Happy new year!
I hope you had a great holiday period.
I wanted to touch on something I see come up more and more as the years go on and thats these ideas of following a certain thing for a month, like dry January and the new one I've seen pop up this year Veganuary. The idea of dry January is to give up alcohol for a month and veganuary is to go vegan for the month of January.
Both of these are mostly used as some weight loss tactic or even just to be part of some strange club, which I think is only present on social media or if you are hip and live in London hot spots like Camden.
In my opinion there are a couple of issues with these January opt ins. Yes you will see weight loss success of course you will because you have eliminated something which contains calories from your diet. If you are a big social drinker then that is potentially a hefty amount of calories you have reduced for a month so its highly likely you will lose weight.
Veganuary, this just baffles me all together. First of all to go vegan is incredibly difficult and restrictive because so many foods have to be eliminated from a vegan diet, again making it high likely you will drop a decent amount of weight over the course of January due to the fact you have heavily reduced the amount of food you can consume. But unless you are doing it for moral reasons I don't think its a great idea to follow this diet.
The end result of following both of these restrictive diets for a month may possibly be a decent amount of weight loss. But it's also highly likely to end up in binge drinking in February and binge eating on all the things you have avoided for a month. Potentially or even highly likely that you will regain any weight you lost and potentially more. Leading to your motivation diminishing and you ending up back to square one of wanting to lose weight.
The better approach
I think instead of embarking on one of these January journeys and becoming a member of one of these weird trends, your time will be much better spent eating foods you enjoy and instead finding a way to just cut back on the amount of food you consume daily and exercise and move more.
If you really feel lost, ask for some help find a fitness professional, personal trainer, nutritionist etc and ask for help, maybe even employ one of them for a period of time to help you get the results you are after and help solve your problems. Yes it may cost money, but like anything an investment in yourself is the best investment you can make. If you cant afford to invest in one, then seek out some you can relate to ask them for some advice or follow them on social media. A lot of good fitness professionals put out lots of free advice on social media, you just have to wade your way through some rubbish ones to find some gems.
If you need any help or advice to get your new year of to the start you really want then feel free to pop me an email I'm happy to help.
Speak soon
Jonny AKA The Fitness Dad