Andy Williams sang about this most wonderful time of year. And for many people it is true. Lots of people love Christmas and the lead up to the big day. But it can also be the cause of stress and anxiety for others.
I agree with Andy, but whilst I enjoy the festivities that occur throughout December, I can’t help but feel that I’d be happy to see the back of it too. So my song would go something like… It’s the most wonderful time of the year and it’s a relief when it’s over. Doesn’t have the same ring to it though.
Because I have managed to overcome many of my anxieties around Christmas (or at least deal with them as they inevitably crop up), I might well be in a position to give a few suggestions on how to ease this festive fear and, perhaps, even enjoy it a bit more.
Here are my top tips for not giving a crap this Christmas…
* You don’t need Christmas pajamas. Wear what you like as long as you are comfortable and warm.
* Your decorations don’t need to look like a scene from a Hollywood Christmas movie. Your tinsel might have seen better days and your tree might be a bit wonky, but it’s your tinsel and tree and if the kids have helped decorate the house then just blame them.
* Oh and you don’t need to light up Las Vegas. A few twinkling lights will do.
* Just because you have the same qualifications as someone else doesn’t mean you have to socialize with them. The people that you work with are your work colleagues. If you don’t fancy the office party then don’t go.
* This year my wife and I are having burgers on the BBQ for our Christmas lunch. A little unconventional but every year my wife gets stuck in the kitchen for hours making a roast dinner with all the trimmings. Not this year!
* Do people send Christmas cards anymore? I dunno, but you don’t have to. For special people you might not see much of, then give them a call on Christmas Day. I bet they’d be very happy with that. But if you do get a card from the Brannigan’s at number 34 then you’d best send one back or your name will be mud in the street WhatsApp group that they’ve not invited you on.
* Don’t start the Irish Cream too early. I’ve made the mistake of raising a toast on a Christmas morning with a fake Bailey’s and I’ve been slurring my words by the time Top Of The Pops came on at 2.
* Don’t worry about other people’s social media pics. Everybody looks like they’re having the time of their lives, but I bet they can’t wait for Aunty Margaret to leave so they can stop breathing in her sprouty farts.
* And finally, your kids love you and if you are teaching them right they will know that, between you and Santa, you’ve done your best with gifts this year.
I hope some of these suggestions raised a smile and put your mind at rest a little. It is indeed a wonderful time of year. You just need to stop, take a deep breath, smile and roll with it.
With my work done for the day (it’s never done, but) I sat down to eat my lunch and decide on what I should do with my afternoon. And with our house about to be put up for sale, I decided that doing something that would give the house a fresher feel would be a good start. Certainly a better start than watching Steph’s Packed Lunch all afternoon!
Hmm. But where to begin? I had a timing issue here. I had to begin something that I could finish before I picked the kids up from school, so painting their rooms, a job that will need doing, wasn’t going to happen today.
So as I placed my empty dish in the kitchen sink and looked out of the window, my answer was right there in the garden.
I’m no green fingered gardener. My wife is responsible for the pretty things that grow out there. But I’m pretty good at ripping things up and tearing things down. And at the side of the garage was a huge big tree like climber that I had been meaning to wrestle for some time. In fact I trimmed it down a year ago after the neighbours complained that it had started to grow inside their part of the garage.
I must admit, any day that I miss training at the gym I feel guilty. I can reason with myself, however, when I consider my NEAT activities. I have explained NEAT previously in my articles, but a brief summary of this is the Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Any movement that you do outside of your usual training schedule is classed as NEAT. This can be from breathing, walking and, well, ripping down trees.
I’m confident that I remain quite active even away from the gym. Barring a couple of hours on an evening watching a football game or a movie then I am rarely sedentary. Therefore, my NEAT is alright.
And it’s amazing how tough a day in the garden can be! When my wife and I begin to plant seeds for vegetables or create new wildlife areas during spring time I have muscle soreness that most gym exercises don’t produce. This makes it just as good a calorie burner as a steady paced treadmill run for an hour.
So the bottom line here is don’t despair if you haven’t made the gym today. There’s lots of stuff you can do to keep you going.
Those days of running for the bus through Durham City center with a suitcase full of shortbread biscuits still makes me smile.
Lou and I didn’t drive at the time and we were desperate to sell our handmade biscuits at the market a few miles outside of the village we lived in. It reminds me of Del Boy and Rodney running from the old Bill, except what we were selling were pukka!
It wasn’t for the money. Had it been for financial gain then biscuits wouldn’t have been our first thought to make and sell. After the labour and baking costs, the ingredients, the bags and labels, the mark up on a bag of biscuits were pretty crumby, but we wanted to prove that we could sell them. The locals and tourists loved them. We even had VIP treatment at museums such as Beamish as they wanted us to supply them with our little sweet biscuity treats.
The Biscuit Tree was born.
But we also knew that it couldn’t last. We had to make enough money to pay the bills. We had day jobs, sure, but the time that went into making literally hundreds of bags of biscuits each week became difficult to juggle. After a couple of years of standing in all kinds of weather, we hung up our kitchen aprons. We have never been sentimental about a business venture. We moved on.
I’m not a natural salesperson. I sell stuff that sells itself really. It’s not difficult to sell something that has lots of butter and sugar in it. Personal Training is trickier, but I am everything that most gym goers are. Insecure about their body, looking for an endorphin fix and have niggling injuries. I am my own client. Add a bit of knowledge on how to solve these issues and you have a decent PT business.
As a teenager I also sold gym memberships and, although this was doorstep cold calling, they weren’t difficult to sell with the price cuts this particular gym were offering. I also sold mobile phones when just about everyone in the world wanted a Nokia 3310. It wasn’t difficult.
But at our children’s school Christmas fair my biggest challenge was to come. We had a stall selling crystals, gems and healing pendulums and jewelry.
Science can be useful when selling something. I can give tangible evidence as to why going to a gym can be helpful or why mobile phones are useful. But science tends to stutter at healing crystals. However, using my own experience can be something that I can draw upon.
I would never, ever sell anything that I don’t believe in. I want to be able to sleep at night. So when my wife asked me to join her in the stall I had no issues in doing it, but I did need to understand WHY people invest in crystals. Therefore I had to ask myself why I use them, despite a lack of scientific evidence of their powers.
First of all I need to break it down to the basics. We don’t NEED a gym membership to be fitter. We don’t NEED a mobile phone to communicate. We don’t NEED biscuits to be happy. We don’t NEED crystals to heal or give positive vibes. But the latter is the only one that can be traced back to ancient Egypt, India, Rome and Greece and it will continue long after the rest too.
As I stood on the stall last night, a lady approached and looked very interested in the different crystals on display.
“I’m always drawn to crystals,” she said, “but I don’t know what to do with them.”
With no prior experience in selling crystals, I had to go with my gut.
“Pick one up and hold it. Tell me how it makes you feel.” I replied.
She picked up a beautiful rose quartz, known for its qualities in emotional health. She held it tightly and started to smile.
“It feels comforting.” She said.
“Then that’s what you do with a crystal.”
Sold. In fact she bought 5 in total.
During the evening, children and their parents spent a lot of time at our stall and many crystals went to good homes. It was satisfying to do. Much more so than selling phones.
The important thing here is that, even without scientific confirmation, you can still lead with your heart. And it is only recently I realized that. I don’t pray for that exact reason. I don’t know who I am praying to. That doesn’t mean that others can’t pray.
Yet I do feel a power or an aura when I meditate with crystals. It feels right to me. It is empowering.
Just like shortbread biscuits, they can make me feel a bit better.
As my wife and I were walking down our street this week the first sightings of Christmas decorations were spotted.
“Them at number 23 have gone early,” we seemed to simultaneously comment.
Every year we look for the early birds “going early” and every year we judge whether it’s a touch too early or not.
We’ve said the same thing for years…
“They get earlier every year, they do.”
“Channel 5 have gone early with their Christmas films this year.”
“Zoe Ball has gone early with playing Mariah Carey on the radio.”
We seem to have an issue with people going too early with their Christmas celebrations. Indeed, no sooner have the Pennywise masks left the supermarket shelves and the After Eights are stocked up. I do cringe at the thought of consumerism that is involved which in turn makes us all go too early.
However, I don’t blame anyone for wanting to bring forward the festive cheers. The last few years have been tough and, just this year alone in the UK, we’ve had political unrest with a few different Prime Ministers, a cost of living crisis, the Queen’s passing with a few weeks of mourning and Neighbors getting cancelled. It’s been a strange year.
So when I woke up listening to a Michael Bublé Christmas classic this morning I did feel a little cheer and a festive spirit lift me. It was about 6:45 and Finlay, my youngest, had asked Alexa for Christmas songs. I wouldn’t have chosen to be awake so early on a Saturday with no school or work to get up for and Finlay hasn’t yet mastered how to ask Alexa to turn the volume down. But if I’m to get woken up by anything, it could’ve been a lot worse than Bublé.
And I can just imagine what the neighbors will have been saying…
It’s almost a year since I published my first article. Before I started, I wanted it to be engaging for the average person who had goals and aspirations whilst juggling work commitments and family life. After all, that person is me! Along with doing the breakfast routines and finding school uniform and organising my work diary for the day, I also wake up thinking of a new PB at a bench press or sticking to a healthy nutritious meal plan. It excites me to think of stuff that can improve me physically and mentally and listening to squabbles about Pokémon cards from my boys can be tedious. So I sometimes switch off to think about my own personal journey.
‘Shouty Dad Has Gone’ was my first attempt at blogging. Like a singer who hates listening to their own voice, I haven’t read it since it was published so excuse the mistakes. I hope I’ve improved!
My idea for my blogs was to empower people into a fitness routine that not only worked on physical health, but mental health too. Every day I see new faces in the gym and I know that they’re in for a long long journey because their attitude to fitness needs to be addressed. Most people quit. But if they learn to develop their emotional side to their training then they have every chance of succeeding in their journey. Maybe, perhaps, my articles might have resonated with some of my readers at some point. I dunno. But I do know that those who work with me find success because I focus much less on the perfect squat or bench press. As impressive as these lifts are, these alone won’t achieve what they are looking for.
Happiness, self worth, acceptance and a balanced life all start in the head, not the barbell.
So I wanted to write more than just a fitness article where I would describe rep ranges, time under tension and training splits. These are all important, for sure, but as I say it means nothing if you aren’t inspired to begin or see it through.
It means that, in writing my blog, I began a journey of reflection myself. It made me think. For example, if I had not written anything for a few days, I would reflect on my life and what I had done with it in that time. And I found that there was always something to think about and write about. And actually typing out those words allowed me to either feel a sense of achievement, gratitude or a need for improvement in certain areas. This is one of the reasons I recommend journals and thought diaries. I find that it can help.
So here’s to another year of blogging. I hope that you, the reader, continue to enjoy my ramblings and you feel inspired too.
My wife and I had the perfect chance for a weekend without the kids. It is my birthday on Monday and their grandparents had offered to take the boys to their house so that we could celebrate my birthday with a meal out or an evening at the cinema.
It’s rare to have an opportunity for a ‘date night’ or to have any significant time together so it was very tempting. But I didn’t want it to happen this weekend. I wanted my wife and two boys with me.
It’s perhaps a cliché thing to say, but when my wife asked me what I wanted for my birthday I said ‘my family with me’. At 44, other than a new pack of undies or socks, my desire to unwrap expensive things or something new and exciting has gone. Undies are exciting. Yes. I have reached an age where a new pair of undies without any holes thrills me. And I’m happy with that.
As a kid I would open up a birthday card and a tenner would fall out. After pretending to not notice the money and instead read the verse of the card I would thank the person and then look in shock as I eventually found the ten pound note which had dropped into my lap. It was an awkward moment. I was always very grateful for people’s generosity at birthday and Christmas time and I still am, but sometimes the bestest gift you can receive is the closeness and love of your family. You can’t buy it.
Seeing as my birthday landed on a school and work day this year, we decided to have a ‘birthday weekend’. We like to extend our celebrations. For example, Eurovision is watched from the semi finals throughout the week with flags on the walls, not just on Saturday’s finale. And daytime Christmas films on Channel 5 are starting to get recorded already for us to binge on a November Sunday.
Our boys love a celebration. It usually involves cake and pizza so why not?! And for Lou and I it involves wine, so we love a celebration too! But it wouldn’t have felt right to send them to their grandparents this weekend. We played Monopoly, went for a coastal walk to the local pub for a few games of pool and managed two movies with copious amounts of food. And I was allowed to open a present before the big day too! Seeing as I complain about being cold so much, the boys had decided that a fluffy house coat is what I needed. Once they were all partied out, they went to bed and I could pop open a bottle of fizz. The coat stayed on.
As I write this I’m feeling a bit knackered myself and my birthday hasn’t even arrived yet. So I don’t think there’s going to be much celebrating tomorrow. Maybe whilst they’re at school, I could have an old man nap to find my energy for the week ahead! It is my birthday after all.
An unusual pain came over my elbow as I trained a couple of weeks ago. I say elbow, but it seems to stem from the brachialis. It wasn’t debilitating, but it was noticeable in my everyday movement which was uncomfortable.
Having trained Monday to Friday plus a few occasions where I’ve trained twice a day, I put it down to over training. Ok, I thought, with the half term holiday for a week around the corner, I decided to take a step back to recover. My readers will be aware that I will take school half term holiday off from the gym for a number of reasons, but the biggest by far is that my kids are at home and I appreciate spending time with them. Of course, I still have to be in the gym for my clients, but I rarely stick around to train myself. It gives me a natural break from it. And on this occasion, it seemed like I needed it.
But as the week went by, my arm became even worse. It went from a sharp pain to becoming a constant dull ache.
My advice to my trainees in this situation is…
* Always listen to your body. If you can’t train then take it easy and have a few days off (or train a different part of the body) but
* If you feel that you can train through the pain, you might find that the pain will ease.
It was totally coincidental that I had to take it easy after my injury due to the half term holiday, but I didn’t feel that my lay off was doing it any good at all. In fact, the pain was getting worse. Once I got back to the gym, plan B was in place. I trained through the pain.
And now, after a week back at training as normal, my injury has almost totally disappeared.
When my kids have a fall at football and start crying I assess the situation very quickly. I need to know where it hurts. Are there any cuts? Is it bleeding? But 99% of the time it has been a case of telling them to ‘run it off’. I’ve no doubt that it hurts at the time and there might be niggling pain associated with it afterwards, but I think that there’s usually a good case for ‘running it off’.
Training through minor injuries allows the body to maintain strength and conditioning, therefore enabling an injury to heal. But this must be up to each individual’s honest assessment. If you blame any twinge or niggle on not training because you can’t be bothered, then you might as well just be honest with yourself and admit that you can’t be bothered. However, if an injury is seriously affecting your performance or your life outside of the gym then giving the gym a miss and seeking professional advice might be an appropriate course of action.
Even if Dick Dastardly were to be walking up the meat isle in Sainsbury’s and was asked by an elderly person to reach onto the top shelf for a pack of chicken liver for her he would have done it. It wasn’t a huge thing that I did for another person this morning, but I was there to help so I did. It made the lady smile and it made me smile. It gives me a fuzzy warm feeling inside to help someone.
Also this morning, I decided to declutter the side shelf that had managed to breed piles of paper and it was about time that I went through it all. It had been a while. Amongst the papers included was an unopened letter from my opticians from 2021 and a Christmas card sent to the previous owner of our house. I walk past this pile several times a day and just haven’t done anything about it in such a long time. Maybe it’s been so long I’ve just become blind to it. I should’ve gone to Specsavers.
Also nestled in this pile of papers was an A4 sized written message from our eldest son, Jonas. Now, talking of making people smile, he managed to do this for my wife and I with his lovely words of love and kindness. It read…
” Whoever gets this I just want you to know I love you, from Jonas.”
We don’t know when it was written, but it had obviously just got sucked into this pile of papers at some point. But this random act of kindness that can be read by me, his mum or his little brother was a very thoughtful thing to do.
And what a wonderful world we could live in if messages of love, acts of support or a simple smile at random people were commonplace. I do fear, however, that we haven’t got enough of it in our lives.
My wife and I have had a rare opportunity to be at home together whilst the kids are at school and sort stuff out such as piles of paper and food shopping. But another practice that we like to undertake from time to time is to cleanse the rooms in the house. We do this by using a singing bowl and palo santo. Burning palo santo wood in your home is called smudging and, with positive intentions provided by your thoughts or affirmations, will cleanse your home of negativity and allow the positive energy to enter.
I’m very much a science based person. I like to see the evidence of something before I can ‘believe’ in it. Yet I seem to be drawn to this 15th century South America tradition. And although I am not religious in any way, I do find many spiritual traditions helpful. Maybe sometimes we don’t need experiments, statistics or numbers to tell us if something works. We just need to feel it. And I do feel the power of palo santo and a singing bowl when it comes to cleansing my surroundings.
I’m trying to be less angry. I’m tired of being annoyed at other pedestrians and road users. I want to be more patient towards people. I’m desperate to hang around supermarket isles just so I can grab another item that had been out of the reach of a shorter person. I want to do random acts of kindness.
But I’m unable to do that if my home isn’t giving me positive vibes. And it isn’t about the annoying pile of papers that need to be sorted out. It’s about finding my home to be a happy place to be. It is where I raise my children, prepare my work and create aspirations with my wife. A home needs positivity.
So maybe we all need to take a look at how the Incas and an 8 year old can create a happier environment in our own homes. Think positively, speak positively, cleanse positively and write positively.
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but the TV adverts are all of a sudden looking a lot more Christmassy this week. It seems like one minute I was collecting sweets with my two little devils and then the next minute I’m buying my box of Bounty-less Celebrations ready to open on Christmas day!
Oh how holiday consumerism flies.
And for 54% of the UK at least, what will be around the corner not long after a repeat of Morecambe and Wise will be the new years resolutions. A quarter of those resolutions will be health based, but only 9% of new years resolutioners will continue into the new year with their goals and actually achieve what they set out to do.
My theory is that when January arrives there has been very little planning involved in starting a fitness goal, if any at all. I can’t imagine many programs or meal menus being created over an episode of Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. In fact, due to the upheaval of the previous two weeks before January starts, it is probably the hardest month to commit to in regards to health and fitness.
So what is the best time?
Now is the short and easy answer. Today you can get a gym membership. Today you can write down a few healthy nutritious meals ideas and buy the ingredients for them. Today you can read an article like this and think ‘What am I waiting for?!’
What are you waiting for? My guess is that you don’t see any point in starting now seeing as silly season is just around the corner. But if we do the math then you might feel differently.
There are 57 days until New Year’s Day. So even if you take two weeks off of training over the festive period that’s 43 days left to train.
But you don’t need to train every day. Let’s be sensible and meet around half way. If you trained 3 days a week at an hour each time from now until a Christmas break, that is 18 hours.
One hour of light training can burn 200 calories per hour. Times that by 18 and you have burnt 3600 calories before the Christmas break.
One hour of vigorous training can burn 600 calories per hour. Times that by 18 and you have burnt 10,800 calories before the Christmas break.
These estimates are without the additional ‘after burn’ effect that you get, especially through resistance training, where your body will still be burning calories during the recovery phase.
Not only do the numbers look impressive, but the whole package does.
* You have already built up momentum before January arrives
* Beginning different eating habits straight after such an indulgent period as Christmas is extremely tough
* If you wanted to hire a PT, this time of year is good and you might be able to strike a deal. January can be a bit pricier during their busier months such as January.
So if you’re looking to get started on a health and fitness journey and you find yourself saying “I’ll wait until January”, think again. The sleigh is waiting for you now. Your journey can begin today.
The bright shiny object is a term that is used particularly in business, but can be relevant in many different situations in life.
It is the belief that, although you have put a plan in place, a new venture or interest catches your eye that attracts you to it. This new thing being the bright and shiny object. In the psychology field they have even called it a syndrome (Shiny Object Syndrome, SOS).
It can often be derailing to our original commitments and the extra cost and time devoted to the shiny object begins to affect a plan that was actually already working rather well.
In the gym I see it daily and, make no mistake, the shiny object is as alluring to me as for anyone else. But I have trained my mind to move on and stick to the plan as difficult as that might be sometimes. So let’s give a couple of examples of what it means in our health and fitness goals and our diets.
Case 1. The Inconsistent Trainer.
This is the shiny object that often tries to put me off of my stride. And it did for Jack. Jack had committed to the gym four times a week to follow a program plan by his trainer which would eventually see extra muscle mass and a leaner, aesthetic physique. He was fully focussed, made the investment in time and money and, after a few weeks, began to notice subtle changes to the way he looked and felt.
His program continued to be challenging as he progressed through the different phases of training, but after 3 months a friend had started to send him YouTube videos of a few different fitness influencers. They became Jack’s new, bright and shiny new object. He wanted to try the sort of techniques and ‘kick ass’ moves that would quicken the process and reach his results in less time.
He began only loosely following his program as he diverted from it during his training to try the new stuff that he had seen from the influencers. He no longer practiced conventional deadlifts. Instead he was keen to master the Jefferson deadlift, which was described as ‘quad killers’ by the influencer. However, whilst the Jefferson might be a useful lift for many of their subscribers, for Jack it put pressure on his spine. Over time, he began to suffer with lower back pain. His PT advised him to stick closely to his original plan, as he still needed to master the original deadlift before trying different variations.
Jack became frustrated. He understood what his PT was saying, but the pull of an influencer with thousands of followers was too much of a draw. Surely they knew their stuff, he thought. And of course he was right, they did know their stuff, but they didn’t know Jack. However, Jack decided to stop the services of his PT and try to pursue his own routine.
As the year progressed, Jack went from having moments of motivation where he would manage to get to the gym four or five days a week to not managing to get there at all for weeks at a time. Either through injuries or simply feeling demoralised, Jack didn’t reach his goals. He ditched his original plan designed specifically for him for the bright shiny object. He found that one influencer would tell their audience to do one thing and another influencer would tell their subscribers something totally different. Jack’s consistency and motivation had gone.
Case 2. The Yo-Yo Dieter.
Jill had promised herself that she would lose some weight and started to be more careful about the food that she ate. Having a sweet tooth and grazing throughout the day meant that she had put on a certain amount of weight that left her feeling lethargic and uncomfortable about herself.
Jill decided that she would download a calorie counting app to keep a check on the amount of calories that she was consuming. She didn’t want to be too restrictive, so along with meal plans of some of her favourite nutritious meals, she allowed herself some of her more indulgent treats a couple of days a week. Jill knew that, as long as she could track her calories, she could remain in control of her portions and enjoy her efforts to lose the weight that she wanted. After a few weeks, Jill felt that she wasn’t so tired all the time and she decided to join a local running group and also began enjoying long walks with her partner.
After 6 months of the positive lifestyle change, Jill was talking to a friend. They were discussing weight loss and it was apparent that her friend had lost a considerable amount of weight. Jill’s friend told her that she was on a diet which allowed just 800 calories a day and, although she felt too tired to exercise from the lack of energy, she was losing lots of weight each week.
Jill had been happy with her progress, but her friend’s impressive story had made her wonder if she could do the same. Jill concluded that, due to the darker cold nights setting in, she wouldn’t want to go running anyway. Plus, if she can make the sort of progress that her friend did, she could hit her target weight for Christmas, 6 months earlier than she’d expected.
Jill started the new diet. But it wasn’t long before her energy fell and she quit the running club. Her mood changed too. She felt snappy with her partner and didn’t want to attend special occasions because she was unable to eat or drink the same as anyone else. She lost weight quickly, but she wasn’t happy. Eventually, she would have binge days and this left her even more frustrated as she felt like she was failing.
Jill came off of the diet and tried to go back to her original plan. This proved to be more difficult than she’d expected though as all of her positive habits that she had worked on had gone. She found herself grazing and eating all of the wrong things again. Despite having bouts of motivation, Jill has not found the consistency that she had once enjoyed.
Summary
In both scenarios, Jack and Jill had found something that worked for them and their lifestyle. There is nothing wrong with what a friend might be doing differently or what an influencer might suggest, but what Jack and Jill were doing was successful to THEM. Yet something new and exciting swayed them into boycotting their plans. The very plans that were working.
Alterations, tweaks or little changes to a plan are fine as long as it is exactly that…the plan. Nobody wants a training program to stagnate or a nutritional menu to become boring with the same meals each day. But the foundations in which it was first created need to remain the same.
The bright shiny object will always have us wondering and the newness to try alternative methods is intriguing, but take it from someone who has had his fingers burnt on many occasions before becoming a Personal Trainer, it will often end in derailing our good work and possibly even ending it with nothing in return.
Never Give Up PT 