Merry Christmas! From all of us here at ProZone we’d like to wish you a very Merry Christmas! Christmas can make it hard to stay in the Zone, so we’ve included some tips below to help you survive the holidays. Healthy Holiday Tips Holidays bring family and friends together to celebrate traditions and spread festive cheer. They also bring lots of opportunities for socialising, eating and drinking. For some people the festive season can provide a temporary challenge to their Zone nutrition lifestyle. To help you survive the parties without going off the Zone we wanted to share a few tips on how you can still enjoy the party season and 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 than you would want to have. • Be familiar with the appearance of your block amount of meat or chicken and choose to eat this. • Enjoy wonderful fresh seasonal blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and cherries instead of reaching for the sugar loaded desserts. • Eat protein i.e. meat or cheese between drinks or dessert. Allow for this in your total protein. • Select vegetables and fruit as carbohydrate choices and ease up on bread, rice, pasta and rich desserts. • Make sure to alternate glasses of water between alcoholic drinks. Avoid fruit juice and fizzy drinks. • 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. If you must have potatoes, a small serving of a new potato is a better alternative. 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”. If you need help putting an eating plan in place please contact me to discuss further. |