Lost your way?

​The past few weeks has been the time for some good old R & R. I don’t know what you were thinking, but I’m referring to activity of reflecting, reassessing, and renewing of health, work and personal hopes and aspirations.

Days are short and cold ...

We want to get back into our health and wellbeing journey. We really do. But these cold, short days make it quite a struggle. And we’ve just seen out this year’s so-called ‘blue Monday’, which is the third Monday in January, and it’s supposedly the most depressing day of the year, according to Dr Cliff Arnall. We can forget about this nonsense – it’s just a unscientific number that Cliff Arnall was asked by a travel company to come up with - to lighten our wallets rather than to enlighten us.

'Tis no longer the season to be jolly ...

Christmas has come and gone, and this can leave some of us feeling a little lost. The build-up to those seasonal celebrations, spending time with friends and family, buying gifts and having licence to eat and drink whatever we fancy, and as many times as we fancy it, is exciting.  And then it’s over. The twinkly lights are switched off, the tree comes down, and we trudge off to work. Back to life and reality. How do we get back into doing the lifestyle healthy habits we started last year?

Why do healthy habits?

There needs to be a reason for committing to new habits that take us away from doing the old ones that, well let’s be honest, taste good (calorific snacks) or are easy to do (binge-watch on Netflix … whilst eating calorific snacks!). We do like taking the path of least resistance and you could say this is a design spec or an evolutionary behaviour.

Just look at the natural world. Animals move around for a purpose, such as searching for food or looking for a mate. Why waste precious energy on moving around when the belly is full and it’s not the mating season? There has to be personal benefit to eating less and moving more.

Commit your motivation to paper ...

As said, there needs to be a reason to do healthier habits. It’s a good idea to commit the motivation to paper – the My Health & Wellbeing Journey journal (digital and paper versions) has a space for that. Take a minute each morning to remind yourself why you’re going to make certain food and drink choices in the day ahead.

Hmmm ... what are you really eating and drinking?

Get back to reality by first knowing what you really put in your mouth, rather than kidding yourself that you eat and drink very healthily. Keeping a food diary for seven days straight is great way to check the reality, when we do it honestly! As soon as you eat or drink, record it and make a note of what you changed your mind about eating – keeping a food diary (in the back of My Health & Wellbeing Journal) and can make us have second thoughts about giving in to temptation!

SMART goals are doable habits ...

When you know what and how often you eat and drink, come up with a couple of doable SMART goals. Set the behaviour change bar too high, you might not get over it and end up feeling disappointed with yourself. Make goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant to what you want to achieve and do them within a Timeframe – for example, once a day, twice a day, once a week, three times a week.

Keep a check on yourself! 

Monitor (see My Health & Wellbeing Journey journal) how you get on doing the goals. We rarely hit the SMART goal target every single day of a given week, and that’s fine. What can you learn from this week to make more it likely that you hit the target more often next week?

I hope you have a healthy and a very happy year ahead!

Tony Hirving
Dietitian