Tag: festive

Guest Post: 7 Reasons You’ll Put Weight On This Winter

As we head into winter, you’re probably dreading the added expense of Christmas and New Year. Our wallets are already stretched to breaking point, with families up and down the land having to make cut-backs here, there and everywhere, so the last thing we need is another visit from Rudolph and co.

That said, although you may be worrying about whether Santa will survive on the less-than-luxury mince pies you leave him at the foot of your chimney, you should probably be worrying about your waistline too. Why? Because winter is when many of us let ourselves go.

So, if you don’t want to enter 2013 looking like you do on the back of a dessert spoon, watch what you eat. Otherwise you might find yourself adhering to all seven of these reasons why you’ll put on more weight.

1. Cold weather. As winter is the coldest season of the year it’s pretty much a given that people are less active. Gone are the early morning walks with the dog, the sunset jogs around the block and the weekend cycles in the countryside. In comes the staying indoors, the radiators turned up and rubbish on the TV. Out goes the range cookers and the hearty filling food, in comes the takeaways and the microwave meals….

2. Wet weather. The winter brings with it wet weather too. If it’s wet you’re less likely to want to walk, cycle or snake-board to work, turning to your car instead. Understandably too. Why turn up to work like a drowned rat, when you can get there in the warm and relative comfort of your own pride and joy? The thing is, though, while it may be convenient, not only will your travel expenses rise, so will the size of your trousers.

3. Less light. With the clocks going back the nights get longer. You end up going to work in the dark, and coming home in the dark. As such, many of us start to ‘hibernate’, with our body clocks thinking it’s time to shut down for the evening. “Shall I go to the gym?” you ask yourself. “Nahhhh. I’ll go home to the warm, thanks.” Less daylight and longer nights reduce your desire to keep active, leading to a night in front of the tellybox, rather than the exercise mat. Unless you’re watching Aerobics Oz Style on Sky Sports 2 of course.

4. Winter blues. Talk to any sufferer of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and they will tell you the same thing, as soon as the clocks go back their mood suffers horribly. They rue the loss of summer and dread the cold winter months. They get depressed, they get down and they miss the sun. They crave sweet and carb-heavy foods to keep up their energy and spirits. If that sounds familiar, watch the scales go up.

5. Seasonal food. Christmas is coming earlier and earlier nowadays. In fact, it was August this year when we first started noticing festive fare on the shelves. Mince pies, Christmas puddings, Twiglets, nuts, selection boxes, advent calendas… you could actually buy them IN AUGUST this year. Surely a new record? If you’re tempted by these offers (£5 for a tub of Celebrations for example), then just think to yourself, “I’m going to get fat!” That should stop you. Unless you say it with pride and conviction, in which case no one can help you.

6. Seasonal drink. Now this one is a sore point for many of us. Supermarkets up and down the land know that us Brits love a drink. We do. We can’t get by without the odd glass of wine now and again. But with Christmas coming, it’s fair game. “A bottle of Baileys for £12, when the normal RRP is £20? I’m there!” But so are those pesky little calories. If you don’t want to slam on the festive flab, then try and avoid these festive drink offers. Or use a straw. You’ll probably feel better that way.

7. Office treats. No matter how hard you try to stay cheery in the winter months, whether that’s keeping up your exercise routine, going for walks or constructing a stationary tower out of paper clips, you can bet your bottom dollar/pound that your workmates won’t be as committed as you. As a result, before you know it, the office will be inundated with sugary treats to help celebrate…erm… nothing in particular. So, if you don’t want to see your scales creak under the weight of all that office joviality, the trick is to learn to say no. Good luck.

October 30, 2012
Guest Post: 7 Reasons The Holiday Season Sucks

If you’re feeling really festive, we mean really festive, then today’s guest post from Louise Tillotson probably isn’t the kind of thing you wanted to read over your lunch break. On the other hand, though, if you bat for Team Scrooge this is the kind of thing you’ll want to read and share and read and share and read and share… (repeat to fade).

I like Christmas as much as the next person. Provided that person is, in fact, Scrooge. Bah humbug and all that…

But honestly, I do enjoy the festive period to an extent. The act of going out in the cold, wrapped up warmly, spending my hard-earned savings on things I don’t have to find space for in my already cluttered home is, to me, one of the joys of Christmas.

When you’re a grown-up, Christmas does kind of lose its appeal. But when you have kids of your own and see it through their eyes, it seems magical all over again.

Sadly, what those little eyes don’t see are the niggly little annoyances that now seem to ruin the season just that little bit more each year. I’m talking about…

1. Christmas Cards. Every year we send flimsy bits of cardboard with awful pictures on them to people we never see or speak to throughout the year. And every year we get flimsy bits of cardboard with awful pictures on them given to us which we then have to display in our homes in case the giver happens to drop by. Which is unlikely seeing as we haven’t seen or spoken to them all year…

2. The Weather. Do a Google image search for ‘Christmas’ and you immediately get thousands of pictures containing snow-covered cottages, trees festooned with lights, and jolly-looking snowmen made out of the purest white snow. Now look out of your window. See the grey slush laying forlornly in the gutter, the crumpled lump of grey and yellow matter with a single carrot poking out at an odd angle, the few dimly lit bulbs hanging on for dear life to a wilting bush…Doesn’t the sight just fill your heart with winter joy? No, I didn’t think so.

3. Strange Bearded Men. I am of course referring to Santa Claus, Father Christmas or whatever you call him in your family. There’s just something vaguely creepy about taking your beloved little one to sit on the knee of a strange man and confide in him all their secret wishes for the season. Or more realistically; start to cry hysterically, scream for mummy and wet themselves.

4. Cold Food. Maybe it was just the way my mother cooked it, but I always think of Christmas dinner as being a lot of cold stuff covered with thick gravy. There’s obviously an art to getting four types of vegetable, three types of potato, turkey and stuffing to the same hot temperature at the same time…and my mother never mastered it. Our turkey dinners always consisted of freezing cold meat, red hot gravy and tepid everything else. Which probably wouldn’t be so bad but the turkey is always far too large and you end up having it with every meal for a week afterwards.

5. Mandatory Alcohol. And when I say alcohol I don’t mean the tasty stuff that you’d choose to drink if you were at the pub. I’m talking about stuff like Babycham, the “wine” parents buy when they want to get their offspring amusingly drunk; and Advocaat, which looks like runny custard and smells like it’s been drunk already. And woe betide you if you don’t want to drink – you’ll have a glass of this cheap plonk out of a box and damn well enjoy it!

6. Decorations. I don’t mind what people have inside their homes, as I don’t have to look at it. I’m talking about the stuff people decorate the outside of their homes with. As far as I can tell, there are two rules every outside decorator thinks they must obey: the lights must be the brightest you can find, and if they don’t flash and/or cause a hazardous distraction to drivers, you’ve not used enough. For preference, you should also create your own Nativity/Farm/North Pole with brightly lit animal structures too, for that added tackiness.

7. Presents. Last but not least, we come to the gifts. Your granny is probably delegated to trot out the old adage “giving is better than receiving” but honestly, I think it’s true. Only by not receiving gifts can we avoid having to pretend to love the hideous pair of socks a lazy uncle has bought you, or the bath salts which you just know will make you smell like the inside of a pensioner’s handbag. There’s only so long you can wear a fake smile and feign delightedness so as not to offend your well-meaning but utterly clueless relatives.

December 13, 2011
Guest Post: 7 Reasons That Christmas ALWAYS Gets Me in the End

It’s Saturday, and the 7 Reasons team have abandoned the sofa in order to rush, blinking out into the sunlight like pit-ponies escaping from their daily labour. But, fear not, for the sofa is in safe hands. Guest hosting this week is the lovely Liz Gregory – that’s right, her of Things to do in Manchester fame – who despite being from Manchester, isn’t going to prattle on about Coronation Street, she’s going to talk about Christmas. Now settle down, children, and she’ll begin.

Every year it’s the same. I roll my eyes at those poor souls who have done all their present shopping by August; I can tut as cynically as anyone at the Christmas songs repeated on an endless, hideous loop in certain shops from the beginning of November. I am a grown woman with a full time job, and the shameless commercial enterprise that is Christmas has no place in my busy and important lifestyle. But by December, I’m hooked, brimming with festive excitement. Again. Here’s why….

1. The weather. Surely even the most hardened and wizened of souls must admit that nothing looks more enticingly festive than a fresh coating of snow, with the power to wipe out an ugly urban landscape of wheelie bins and cat poo, and replace it with pristine perfection. And I say this despite the fact that I am seemingly the only teacher in the UK not to have received a single snow day in the recent bad weather – I have had to go to work and perform the job for which I am paid EVERY SINGLE DAY.

2. Rosy-cheeked children. No, not the bratty whiny ones running amok in the supermarket trying to grab everything in sight – they are the ones to avoid if you’re trying to be misty-eyed and non-cynical about Christmas. I mean the angelic ones who assemble at Christmas lights switch-ons, warbling traditional festive songs and obligingly going “ooohhh” when the lights are turned on.

3. The Christmas Radio Times. I take enormous comfort in the fact that even though we live in a high-tech, culturally diverse society where we celebrate individuality and cutting-edge modernity, at least fifty percent of the UK will have spent the last week leafing through the Christmas Radio Times, armed with a marker pen, drawing wonky circles around the plethora of bad television they wish to watch this Yuletide. The fact that you will only actually watch three of these programmes is entirely besides the point – the pleasure lies in the selection, not the viewing.

4. Alcohol. One of the overwhelming perks of December is that it becomes socially acceptable to consume alcohol at virtually any time of day without anyone raising their eyebrows and calling you an alky. So that means sherry at elevenses is fine, as is bucks fizz at breakfast and Amaretto Sours at lunch. I do not, of course, live like this at other times of the year.

5. Decorations. Yes, Nigella is annoying, but I do admire the fact that her house (or her studio-masquerading-as-house, one is never quite sure) appears to be permanently bedecked with fairy lights. I am not brave enough to try to convince my husband that this is acceptable all year round, which means I must make the most of the carte blanche that Christmas brings. Turn the big light off, switch the fairy lights on, and hey presto! Your house instantly looks clean and tidy in the murky pixie gloom.

6. Food. I am by nature a most abstemious person, unlikely to over-indulge in any way, but the range of tasty morsels positively flung one’s way at this time of year makes it impossible to refuse. As with the alcohol, it is de rigueur to adjust one’s notions of what acceptably constitutes a balanced meal – as long as you select items from both the savoury AND the sweet party food ranges, you should be absolutely fine.

7. Two weeks off. I enjoy my job, and by anyone’s standards, working in a college in the run up to Christmas must surely be as good a place to be as any. Giant tins of Quality Street lurk at every turn, and teaching English means that the final week offers plenty of chances to watch Wuthering Heights and eat popcorn. And yet, the prospect of two weeks off, spent lolling on the sofa, opening the odd present and reverting to a lifestyle where your mum brings you a cup of tea in bed in the morning, is surely something to be cherished.

So, if anyone fancies a mince pie or three in the semi-gloom of my Nigella kitchen I’ll see you shortly; only visitors bearing sherry will be admitted, mind.

December 11, 2010