Drop and give me 20

This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. The idea that you must “drop and give me 20” before you get to reward yourself with some party food.

Do you need to earn your Christmas food?

How long do I have to run for to burn off a mince pie?

How many sit ups to ‘earn’ a roast potato?

How many squat jumps until I can eat a bag of chocolate coins?

Some use this as motivation to get people to exercise, I take a different approach. I never want my workouts to be used for people to ‘earn’ their food.

Exercise is NOT about working out for permission to eat. 

This technique bothers me for a few reasons:

You can’t out-exercise a bad diet

Many will try and tell you otherwise, but while you can lose weight eating a terrible diet, and you can stay ‘thin’ if you don’t eat well.

Being thin does not mean being healthy.

Too many people focus on the outside, which is perfectly understandable, we focus on what others can see but a lot of the improvements from eating a healthy balanced nutritious diet are also on the inside and are not visible to us, meaning the importance of this aspect can be forgotten.

It takes away the accountability

If you ‘earn’ your food through exercise then you can justify eating anything and still expect to see good results.

The reality is that what we eat can make our weight loss almost effortless or an uphill battle. And while we must focus on quantity first, we cannot ignore quality either.

Some foods are more satiating than others, some are healthier than others, some foods even lead us to crave unhealthy food causing us to overeat.

It starts an unhealthy trend

If you justify eating food by exercising why stop with earning your bar of chocolate? What about breakfast? You’ve slept all night do you deserve to eat it?

Of course you do, you need to nourish and feed your body to keep it healthy and strong. But it is easy to see where this flawed thinking can lead if used too often.

It shames you and your eating

You never see how many burpees you need to do to ‘burn off’ an orange. Or how long do you need to run for to ‘earn’ your broccoli. We can all agree that oranges and broccoli are healthy foods and we could eat them frequently without worrying that they are bad for us.

Does this mean however that we should demonise those foods that are not ideal for daily consumption?

No. A balanced diet means enjoying those foods which are not seen as every day foods once in a while without needing to justify it.

It is hard to lose weight. It is hard to change your life. And techniques like this will likely not help you. Everyone’s nutritional path is different so to give a general guideline that fits all people is impossible.

Here’s some tips to keep you sane this December:

1.You don’t need to earn your food.

Don’t worry about burning off calories in order to eat something that you deem off limits.

Ask yourself why it is off limits.

If it is a food allergy then it is best to leave it alone. If it is a self imposed rule that you are finding impossible to stick with, perhaps it is time to loosen the restriction and allow yourself a small treat every now and then.

2. Moderate or Abstain?

As Gretchen Rubin suggested some of us are moderators and others are abstainers.

Some people can have 1 mini snickers bar from the celebrations tub and then sit there in front of it for hours and never take another one.

Others will be in there several times until either the tub or the person is removed from the situation.

This may change when the food in question is changed, I could go to town on celebrations but I’m not so fussed about chewy sweets for example.

We can argue ‘self control’ all day long but the fact is that some people can moderate others cannot, and once you know which you are it makes tackling these situations easier.

3. Make a game plan if you need it.

Go in prepared. It’s December, we’ll be over at other peoples houses for dinner, there will be parties, nights out, chocolate, cocktails, late night mince pies and breakfast bucks fizz on Christmas day.

Safe to say we probably don’t eat this way often and so it’s a new set of rules and a new set of habits in December.

PLAN.

Have a night out on Saturday and planning to drink? Ok, take it easy on the alcohol until then.

Family dinner with 5 courses? Have a light breakfast.

3 nights out in a row? Take day 4 as a well deserved rest, have plenty of sleep, gentle exercise and lots of water.

If you plan you can make December full of treats without compromising on health.

Ainzlie “Cheers” McMaster

Do you need a game plan? Get in touch.