Healthy Habits for the New Year – How Will You Make Them Stick?

Our nutrition partners at Nutrable share three tips to help you start and sustain new habits:

Forget ‘New Year, New You’ - Look back instead!

Remember how bad you’ve felt after over-indulging either at Christmas or another event? It might not have been alcohol but, rather, just bad food, too much food and too much lounging! Your skin, your muscles and your fitness may be hit hard, but remember too how your energy, your mood and your ability to fight off infection suffer from poor diet and low levels of exercise. And that’s without considering the negative effects on your recovery from training, injury, illness or surgical procedures.

You know you don’t want to go back there. In fact, you probably can’t afford to go back there if you want to stay healthy and fit. Take a moment to write down how you felt. It can also be helpful to think about whether it stopped you doing anything you enjoy. One client told me, for example: “I was just too tired, sluggish and stiff to join my kids on the trampoline.” Remembering these moments can be a powerful motivator.

On the flip side, have you ever had a great health and fitness streak in the past? If so, you know how good that feels. Keep your eye on that target by writing it down too or telling someone else about it.

What were you able to do that you can’t do now? Better still, write out exactly what you would like to achieve over the next three months. This can give you extra impetus to get started on your new habits – after all, that first step can be the hardest – but it can also give you a point of reference to look back at if or when you encounter your first challenges.

One step at a time

You might be a person who likes to change absolutely everything at once but, in reality, this kind of change risks becoming a short-term fix. Diet and exercise can deliver incredible results in just a short space of time, so people often feel invincible during the first few weeks. It’s tempting at this point to dive deeper into restrictive diets and new recipes or to go to the gym ever more frequently and push yourself harder.

For many people, this becomes exhausting, and their high standards are not sustainable. It’s far better to change a few things or a set of things and re-gain your health and fitness gradually.

Think about your priorities. What action could you take this month and what could you start next month instead? If you really do work best with a ‘cold turkey’ approach, group together your actions so that you can do one batch right now and another in six months’ time.

You might start, for example, by swapping out processed snacks for whole-food, low-sugar options such as Greek yoghurt, nuts & seeds, oat cakes & humus, apple & cheese, or dark chocolate with more than 70% cocoa. Once you’ve embedded that as a new habit, move onto fixing your breakfast so that you eat protein-rich foods such as eggs instead of cereal. Incremental changes are effective.

Make sure you’re doing the right diet and exercise

January is a busy time for the diet and fitness industry. Enthusiasm for self-improvement is admirable, but many people serially choose popular but problematic approaches that most experts wish they wouldn’t! Here are two examples of what NOT to do in your rush to get fitter:

• Low-calorie, low-fat diets – eating like this can definitely help you to shed the excess pounds, but for how long? And are you sure you’re losing fat and not muscle? The brain eventually craves nourishment in the form of calories, protein, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals, leading to yo-yo dieting. The professional approach to improving your health and your body composition is a non-calorie-counting strategy which includes protein-rich food at every meal, restricted sugar, tailored levels of starch, plentiful vegetables and some healthy fats found in unprocessed foods.

• Chronic cardio fueled by chronic sugar consumption – many people forgo professional diet and training advice for simple quick-fixes. Over-training, unbalanced workout routines and large amounts of sugar eventually take their toll on fitness, performance, recovery, sleep and overall health.

A considered approach

The message is clear: don’t rush into New Year health and fitness resolutions! Plan what you want to achieve, consider why you want to achieve it, and take a slow but sustainable approach. Get professional support as much as you can. Incredible results are waiting for you!

Don't forget as a Carter & George patient you receive nearly £300 off the retail price of a bespoke Nutrable program. Find out more here.