While the festive season is a great time to eat, drink and be merry, it’s also the optimum time to slip into bad habits and pile on a few pounds.

At The Fitness Room, Honeybourne, we can help you shift some of those Christmas treats! Here are five diet tips to get you started.

1.Cut out alcohol

It’s not easy to avoid a few tipples over the festive period, what with parties and family gatherings. After all, even the Christmas pudding has alcohol poured all over it!

However, one of the best things you can do to lose weight in the new year is to avoid alcohol completely. Let’s face it, for most people January is usually a pretty quiet month anyway, and it’s not the peak time for socialising, which makes it the ideal time to go cold turkey on the booze. And with challenges such as ‘Dry January’ increasing in popularity every year, you’ll know plenty of people in the same boat who can offer support after Christmas.

2.Drink lots of water

While it’s important to cut out alcohol, you need to replace it with something good for you, so having lots of fizzy drinks for example won’t help.

Make an effort to drink plenty of water. It will help to flush out some of the toxins in your body and it can boost your metabolism too.

If you find water a bit plain, then try warming it up and adding a slice of lemon to add some flavour while still keeping it healthy.

3.Give yourself a goal to aim for

A challenge is far easier to achieve if you know what you’re aiming for. If your goal is simply to ‘lose weight’ then while this is a good thing, how will you measure it? What will success look like?

Set yourself a specific goal. It could be a certain weight you’re trying to get down to, or it might be that you want to fit back into a pair of jeans that you haven’t been able to for a while.

4.Have some variety in your diet

The idea of dieting can be quite daunting to a lot of people. They automatically think it means eating nothing but salad and fruit for the next month, but in reality, it’s not like this at all.

While it’s important to eat more of the good stuff and less of the bad, you can still cook tasty meals using healthy ingredients.

Instead of seeing your weight loss as a challenge, try to see it as an opportunity to try out new foods and recipes.

5.Plan your meals

Make a list of what you’re planning to eat every week and only buy those items when you go shopping. It’s easy to be tempted by the offers in the supermarket, or to leave one night free for takeaways but they’re not just bad for your health, they’re bad for your wallet too.

If you only buy what you’re going to eat for the week then you’ll cut down on waste and save money too.

The Fitness Room Honeybourne offers a friendly, safe gym environment, personal training and meal plans to help you start as you mean to go on. Call us on 07540 060269 for a free consultation and more information. Let us help you lose weight for good.