Paul Lyons* says the best way to avoid those extra Christmas kilos is to balance party time with regular workouts.
It’s the festive season and with social, work and family gatherings that involve more food and drink than usual, it’s easy to consume calories you don’t need.
However, you can lose weight and become physically fitter through a high degree of resolve and an exercise routine.
Here are two easy-to-describe, but harder-to-adopt, mental toughness tips to help you stay disciplined and make you slimmer.
Build your resolve by setting a goal to lose weight over the next month
How much do you want to lose weight or not gain weight over the next month?
It’s up to you.
Write down your goal and put your written note in a prominent place (the door of the refrigerator?)
Weigh yourself today, and then every day, to monitor your progress.
Every time you are faced with the temptation to eat or drink more, draw on your resolve, read your note, picture yourself as slimmer than you are now.
Choose to limit your food and drink to one small serving or abstain altogether. Enjoy the event but tone down on the food and drink.
Every day that you abstain, every day that you weigh yourself in with no increase, you build you mental toughness a little more.
You feel less inclined to ‘break the chain’. It’s a valuable compound effect.
Sure, it’s far easier said than done, but that’s the essence of mental toughness — having the resolve and mental strength to stick to what you believe in.
Exercise every day through the festive season
Regular exercise is the best way to build both physical and mental toughness.
It is a good counter balance to the endless round of events and gatherings.
I have found the morning exercise routine this year beneficial in setting me up for a positive day.
Also, I have been able to productively use the grit and determination required to push myself to my physical limits in more mental pursuits.
In the absence of celebrity personal trainer, Faisal Abdalla knocking on my door at 5am to pound the pavement I was nevertheless interested to read his view in a recent edition of menshealth.com.
In his article he thinks that even a small amount of regular physical exercise will help build your mental toughness that in turn strengthens your willpower to resist culinary cravings.
He says we have been fed the message that changing what you eat is the surest route to getting in shape for the long term.
“However, no matter how you serve it, it’s nonsense. Without rebooting both your training and your diet together, you’ll never tip the scales in your favour,” Faisal says.
Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle confirmed this when they conducted randomised trials on overweight participants.
A clean diet alone was nowhere near as effective for fat loss as combining good nutrition with exercise.
What’s more, our obsession with food consumption could be distracting us from more urgent statistics.
A 2009 study suggested that poor cardiorespiratory fitness was responsible for nearly 17 per cent of male deaths, while obesity accounted for just three per cent once activity levels were factored out.
In short, you’d better get moving.
Most of us under-estimate the mental toughness required to resist cravings, but research shows that even small amounts of physical activity help to strengthen willpower.
One Dutch review concluded that forming an exercise routine leads to significant increases in self-control, probably because it increases blood flow to the frontal region of the brain.
That means hitting the gym not only improves cardiovascular fitness, muscle mass, blood pressure and mood, it also steels you against the lure of the Golden Arches.
The same can’t be said of any kale smoothie.
If you’re training hard, don’t be afraid to break from nutritional austerity with a cheat meal. Or have a cheat day.
Rely on food alone for transformation and there’s no room for slip-ups: You can’t burn off extra calories without exercise.
Workouts are what turn any reboot into a sustainable lifestyle, rather than a short-lived dietary denial.
To make this festive season your most physically rewarding yet, lace up your trainers.
*Paul Lyons is an experienced business leader, adviser and coach enjoying a diverse career across Australia and Asia. He can be contacted at [email protected].
This article first appeared on the Mental Toughness blogsite.
