• “Have a f**king break it’s just 2/3/4 days”
 
• “One f**king day won’t kill you”
 
• “Just eat the f**king food”


Sound familiar ?

All this implies of course that the person is sticking to a well managed and carefully crafted eating plan before they get to Christmas

Which of course, most aren’t

Many people have already reached the ‘f**k it it’s Christmas stage’ already
 
• Mince pie for breakfast – f**k it it’s xmas
 
• Sherry after work? (During work) – f**k it it’s xmas
 
• Quality street by the handfuls? – f**k it it’s xmas

I’d take a safe bet that 99% of people don’t need anyone’s permission to eat what they want at Christmas

I had a good chat with a few of my clients last night

We were talking about the impact of Xmas on diets etc and how hard it was to track meals out or at family gatherings and this is a cause of anxiety for many people trying to lose weight.

There’s a few things you can do here
 
• Not track and use any systems and habits you’ve built to make sensible decisions with food.  

If you’ve been following a plan for a while you should have an idea about what is the ‘right’ amount of food to eat and which choices are more favourable to your results than others (notice we don’t talk about good or bad foods, there are none)
 
 
• Allocate a certain amount of calories to a meal out or event.  

At Wellman Fitness we use either calories or meal blocks.  

So for example if you have 4 meals in the day and they are 450 calories each you can allocate 2 meals to a meal out giving you 900 kcals as a buffer for that meal.  

You don’t track macros etc but it’s a reasonable amount of calories and you still need to be sensible with your choices
 
 
• Pre load your meals by investigating the restaurant. 

This only really works if the restaurant has calories on it’s meals which most big chains do.

You’ll need to be aware of your calories for the day but by knowing what you want to order before you get there you’ll have a better chance of staying on plan.  

I’d recommend having 2-3 choices in case they are sold out of your primary choice

The key thing here is that most of the anxiety and spontaneous ‘f**k it it’s xmas’ eating when you’re on a transformation mission comes from uncertainty.

That uncertainty comes from a lack of perceived control over your decisions.

But you always have control, see above.

It’s how much you let your brain take control which will determine your actions.

The instinctual brain gives you food cravings when you’re stressed to make you feel better 

That doesn’t mean you have to be an unemotional robot at xmas. 

Having control doesn’t mean you don’t have fun.  

It just means you’re more in control of your own fate than others who will just be like ‘f**k it it’s xmas, I’ll worry about the fall out after January’.

Have a great Christmas