liver panics and sends out lots of insulin which tells your body to use the sugar or store it as fat, this makes your blood sugar levels drop very low and to bring your blood sugar back up to a normal level your brain makes you crave more carbs, therefore your get really hungry again. As you can see this is one vicious cycle, this is one reason why low carb diets are great.
To beat the cravings this winter, increase your protein intake from meats, fish, eggs, nuts and cheese and eat whole unprocessed carbs such as fruit, veg and oats.