Looking to set some New Year’s goals? This is the fastest way to lose weight after Christmas for women over 40.
Losing weight after Christmas is usually on everyone’s minds come January. Every year we see people getting really excited and motivated in the first few weeks of the year. Yet, they easily fall off track and lose all their motivation come February.
For women over 40 in particular, one of the main reasons this happens is because of a lack of results in the mirror. Nothing is more frustrating than spending all week on your new diet plan, only to step on the scales and see ZERO movement.
This usually happens because changing hormones and high stress levels can make it more difficult to see results. And it leaves SO MANY women stuck and feeling like they are unable to lose weight!
Luckily, there is a way for women over 40 to drop up to 2 dress sizes in as little as 12 weeks.
This is EXACTLY what we’ll do inside our Fit Over 40 programme for the women who join us in January.
In today’s blog, we’re going to break down the exact strategies we use with our clients to help them turn it all around, lose the Christmas pounds, and keep it off for the rest of the year!
Here’s the secret
So first of all, the #1 secret to losing the Christmas weight is not the same for everyone.
There’s no one-size fits all solution, and that’s something you should be very wary of. What that solution is depends on what you struggle with the most:
- Being consistent, but not seeing results
- Not being consistent enough to see results
Being consistent, but not seeing results
Hormones
Physical and hormonal changes can start up to a decade before clinical menopause.
This leads to a heightened stress response, changing levels of progesterone and oestrogen, joint aches and pains, and changes to metabolism.
All of this can make it easier to gain weight and more difficult to lose it again, and it can leave many women stuck and unable to see results.
So, rather than just taking a general fitness approach – designed to work for your average dieter – choose an approach specifically designed for women over 40. One which works with your changing hormones rather than against them.
The key things to look out for are low impact, weights based workouts, and a sensible nutrition approach which doesn’t involve anything too extreme. Keeping stress levels low is also really important.
Portion sizes
It’s possible to eat healthy foods but still be eating too many calories. You can’t escape the basic science of weight loss.
Calories are a measure of how much energy is in food and drink. You must consume the right amount of calories consistently over the whole week in order to lose weight. You need not too much and not too little.
This number is unique to you and must take into account your current age and hormonal situation, as well as your height.
Your portions must be based on this number, and be right for you and your body as it is now in order to see good progress!
Alcohol
It’s also possible to eat healthily and not eat too much, but to then to consume lots of alcohol on top of that and put the brakes on your progress.
Alcohol contains a lot of calories (7kcal per gram). Therefore it’s very easy to consume hundreds of calories of alcohol, without meaning to! For example, 1 bottle of wine is about 700 calories. This is the equivalent of 3 large jacket potatoes!
It will also make side-effects of hormonal changes like menopause much worse.
Weekends
A lot of people are able to stick to healthy eating and exercising during the week, but when it comes to the weekend, it all goes to pot!
They eat too much, drink too much, and undo all the progress they’ve made in the week – which is easily done if you make the wrong food choices.
This can lead to a cycle of “I’ll start again on Monday” which repeats over and over again. This leaves people trapped in a situation where they’re “dieting” most of the time – but still not seeing any results in the mirror.
The key thing is the total amount you eat over the week. If you eat the right amount of food and do enough exercise, you WILL lose weight.
This can be done by either:
- Eating slightly less in the week to allow for more food and drink at the weekend.
- Monitoring your food intake at the weekend but being flexible with food choices so you can still indulge… but not overindulge.
Not being consistent enough to see results
Then there’s the second camp for those who want to lose weight after Christmas. And that’s those who are not consistent enough to see results. Some of these points we have already covered, but there’s a couple more things to note.
Consistency is key to seeing good results, and in our experience it’s one of the main reasons people struggle to see the scales moving.
Consistency
Giving up or giving in to the “I deserve a treat” voice in your head is detrimental to your progress. And it’s very easy to fail alone.
When you have a tough week at work and it’s cold and dark, and you just want to comfort eat and drink a bottle of wine, what happens?
If you have no one to answer to, then you’ll turn back to the old habit, undo the hard work from the week, and you’re back at square one.
The solution to this is accountability.
Every week we have catch up calls with clients and they tell us they still stuck to it all, even when things were really stressful. This is because they knew they’d have to report to us on how the week had gone! It’s like having a boss and knowing you’ve got to report what work you’ve done to them. It means you show up and get the work done even if you didn’t feel like it some days.
Stress
Even with accountability, it’s possible for stress to cause things to unravel. This can lead to being sat on the sofa with a sharing bag of chocolate and a bottle of wine!
Once it’s hit that point and you’re tempted to hit the “screw it button” – it’s too late.
You need to reduce stress levels proactively and regularly to stop this from happening.
Our clients do this using a powerful daily mindset routine called the Stress Shield. It takes less than 10 minutes a day and helps to dissipate stress proactively before it ever becomes a problem.
It stops them turning to food and alcohol and means they stay consistent.
