Holiday Season Tips
For some people the festive season can provide a temporary challenge to their Zone nutrition lifestyle. If you want to take a Zone holiday fine, although you will find that you feel a lot better if you roughly eat in the Zone at all those festive season events. Many clients report to us the good effects and how easy they find making Zone balanced choices at Christmas functions, parties and for Christmas dinner when they resolve to “just Zone it”. Following are a few tips on how you can enjoy the party season and still not stray too far from the Zone:
• Have a balanced Zone snack half an hour before going to a party. You’ll be less tempted to choose sweet and other excess carbohydrate foods.
• When at a function where unfavourable snacks are being passed around it is always easiest to refuse the first time they are offered. This is very empowering as it puts you in control and makes it easier to refuse further offers. Accepting “just one” can easily spiral into eating more later than you would want to have.
• Be familiar with the appearance of your block amount of meat or chicken and choose to eat this.
• Eat protein i.e. meat or cheese between drinks or dessert. Allow for this in your total protein.
• Select vegetables, fruit as carbohydrate choices, ease up on bread, rice, pasta and rich desserts.
• Alternate glasses of mineral water between alcoholic drinks. Avoid fruit juice.
• Take Zone bars when on big Xmas shopping trips to keep energy levels up and to avoid cravings for unfavourable food when hunger strikes.
• Prepare a Zone favourable Christmas dinner with the emphasis on quality rather than quantity of food. You will definitely feel a lot more comfortable afterwards. Turkey is actually excellent protein. The best part of chicken or turkey is the breast meat. Skipping the baked potatoes (which have an astronomical glycaemic load) allows for much more favourable choices. A small serving of new potato is not too bad. Enjoy wonderful fresh seasonal blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and cherries.
• Don’t get stressed if you don’t get it exactly right. If you sort of do it, it is bound to be better than what you were doing before the Zone.
If any of the above fail, go for it and enjoy yourself and remember “If you Zone 80% of the time you get 90% of the benefit” and, when all else fails, “You are only one meal away from the Zone”.