It is the Christmas season when eating and drinking and family are over-indulged. It is the season when most people make health mistakes looking forward to Dec 31st so that they can make new resolutions of the coming year.
You know you have done these things over and over again and maybe this is the time to make some changes. Your relationship with food during this season especially can benefit more from a tender loving care. Your waistline will thank you for it.
Where to Start
If you are wondering how exactly do you change the loving and cosy relationship you have with your chapatis and nyama choma, perhaps you can start by telling yourself that it is possible to control your portions.
Eat with intention. You should not expect anything less of piled kilos if you are the kind who yanks their gaze from watching Moyo and reaches for some crisps. If you eat while scrolling down your social media pages and laughing out loud at some joke, then surely, you are mindlessly indulging. You should ask yourself a few questions.
Why do you need to be gobbling 3 chapatis, roasted meat and copious amounts of beer in one sitting? There is everything wrong with over-eating. Your belly feels like a balloon, you can hardly sleep, you are farting everywhere, come-on slow down. Food is not going anywhere. Slow down. And by the way, there is such a thing as mindful eating. Read about it and thank me later.
Courtesy; https://www.pambazuka.org/food-health/moral-complexities-eating-nyama-choma[/caption]
Mindful Buying
That is my invention. Mindful buying simply means purchasing foods with health in mind. Even more so when you have children. Of course the supermarkets have done their studies and they know you love it when you see all the colours and all the advertisements screaming buy me, buy me now. Perhaps it is about time you made a list when going to make your christmas shopping.
You definitely do not need 10 bags of sweets, 5 packets of crisps and all the cowboy you can lay your hands on simply because it makes chapatis taste nyam nyam. The problem with ‘reckless’ buying is that so long as it is available it will be eaten.
Surely you do not want to be returning to the city with thousands of calories piled up in a week of mindless eating? Or at least you do not want to be making the same old wish list for the new year.
Listen to your body
There is emotional eating and there is eating when hungry. While both of them feed a certain void, you do not want to be eating to feed an emotional emptiness. Learning how to separate the two will enable you eat just enough and eat right.
Exercise, it is Christmas
So you got your annual leave and all you want to do is lie in bed, wake up, eat, talk, drink then press replay. Maybe it is about time you slotted in some 30 minutes for a walk or yoga or cardio whatever suits your fancy.
Just so that you know, research has proven that during the festive season there is an increase in cardiac illnesses. This is what gave rise to the terms ”Merry Christmas Coronary” and ”Happy New Year Heart Attack”
A study done in 2004 in the US established that 5% of heart related deaths occurred during the festive season.
As you get into the Christmas mood and make your list of things to do and buy, think about your health too. It could the one thing that makes 2018 look brighter.
