Looking to lose weight before Christmas? Here’s how to hit your goals as a woman over 40.
Most people tend to think there’s no point worrying about their fitness goals towards the end of the year. They get into an “I’ll start in January mindset” – even though there may still be a few months left in the year.
Each Christmas, we’ve helped hundreds of the women over forty lose between 1 and 2 stone of stubborn weight in the run up to the festive season – and they keep it off long term.
These were all women in their 40s and 50s who had struggled to lose weight in the past and weren’t seeing any movement on the scales, no matter what they tried. For many of these ladies, this was starting to have a big impact on their confidence and self esteem – making it difficult for them to enjoy life to the fullest.
Despite the pressures of having a family and busy work schedule, we helped these women to remove the barriers that were blocking them from seeing results. We helped them quickly and easily turn it all around, lose the excess weight, regain their confidence, and get back to feeling amazing in all of their clothes.
For these ladies, going into winter was actually the perfect opportunity to focus on themselves and take control of their weight, health, and fitness!
So, with the days getting shorter and the social calendar winding down, now could be the perfect time to take advantage and make your own amazing transformation before Christmas.
In today’s blog we’re going to tell you, step by step, how to drop two dress sizes before Christmas. All WITHOUT having to sacrifice your career, give up time with your family, ban wine and chocolate, or step foot in a gym.
Change your mindset
In the run up to Christmas, days are getting shorter, there are less social events, and less to do in the evenings. This can actually be a great opportunity to tackle your goals.
You can either waste the next few months waiting for the new year, or you can follow the next steps we’re going to outline and enter the new year 1-2 stone lighter than you are now.
We’ve found that, from coaching thousands of women over 40, the most important factor for success is removing the barriers that block people from seeing movement on the scales.
This mostly comes down to dealing with the physical and hormonal changes that women go through as they get older, which can make it easier to gain weight around the middle and more difficult to lose it again with normal dieting.
But it can also come down psychological barriers such as getting and staying motivated…
Start by resetting your brain-food connection
Trying to eat better when your brain is hooked on sugary foods or alcohol to deal with emotions and stress never works. This can actually disrupt your hormones and make the problem worse!
In our experience, it’s almost impossible to just wean yourself off gradually. Instead, you must go cold turkey to reset your cravings. Like a computer running slowly and crashing often, you’ve got to restart it to get it to work properly again.
Cut out the foods that are high in calories, and control your sugar for 1-2 weeks, to reset your cravings and get into better habits with food and drink.
We do this inside our Fit Over 40 program using a process called the Diet Makeover. You can find out more about this here.
Exercise in a way that keeps stress levels low
It’s unsustainable to exercise while also starving yourself to see results. Any diets which recommend this aren’t going to work long term. However, this is very common with people in busy careers – especially desk jobs.
Many people are sedentary at a desk all day, which means they struggle to get in any exercise. However, the opposite also doesn’t work. Too much intense exercise combined with a stressful job or lifestyle causes chronically high stress hormone levels, leading to no results.
Instead, we recommend you to do exercises that keep stress hormone levels low but deliver BIG results. A great example of this is LIST training (low-impact strength training) and upping your step count.
We do this inside our Fit Over 40 program with just three low intensity sessions a week. Our clients typically lose 1-2 stone over a 12 week period using this method.
Proactively manage stress levels
Managing stress levels is vital for weight loss. However, in reality you can’t get rid of all the stress coming in. From work pressures, to family responsibilities, it can all be unavoidable stress.
If this isn’t managed it can turn to having elevated stress levels, which in turn can manifest into:
- Drinking wine on the sofa back on the laptop finishing work that didn’t get done
- Eating a whole sharing bag of chocolate every night
- Mindlessly munching through an entire bag of crisps and biscuits
- Drinking excess alcohol in order to destress
It’s like a bath with the taps always on but the plug is in, you need to take the plug out to avoid it overflowing. There are lots of different ways to do this.
We do this inside our Fit Over 40 program using a process called the Stress Shield, which is a daily mindset routine that takes 7-8 minutes a day and avoids stress levels becoming too high.
Stop struggling alone
If you knew how to get results on your own, you’d have already got them. Just like it can be more difficult to stay motivated when you’re working from home on your own, it can be really difficult to stay motivated to exercise and eat well when you’re doing it all by yourself – especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.
And when you’re over forty, it’s a new challenge that can be hard to figure out. Your hormones are different so it requires a different approach, your lifestyle is busier and more stressful than ever, and it’s very easy to throw in the towel during a busy stressful week.
IIn our experience there are two things which can help:
- Being part of a group of like-minded women on the same mission, so you don’t have to struggle alone
- Having someone to help you, guide you and keep you accountable to getting the results you want… and take all the stress and uncertainty out of the process
And that’s exactly what our clients get when they join Fit Over 40. And that’s why we are able to help so many women to see amazing results and lose 2 stone by Christmas.
Looking to lose weight before Christmas? Here’s how to hit your goals as a woman over 40, from the experts.
