We are at that time of year again, parties, gatherings, more food, more drink and generally and expectation that health and fitness will be put on a back burner…
“Oh sounds great, I’m away for a couple of weeks, I have a bunch of parties – I’ll start in the New Year!”
Literally two people have said this to me over the last week or so. This means they are going to lose 3-4 weeks of progress because it might not feel like the perfect time to get a new fitness journey started.
That may be the case, but if you have a problem with your fitness routine, please don’t wait until next year to get started. Let’s not get into the whole New Years Resolution debate/problem – but why waste time (we don’t get it back).
I want to introduce you to the idea of building some health “streaks” (aka: habits) that you can start today and take with you into the holidays.
Why am I calling them streaks? Well, the book Atomic Habits (great read if you need help with building good habits) talks about building streaks of habits and when we have a streak going, we want to keep it going.
There’s also an app called – Streaks – which can help you be successful in hitting these healthy habits. The app is paid but is highly rated and allows you to build a list of things you want to streak everyday and can remind you with alerts etc. (you could do this with names alarms on your phone too).
Anyway, try to come up with around 5 things that you can do everyday to help improve your health and fitness. Here’s a couple of suggestions:
Someone who currently does nothing (very inactive/not healthy):
- Walk 30 min each day
- Drink glass of water upon waking
- Go to bed 30 min earlier than normal
- Eat protein for breakfast
Someone who trains regularly:
- Hit 10,000 steps per day
- Drink 2L of water
- Do the gym workout or 30 min of low intensity cardio
- Take 2-3 exercise snacks
You get the gist. The idea is to build some simple things that you can do each day. Depending on where you are on your fitness journey, they can be more or less demanding. If you have an injury or a mobility issue – you can insert your daily rehab here.
If you know the holidays are going to have a negative impact on your health and fitness but you’ll enjoy what you’re doing – that’s great. No need to sweat over it. But you can do things each day that will minimize that impact and give you a head start going into January.
It may not be perfect but it’s better than nothing! And once you’ve built these habits – you may just keep them!