Back To Your Regular Schedule Program

For most today is the first day back to normality, which means work, gym and diet. 

It’s very likely the structure of your diet has suffered over the last 10 days or so. 

• Excess calories, in general,
• Excessive amounts of inferior food sources consumed 
• No particular structure to your diet 
• Alcohol 
• Lack of exercise 

This is absolutely fine. You need balance in this life and celebrating over Christmas and New Year with loved ones.

However, with that in mind let's want to discuss what is your next best move to get your New Year off to the best start possible.

This isn’t a BS “detox” - let's talking about real things you can do today to fast track your results. Here are 5 things you can do to get you back on track.

1. Structure 

The first obvious key point is to get your structure back in order. Plan your meals throughout the day, at specific times and prep your meals around this. Not only will this make you progress faster, mentally the added structure will encourage you to stick to the plan going forward. 

2. Greens 

If you’ve eaten large amounts of delicious sweet goodies, tempting foods and other things of this nature you’ve probably compromised your insulin sensitivity marginally. This will differ from one person to the next. However, if your goal is fat loss and you have plenty of body fat to drop then this will be especially applicable to you. Adding in 3-4 servings of green vegetables per day will help improve insulin sensitive by blunting the response your food creates. It will also help cleanse your gut which I’d imagine isn’t functioning at its best after the festive period. 

3. Water 

Get your water intake back up immediately, around 4-5 liters per day to really flush the toxins out of your system out and also help your gut function. Sip throughout the day so there’s a constant drip feed of water available, to help transport nutrients properly around the body. You’ll probably find you feel much more alert doing this, having had several days where your water intake probably wasn’t on point. 

4. Manage carbs

Somebody who’s looking to drop fat it wouldn’t hurt you to moderate your carbs more than usual for the first week back simply to reinstate your insulin sensitivity quicker. If for instance a normal day is 200g of carbs, then sitting at around 150g per day might work well before including a refeed at some point next week. Nothing drastic!

The combination of slightly fewer carbs and a bigger energy deficit will help bring back insulin sensitivity quicker.

After this initial week, most would be well advised to return to their normal intake. This isn't a long term strategy. 

5. Decaf

Over the festive period your sleep pattern has probably suffered and your body will probably be feeling the aftermath of this. Don’t get into the habit of “fixing” this with added stimulants. For the next week, use decaf coffee and avoid stimulants to let your body readjust and sort its pattern out again. This will lead to better sleep, which means better recovery and progress.