It's simple math

Why is it that at this time of the year it is so hard to keep good behaviors around food, alcohol? It’s like the calendar flips over to December and for the next two months you become a different person. You can see yourself doing it but for some reason you can’t stop the tide of temptation and you get thrown out the other side, in late January in a place that you aren’t happy with; unfit, overweight and vowing to drink less.

To me it’s almost like a simple maths equation, let me explain. In a normal month during the year you may go out with friends every couple of weeks, have drinks after a weekly game of sport and once a month there’ll be a big occasion. In these social activities you may sometimes go a little too far with your eating and drinking but it doesn’t happen often so it doesn’t have a negative impact on you. If we go to my equation we would say that you had seven social ‘temptation’ occasions per month.

When December comes around the social calendar seems to multiplied, all of a sudden you are going out four nights a week for events where the temptation is higher because they are all about celebrating and someone else is paying! Now instead of going out seven times a month you are going out sixteen times and if anything the social occasions have a higher temptation rating. No wonder it’s a losing battle that you wake up from a couple months later wondering how you had ‘let yourself go’.

I know that the numbers I have used here probably won’t fit for everyone but you get my drift. The good thing about the “normal month”  is that we only expose ourselves to a certain amount of temptation, at this time of year our exposure increases rapidly. So what can we do to avoid the January blues?

If you are really motivated to get to January in a healthier state, spend time and consciously choose your social temptation times. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be social, it’s just try to choose the times when you will let you hair down and the times when you will have a quiet one and leave early. By doing this wisely you may find that January blues have become a thing of the past.

If you enjoy my pieces you can get them emailed to you when I put them on the internet. This way you won't have to come back to my website to check when a new piece is out. Don't worry I won't spam you. If you want to join up just put your details in here: