A Calm and Conscious Christmas for a Happy New Year

With Christmas comes the onslaught of brightly coloured wrappers and decorated boxes adorning chocolates, biscuits and sweets. For some, this represents dietary abandon with the resolution to bring it all round in the New Year.

But some of us have had enough of that swing and prefer not to feel like we’re lurching from a sugared-up state that leaves us feeling sluggish, bloated and, well, a bit dirty, to somehow suddenly having the willpower to give it all up come Hogmanay. So let’s unpick some of those Christmas habits in order to maybe evolve some healthier ones...

While original yuletide feasts were designed to celebrate coming together as communities to nourish and fuel for the winter months, human’s love of the sweet stuff seems to get a free pass at Christmas. It can even seem conspiratorial when, if you politely decline the third round of mince pies of the day, you can receive sideway glances that make you feel like you’re Scrooge.

Personally, a few years back I reached the limit of feeling like c*&p after each Christmas Day finally arrived – sluggish, head-achy, tetchy and with raging sugar cravings – and longing for when all the so-called ‘Christmas food’ was finally gone. I have a tendency to want to hoover up sugar just to get it out of the way, so this can seem endless with so much around!

Let's look at why we binge at Christmas...

It is good to remember that Christmas in Britain was historically a time to see in the winter and prepare for the colder months to come. The difference between then and now is the availability of food; when we relied on what the land gave us – what we grew and raised – every calorie was precious, especially those from fat, the best compact source of energy to see you through the winter. Now calories are too abundant and living in centrally heated homes, we have removed the need to produce as much body heat from fat. The motivation of a feast at the height of winter no longer fits with the way we live.

This excerpt is taken from Charlotte's eBook, A Calm and Conscious Christmas for a Happy New Year: recipes, nutritional advice, mindful living & self-enquiries for the whole festive period. 

The eBook features exercises, movement ideas and includes the following recipes:

• Hot Gingerbread Drink
• Almond Pastry Mini Mince Pies - low sugar and grain free
• Coconut Truffles
• Cashew Nut Gingerbread Ice Cream
• Parsnip and Brazil Nut Loaf
• Salmon Cakes

You can purchase the eBook via Amazon, or click here to join Whole Health with Charlotte, where you can access this eBook and more, including:

• Live online classes & recordings - Mindful & Somatic Yoga / Therapeutic Movement / Movement into Meditation classes
• Recordings of the above online yoga classes, which stay available for 60 days after their live date
• Monthly natural health webinars (and access to the recording)
• Access to Recipes, Nutrition & Self-Care Database
• A huge archive of classes of various lengths; yoga, meditation, self-massage, yoga nidra, therapeutic movements, health webinars and other health resources. 
• New material and regular special programmes released monthly.
• 20% off supplements from Charlotte Watts Health Shop
• Opportunity to book Nutritional Therapy consultations with Charlotte. Further details here.
• Access the materials (except live classes – these are on Zoom) via an app that you can download from Apple or Google stores

Discover Whole Health with Charlotte here, featuring access to yoga classes, meditations, natural health webinars, supplement discounts and more...