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Christmas Fitness:

How to manage your Christmas health and avoid turning into a giant roast potato: A curvy women’s take on Christmas fitness.

2 years and 5 months after the first covid lockdown in the UK, I finally reached trough fitness and wellbeing. Yep. I’ve coined a new phrase there, trough fitness. It’s the opposite of peak fitness. My mental and physical health were in tatters, and I’d just finished a contract under such a toxic boss that I was starting to question my sense of self.

After a short camping holiday with friends, I recorded all of my measurements in a note called, “as bad as it gets”. This was my commitment to getting my wellbeing, health, and physical fitness back on track.

Fitness has always been something I’ve tried to look at in the round. When I’m sleeping well, eating well, thinking well, and moving often, I’m fit. I’m healthy. I make good decisions. When my sleep starts to wobble, my meal planning goes downhill, my mental health suffers, and in turn I stop moving. This is a pattern that I’m sure many of you can relate to.

I’m not going to tell you that I’m the fittest, healthiest, or trimmest I’ve ever been. There are no before and after pics to compare yourselves to here. I’m just going to share how I’ve improved my overall state of wellbeing since August, and how I plan to maintain things over Christmas. Let’s face it, for many of us Christmas fitness goes out the window!

Fitness step 1: Sleep

First things first was sorting the sleep. To be honest, time under canvas in a field and knowing I wasn’t returning to a damaging workplace helped a lot here. But I also started going to bed earlier and reading books made of paper. On top of this I wanted to do something that made me feel better about how I was looking. Heading towards my mid 40’s my skin has always been pretty good but I felt Covid life had taken it’s toll and I wanted to pep things up a bit. I was told by my friend about a collagen product that she was trying and loving but I wasn’t convinced so did a lot of my own research and reading online. I ended up deciding to give the Raw Beauty Lab vegan collagen a try and have to say it has been great. These guys produce a revolutionary plant-based alternative to collagen. There product is 100 per cent natural vegan and is proven to improve collagen synthesis in the dermis by up to 80 per cent. I have to admit that I wasn’t certain it would make much difference but I have been very pleased with the results.

Their advert told me that this was the must-have supplement for building collagen for smoother, firmer skin and that over 1 million doses have been sold worldwide, and finally that it really works with visible results after 28 days. Well, my scepticism was unfounded and I would recomend giving it go if you feel similar to how I did about yourself. If you do want to try it you can find out more about it here:

Fitness step 2: Eat

Next up was bringing back meal planning. We eat better, spend less, and get on better as a family when I’ve made a weekly meal plan and we’ve shopped accordingly. I let this slip when I was in an unrealistically demanding job and I was determined to bring it back before getting into the next work commitment. So we make a meal plan. It’s simple. Everything is cooked from scratch, and it’s balanced. One of the family is vegan, and most of our meals are too. But when we’re cooking with meat, it’s always a meal that can be adapted with ease because we’re too big a family, and too busy, to be cooking several different meals for people.

Fitness step 3: Move

I was running 1-3 times a week before I took ‘the job’. And I was also practicing pilates once a week. Both of these slipped rapidly under the pressure of that working environment. I knew I could return to pilates with ease, but I wasn’t fit enough to run 5k without stopping so I needed to find something different to get me back into moving often. 

I’ve never had a gym membership, and the idea of using machines with nobody to check I’m doing it right terrifies me. So I decided to try out classes at a local gym. Within a few weeks, I was spending so much on classes that the sensible option was to join. I’m trying to balance cardio with bodyweight / weight classes so that I’m mixing how I move my body. My favourite class is, without a shadow of a doubt, Zumba. I’m hoping that being able to ‘dance’ for an hour will mean that I can run 5k again without stopping by the end of November. We shall see.

I’ve kept up with my usual pilates class and I’ve found that it’s been really helpful for me when trying new things like Body Pump which uses weights (totally new for me). Years of pilates means that I know how to maintain a good posture and it’s quite obvious to me if my weights are too much because they pull me out of a good standing posture. Lifting weights in classes, with an instructor correcting me as needed, also makes me feel more confident to pick up my partner’s hand weights at home. 

This is all well and good, of course. But how will I maintain this plan in the remaining 43 ish days (depending where you are in the world) until the end of 2022? How will I manage Christmas fitness with all of the other commitments we’ll have in the weeks ahead?

And so, to Christmas fitness

Fundamentally, I want to broadly stick to my 3 step plan. It’s when I deviate from this that my personal wellbeing suffers the most. The Christmas period is difficult for me anyway, as it is for so many people for so many reasons. And that means that it’s possibly the most important time for me to look after myself well.

Sleep

We’re travelling around a bit over the school holidays that make up the ‘2 weeks of Christmas’ which means that I will need to be a bit careful on the sleep front. What I plan to do is keep to a sensible bedtime. I know this may slip a little, but I plan to make allowances for that by having later starts if I know we’ll be up later. I know that my sleep is affected when I drink alcohol too, so I’m not going to be indulging in much of that this season which is another new commitment I’ve made to myself.

Eat

Because we know where we’re going to be, and when, we will make meal plans for the Christmas holiday. Shopping will be a little bit trickier with the travelling and visiting people, but we’ll book delivery slots next week and shop to the meal plans after that. 

It’s Christmas, there will be indulgences. And being catered for means some things will be out of our hands at times so we won’t be berating ourselves over a dessert, an extra roast potato, or enjoying a mince pie. We will make sure there are plenty of fresh veggies, fruits, and plans for leftovers though so that we make the most of our time off together without spending it all in the kitchen.

Move

Over the years, movement is where my Christmas fitness has fallen down. Though we managed a run on Christmas morning last year, it was the only proper exercise we managed in the whole of the school holidays. That’s not my plan for 2022.

My pilates class is off for 4 weeks, which means I will need to take my mat up to the spare room and commit to home practice. I have access to recorded classes so I can do as I’m told via headphones which is almost as good as having my teacher standing over me.

I’ll go to my usual cardio / weight classes when they’re running, but the timing of the holidays means there will be quite a few classes that don’t run. To manage the time when they’re not, my partner and I have decided that this year we are going to really splash out and have bought ourselves a treadmill as a shared present. I know it’s extravigant, and it’s not as much fun as dance is, for me, but we can both use it in all weathers and I can even use it while watching a Christmas film or two. Going for a run, no matter how short it is, means that I’ll be moving and not focusing so much on whatever is going on in my head for a little while. That’s more than just exercise to me!

This DKN endurun folding treadmill is the beauty that we opted for and at a touch under £2,000 it is not cheap. However it does meet our needs and we will both use it a lot. My partner uses the gym a lot and he researched a bunch of different machines and settled on this one. And I have to admit it is easy to use, feels safe and sturdy and does the job very well.

If you are interested in trying one then you can find out more about it here: