How To Stay On Track This Christmas

Christmas is looming which means a break from our usual schedules and temptations all around. To keep your good habits on track, take advice from Workshop founder Lee Mullins and ensure you don't fall foul to too many seasonal trappings...

Time-restrict Your Eating

Continue eating in a 12-hour window. Ideally, I’d say start at 8am and finish at 8pm, but over the festive period, 9am-9pm might be a more reasonable timeframe to aim for. If you can carry on implementing that strategy, it will still enable you to get all the digestive benefits and give your gut time to rest without having to work to digest food. It’s a good one for this time of year too because you don’t necessarily have to change type and amount of food you eat, just when you eat it.

Step It Up

In light of COVID and having no access to gyms, it’s more important than ever that you continue to get in at least 10,000 steps a day. If you’re hanging out at home with not much to do, then make sure you do this; just make sure it’s a minimum requirement and aim for more where possible. Going for a 10-minute walk after breakfast, lunch and dinner is not only a great way to get your step count and daily activity up, it helps improve digestion and insulin sensitivity, which means better blood sugar management.

Don’t Overindulge

Overindulge if you want to, just don’t do it every day. It may be Christmas but if you know there’s one meal that’s going to be more on the decadent and indulgent side, make sure the other two aren’t excessive as well. Overeating at every meal is a bad habit to get into and if you do it for long enough, you’ll set your body composition steps back quite a bit too.

Fill up on Protein

Aim to have a quality serving of protein in each meal. Although this shouldn’t too hard a target to aim for over the festive period, it’s an important one. Protein is vital for supporting the immune system and producing collagen and keratin which contribute to stronger hair, skin and nails. 

Commit to Sleep

Use this time to get your sleep routine in better health. If you can do this, it means that when we do return to some sort of working schedule, whatever that looks like, you’ll be more able to keep a good routine going. Regular, good quality sleep helps re-energise our brain cells, repair our skin, maintain productivity and strengthen every major system in our body including our immune, respiratory, endocrine and central nervous systems.