16
Apr 14
What’s the right way to eat a chocolate Easter bunny? Start at the ears of course!
Easter is almost upon us. Hot cross buns and chocolate eggs. And by the end of the weekend, quite likely a couple of extra pounds on the scale.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. A little planning and some simple strategies set up in advance could spare you the unwanted Easter weight gain.
Food and drink is such an important part of socialising and sharing with friends and family, we connect over the dinner table whether at home or in a restaurant and it can be a wonderful bonding experience. But food and drink need to be servant, not master.
Supermarkets started to stock Easter eggs as soon as Valentine’s Day was over! That’s two months of shelf displays of enticing, tempting chocolate bunnies, eggs and assorted Easter treats! It’s so easy to just slip an extra bag of mini eggs in your shopping trolley thinking that they’re only small, it won’t do any harm! Um, once you start, how easily do you stop? To burn off 3 mini eggs, you’d need to skip continuously for 15 minutes! And who stops at 3!
And what about Hot Cross buns? Compare the size of a bun from 1994 to 2014 – they’ve grown to about triple the size of what they were, with all the corresponding tripled calories and fat. A small bun without butter sits at about 150 calories or the equivalent of a half an hours swim. A large bun is at least double the calories and would take a half an hour intense training session to burn!
If extra chocolates and candies aren’t in the house, you can’t eat them. Simple as that! Save your treats for the actual day!
So, should you sit in the corner of the room declining all treats and look and feel like a martyr to your diet? Or can you perhaps plan to enjoy your Easter as part of your weekly calorie allowance, taking the extra holidays to increase your training intensity too. If you know that you’ll be enjoying a big Easter lunch on Sunday, try reducing your calories and your starchy carbs the day before. Have a solid training session that will burn a load of calories and make sure you drink a ton of water!
If you’re travelling for Easter and socialising across the whole weekend, then scale back your calorie intake this whole week. Make sure you’re training regularly and intensely and keep up with your water intake. You’ll go into the weekend knowing that you’ve earned your treat meals and you’ll enjoy them guilt free.
If it forms a helpful picture for you – BEFORE you scoff those mini eggs, imagine how much exercise is required to burn off those small, innocent little treats.
6oz chocolate bunny (50g fat) would take 2 solid hours of running
1 Cadbury Caramel egg will take 2 miles of brisk walking
1 Chocolate chip hot cross bun would take a one hour cycle class
You can never out-train a bad diet, but you can certainly put in the hard work beforehand and earn the right to treat yourself. And if running for 2 hours isn’t your thing (my knees ache at the very thought!) then try these intense yet do-able workouts designed for women perfectly timed for your Easter weekend.
My passion is teaching people how to work fitness into their daily lifestyle in order to improve their quality of life. Let’s work together to help you reach your fitness goals!
