RECOVER YOUR FORM BEFOR CHRISTMAS

Recover your form before Christmas.

After the excesses of holidays and a long summer break, it is quite possible that you have picked up a few more inconvenient kilos. To add to that, Christmas is just round the corner, with its dinners and copious quantities of food. From the health centre at CEM Can Ricart and CEM Colom, we would like to offer you some advice to get back into the kind of shape you feel comfortable with, get through Christmas in good trim and without worrying about your weight.

In reality, this increase of body mass can have more consequences for our organism than we sometimes think. It’s important to remember that weight gain directly affects all our organic systems, sometimes reducing our quality of life, and, above all, in the case of this increase sustaining itself over time, changing our fundamental constitution and rendering us more vulnerable to certain illnesses. For this reason, we would like to remind you of some very important factors of which you should be aware:

• Excess weight gain over time and obesity are defined as an excess of body mass, producing an increase in the body’s fat reserves beyond the level which is considered healthy. This excess weight increases the risk of suffering from cardiovascular problems, diabetes, damage to the skeletal and muscular systems…and leads to an unhealthy body image we would rather rid ourselves of.
• Currently we have a societal and professional model that favours sedentary postures and low physical demand. Changes of this kind, together with overeating and less general awareness of diet, in which calorific precooked foods predominate, with little nutritional value, inevitably lead to weight gain and a deficit in those foods which are necessary for maintaining a strong and healthy constitution.

With these factors in mind, we would like to suggest some guidelines for a healthy diet, to keep those extra kilos at bay.

1. Improve your diet, modify eating habits, and follow a healthy regime. Reduce the consumption of fats and sugars and increase the amount of fruits and fibre. Specifically, follow the habits of a Mediterranean diet. We know you’ve heard it before, but it’s important and it works.
2. Gradually increase the amount of regular physical exercise, according to your limitations. Treat yourself to at least 20 minutes a day.
3. Monitor your physical constitution and assess the percentage of fat and muscle mass. Do this once every 3 or 4 weeks. Ask for a review of your physical constitution from one of our fitness specialists, or ask for a 15 minute assessment from one of the nutritionists.
4. Do 1 or 2 weekly food shops, planning your meals on a daily basis, this will help you to gain control over your diet and include necessary nutritional foods.

If these small pieces of advice together with the aid of constitutional analyses conducted by specialists is not enough, you could try out our specialist nutrition service, which is carried out according to an instructive method which is easy-to-follow, open, and without restrictions or prohibitions, simply limiting the quantity and dietary groups commensurate with your objectives. We like to operate following a Mediterranean diet, with market products, and without supplements or pills, promoting seasonal foods cultivated in proximity.  We adapt our plan to all types of diet, vegetarian, allergy, intolerance, diabetes, cholesterol imbalance…We can help with objectives such as:

1. Nutritional sports plans or increase in muscle mass.
2. Weight loss solely reducing fat.
3. Nutritional guidelines for pregnant women or lactating mothers.
4. Vegetarian diets, lacto-ovo vegetarians, and vegans
5. Dietary adaptations for allergies, intolerances, diabetes, hyper-cholesterol, etc

If you are a sports person, have a specific sports-related challenge or want to increase muscle mass or stamina, don’t hesitate to ask for the nutritional sports service, we’ll explain how to balance nutrition and sport in a healthy way.