Life

Lynette Fay: I'm promising to look after myself a little better this year – that's all

Eating well and healthily is not easy. We live in a world of immediacy. Anyone I know who has really committed to losing weight and changing their body shape has had to invest in it. It takes time to find recipes that work for you

Lynette Fay

Lynette Fay

Lynette is an award winning presenter and producer, working in television and radio. Hailing from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, she is a weekly columnist with The Irish News.

The festive season brings with it big dinners, mince pies, chocolates and alcohol. And repeat
The festive season brings with it big dinners, mince pies, chocolates and alcohol. And repeat The festive season brings with it big dinners, mince pies, chocolates and alcohol. And repeat

HAPPY new year! This is day five in the 2019 house. How are we all getting on? Has the new year, inevitably, brought with it the promise of a new you?

The festive season brought with it big dinners with never-ending portions of stuffing, numerous cheeseboards, mince pies, Roses, Quality Street, wine, Baileys. And repeat.

The fact that I tried to exercise more than usual before Christmas meant that I could eat double the amount I usually would… naturally. At least that was my justification.

Never more have I felt the need to cut back, change my diet, and exercise more. I feel like a big ball of bleeeeuuugggghhh. I did enjoy the over indulgence at the time, though, and I knew this feeling was ahead of me.

I don’t have a set of scales, despite friends telling me I should invest. I don’t have a clue what I weigh, but I dared to go running on New Year’s Eve and I felt every excess with every step. The first day out is always the worst. It will get easier.

What is it about this time of year, though? Diet pills, slimming world, weight watchers, Noom, the list is endless – all these brands/companies tell us that they can help us to lose weight. We are bombarded with weight-loss ‘methods’. I appreciate that for some, these are tried and tested ways of counting the calories, but they just haven’t been for me.

In the past, I have signed up, paid the subscription, downloaded the app and simply didn’t engage in the process offered.

The answer is simple, the application is not. If you want to break a cycle, you have to ring in the changes. Only you can do it, and it’s often not an easy process, but, if done correctly and invested in, it can be incredibly rewarding, if successful.

Recently, I got into the ‘weight’ conversation with a good friend. She was giving out that she just couldn’t seem to shift the extra pounds, despite exercising a lot. I challenged her on her eating habits. It was an act of tough love that was not appreciated at the time. She told me later, however, that my words made her rethink her approach.

If only I could follow my own advice.

Eating well and healthily is not easy. We live in a world of immediacy. Anyone I know who has really committed to losing weight and changing their body shape has had to invest in it. It takes time to find recipes that work for you, that the whole family might enjoy. It also takes time to find ingredients.

Recently, I needed black beans to make a healthy chilli. Two tins of black beans. I tried seven shops in the locality and then travelled three miles and found them. The chilli takes 20 minutes to make. The quest for the black beans took hours.

Fast food, however, is readily available. Too available, in my opinion. Do me a favour and count the number of fast-food outlets you pass on your way to work. While I understand that these are businesses, do we really need this much choice?

I understand myself enough now to know that eating well, cutting back on alcohol, and getting good sleep makes me feel a lot better. I’m no expert but this might be universal and apply to everyone. It’s self care.

For the most part, I think that self care is an alien notion to us and can be perceived as selfishness. It’s far from it. As the excesses of Christmas have shown us, we’re great with the external, material stuff. And that’s all it is – stuff.

But I refuse to make resolutions. I think that they are unhelpful, unrealistic and for the most part, unachievable. No-one can go to bed on December 31 and wake up a new person on January 1, can they?

Instead, a few goals have been set. I’m going to promise to try to look after myself a little better than I have been over the last month or so, and without fanfare.

So, no demands of myself and no pressure. If I crack this, the changes I ring in will be part of my daily routine this time next year. If I don’t, I will be kind to myself, pick up and try again. It’s all any of us can do.