New Year

Happy New Year everyone.

What has this New Year got in store for you?  Have you already written out your goals for 2016?  Maybe you have some big plans for 2016 or maybe you just have a general idea of this being time for new beginnings, a fresh start, an opportunity to make something in your life better. Hopefully of all those plans you have, health is high on your list.

January is a great time to take stock of where you are and put a few healthier disciplines in place.  It’s a time when many people decide to do a detoxifying diet, and I guess the rational is a clean fresh start to a new year.

Personally doing a detox in January is not something that I would ever recommend to my clients.  January is a harsh month for our bodies (assuming that you are living in the colder regions of the northern hemisphere).  For a start you have just come out of , for your body, a very stressful period.  Most people work harder, longer hours prior to Christmas.  When we finally stop working for Christmas we then start on an excess of food, alcohol and late nights – all very stressful for your body.

We then start work again and enter the coldest months of the year.  Our bodies are then shunted between two extremes of temperature – the cold outside and the artificially heated indoor temperatures. Again, lots of bodily stress.  And even if you have managed to keep yourself healthy through all that has gone on in the past two weeks, you will also now be spending time with other people who are happily spreading their germs around your office or home.

This is not a good time to do a detox!!! Your body is struggling already and you do not want to overload it any more.

That doesn’t mean that now is not a good time to make some changes.  Changes that are good for you health and good for shedding those excess pounds that you promised yourself that you would lose this year.  These changes are also a good practice for doing a full cleanse in spring when the weather starts to turn warmer.

So what changes do I recommend?

Give up alcohol

There is lots of support if you would like to give up alcohol for January.  The Dry January campaign has it’s own website and many supporters.  The benefits of giving up alcohol for a month will obviously vary depending on how much you drink but the benefits can be huge for both your health and your weight.

Alcohol is processed through your liver and this is the first organ that will thank you for abstinence.  Your liver will be able to cleanse itself of excess toxins and the build up of any alcohol that you have over indulged in over the festive period.

A dry January could result in a drop in your blood glucose level by as much as 16%.  This was the average drop in blood glucose levels during a study by New Scientist magazine.  This is great news for anyone with Type II Diabetes or anyone wanting to lose weight.

If weight loss is your primary concern these figures may help to convince you that it is worth quitting or at least drastically reducing your alcohol consumption in order to achieve your weight goal.

^Glass size = 175ml  ** shot size = 25ml  *** bottle size = 275ml

If you would like to track your own calorie consumption through alcohol visit the Drink Aware website.

Give up sugar

It could take you all of January to work out where sugar is hidden in your diet but don’t let that put you off trying.  Start with the obvious things like chocolate bars, commercial cereals, sugar added to drinks and desserts.

If you add sugar to coffee or tea my recommendation would be to reduce the amount of sugar by just ¼ teaspoon per week or until you get used to the taste.

Another option, rather than thinking of giving up things, is to think about swapping the less healthy items in your diet   Try swapping some of your drinks for herbal or fruit tea or filtered water.  Any change takes time to adjust to so give your new option a good trial to give your taste buds time to adjust to your new choice.  If you are used to very sweet drinks, fruit teas are sweeter than herbal ones.

Make your own food

Home made food contains more nutrients and less calories than ready meals.  If a meal is pre prepared it needs to be preserved in some way and the easiest way to do that is by adding salt and sugar.  You don’t need any sophisticated culinary skills to make your own nutritious meals.  Just start with something simple and your skills will soon grow.

A bowl of home made soup is a lovely welcome home on a cold winter’s night.  Soup is easy to make and easy to pack full of nutrients and with a few additions can become a whole nourishing meal.  If you are busy during the week you can easily make a big batch of soup at the weekend that will last 2-3 days or freeze for later use.  Just remember to get the frozen soup out of the freezer before you head off to work in the morning.

Here’s a great winter warming soup recipe to get you started, although this one is not suitable for freezing.

Mexican Bean Soup

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 green peppers, diced

400g can tomatoes

½ tsp chilli powder or fresh chilli if you prefer

2 tsp vegetable bouillon in 750ml water

400g kidney beans

120g sweetcorn

1 Avocado, roughly diced

Coriander, chopped

Warm the oil and gently fry the onion until soft.

Add the next six ingredients to the pan.

Add half of the kidney beans

Simmer for 20 minutes.

Blend until smooth

Add the remaining ingredients, except coriander, and stir to warm through.

Serve in bowls and sprinkle with the coriander leaves.

This whole batch of soup gives 870 calories so serve between 2 people as a meal or divide accordingly.

This recipe also works well with tinned tuna added to make a heartier meal.  If you want to leave some of the soup until the next day don’t add the avocado to the pan, just add to the bowl as you serve.

Eat conservatively

Until the point in our evolution that we learnt to preserve food, winter would have been a time of scarcity so practice only eating when you really need to.  Try ignoring the clock and only eating when you are really hungry, especially at the weekends when you have more control of your time.

It is also worth remembering that your first signals of hunger are probably not real ones.  When these first hunger pangs strike make a drink, water or herbal  (including green tea) or fruit tea are best.  If you still feel hungry half an hour after finishing your drink then go ahead and prepare a meal.  Make a simple meal based mainly on vegetables and a small amount of protein, whilst keeping grains to a minimum.

Start the day with lemon water

If you are not already drinking lemon water first thing in the morning, this is a great time to add it to your routine.  Simply squeeze the juice of half a lemon into a mug and fill the mug with cold or half boiled water.  If you fully boil the water the heat will destroy the vitamin C in the lemon.   Drinking lemon gives your body a mini detox every day.

Put it all together

There are 5 ideas above to help you to kick start your healthier regime or weight loss for 2016.  Doing any one of them could make a difference to you but putting them all together will make a huge difference.

If you want to do all of the above then please don’t start them all on January 1.  Pick the easiest 1 or 2 and then keep these going until you feel comfortable with your new regime.  You need to give this at least a week.  When you have got into the routine of doing your first choice(s) then add one more thing to your routine and so on until you are doing all of them.

For example

Helen is a moderate drinker but consumes a lot of sugar so she thought that giving up sugar would be the hardest thing for her to do.  She decided that the lemon water would be easy to add to her morning routine and that giving up alcohol wouldn’t really bother her so she chose these to changes for week one.

As Helen lives on her own she likes the idea of making soup in batches at the weekend so that she can come home to a bowl of soup in the evening and not need to worry about cooking when she is tired after work.

By the first weekend she had found 2 soup recipes that she liked and made four portions of each, putting some in the fridge for Monday and Tuesday and the rest in the freezer in individual portions.

Helen practiced eating conservatively at the weekends, having a bowl of soup for brunch and a small early evening meal.

By the end of the first 10 days Helen and made massive progress and didn’t feel deprived at all.  She now felt confident to reduce her sugar.  Helen discovered that she was eating around 2 chocolate bars per day plus 2 teaspoons of sugar in her tea.  Her next task was to reduce her snacks to 1 bar per day and reduce the amount of sugar in her tea by ¼ teaspoon.

Helen found it easy to reduce the sugar in her tea but struggled with the chocolate bars until we worked out why she craved them so much.

This brings me to my final point.  When you want to make big changes you need help.  This may be the support of friends or family or it may be external support.

I can’t guarantee that friends or family will support you on this journey.  In fact in many cases the opposite occurs, because unless your friends want to change with you they may feel threatened by you wanting to go it alone.  What I can guarantee is that with Your Natural Weight Club you will have all of the external and professional support that you want.  Book your place today by emailing me sandra@TheEssenceOfHealth.co.uk or call 0775 801 2894.  Or contact Beehive Healthcare in Chesterdirectly on 01244 915603