Making it through Easter unscathed

It should not be thought of as impossible to maintain health and fitness over Easter. More often than not however, people seem to fall into a chocolate and alcohol coma as they take what they believe is full advantage of the long weekend.

The big issue with this is that not only does it drastically impact your ability maintain results, but it also can put a handbrake on any form of success for a number of weeks.

Finishing a long weekend feeling absolutely exhausted and in need of a break is the exact opposite of how you should be feeling after 4 days away from work. Of course we should be enjoying ourselves, but there also needs to be a focus on rest, resetting and allowing the body to recharge after a busy first quarter of the year.

2021 is well and truly underway. Health and fitness has become a priority for a lot of people again, and they should be feeling better than ever. The path to health and fitness success is never easy however and the first true test of the year is here.

The Easter long weekend…a combination of time off and a lot of chocolate.

With chocolate on the mind and a bit of time off, it can be very easy to get overwhelmed and lose sight of your goals. Your health and fitness does not has to suffer this Easter. With the right planning it is entirely possible to make it through unscathed.

Read on for a few hints and tips to turn Easter into an enjoyable and well-balanced long-weekend.

Easter Health & Fitness Tip #1 – Plan the weekend

Long weekends are simply brilliant!

They are 3-4 days of no work and a great chance to relax and refocus on life. However, if the celebrations get taken too far, they can tend to be incredibly busy with a series of hangovers. This can leave you exhausted by the time work starts up again.

A great way to take control of the weekend is to map out exactly what events you have on.

Questions like these need to be answered:

• Are there many lunches?
• Dinners?
• Drinks planned?

If you can map out exactly what it is that you will be doing socially, you can then figure out what you need to do exercise and food-wise to create a positive balance.

Heading out on Saturday night? Wake up and go for a run on Sunday and lower the carbs for the rest of the day.

Always have the aim to end the time-off feeling revitalized and ready to start work again, not tired and in need of a break.

Easter Health & Fitness Tip #2 – It does not have to be all about eating

There are far too many occasions during the year where we use a special event as an excuse to indulge.

Christmas, Valentine’s Day, birthdays, Easter – by the time we’ve taken all of these into account, we’re allowing ourselves to over eat and go out for treat meals quite regularly throughout the year.

No wonder we find it hard to reach our goals!

Instead of catching up with your friends for drinks, why not meet them and go for a walk?

Why not organize to have a big lunch in the park with a bbq so you can run around and play some games?

Instead of just sitting and eating all day long, incorporate exercise in to your plans. Best case scenario you actually stay on top of your health, worst case, you are balancing out the extra calories.

There are lots of different ways to make Easter an incredibly enjoyable time without having all of the food and drinking involved.

Easter Health & Fitness Tip #3 – Keep your long term goals in mind

Indulging over Easter will not completely derail you from your long term goal. After all it is only a few days.

What it can do, it move you backwards a little bit and even plateau for a few weeks as you try to get the results moving in the right direction.

It will not be helping you hit the health and fitness target that you have set, but it doesn’t have to break your overall aims.

What ever your goal is, it is very important that you have it in the front of your mind over the long weekend. Sure, one big dinner or one night out is not going to impact it too much, I would actually recommend that.

A full long weekend of indulgence however is going to hurt the speed in which you can see long term success .

If you place your goals more front of mind, then there is a higher chance that you will re-think the weekends approach. After all, why would we want to compromise our hard work and results for 1 weekend of fun?

Print out your goals, have them on the fridge, drive to events so you cannot drink.

Do whatever it takes so that you can stay on target with your overall goal.

Easter Health & Fitness Tip #4 – Pick your eggs wisely

Chocolate is very tasty, it is very easy to eat a lot of and it is very addictive. We all know this!

It is very hard to say no to it repeatedly, and it is even harder to say no to it if it is in your house. People love giving chocolate at this time of year and it is hard to avoid.

Sometimes, drastic action is the best way to ensure that you stay true to your health and fitness goals over Easter.

The best advice that I can give, is to choose one egg, bunny or whatever you want to indulge in each day and get rid of the rest.

There is absolutely no need to have 15 different pieces of chocolate over the long weekend. It is very hard to try and avoid it when it is in your kitchen.

Any leftovers? Re-gift them. Throw them out. Invite yourself over to your neighbours house and take every thing and give it to them.

Do whatever it takes to limit yourself and you will have overcome a massive challenge. You also would have allowed yourself an appropriate amount of indulgence so you can feel like you have also won.

Easter Health & Fitness Tip #5 – Start next week with a bang

This should be the concrete rule for all long-weekends.

Tuesday morning = exercise!

Make sure that you wake up early and start the week on a positive note. It is so easy to let a short week turn into a lost week. If you do that you are only putting yourself further back. Just because the work week starts on a Tuesday does not mean that you view your exercise week as lost. Building momentum immediately is going to give you a wonderful chance of success.

Book in some extra workouts and grab the bull by the horns.

Any excess that may have creeped in over the weekend certainly will disappear quickly if you are proactive.

The sooner you can burn off those extra calories, the sooner that you will be back on track with your health and fitness goals when the Easter break is over.