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How To Party Smarter

Rather than making a whole lot of false promises about partying less this Christmas, perhaps it’s time you tried to party *smarter* instead.

Here are our top tips:

1. Align your values
If people-pleasing and perfectionism are your go-to behaviours, it’s time to get smart and avoid the inevitable seasonal burnout.

“Your efforts to please will become truly exhausting and other people’s appreciation less and less,” says life coach Rebecca Williams.

Author and blogger Sarah Wilson agrees: “I stress this always: don't preach, just be your message.”

Williams sets 10 core values for her personal brand and aims to experience them directly each day. Heading into a manic time of year with clarity on your values will help you navigate endless invites, commitments, gift buying, cooking and catch ups.

2. Deal with stress
Imagine if stress was as visible as dirty hands or gunky teeth.

“If you could see it, you would want to wash yourself at least twice a day,” suggests meditation teacher Laura Poole, who wants to make meditation as habitual as brushing your teeth. “A daily meditation practice … washes off the daily stress and trains your brain to operate from a deeper, more connected place. We can sometimes forget we’re the creators of our own realities and we have the power to affect change.”

Poole has developed a free app to get you started: check out www.1giantmind.org.

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3. Get good guts
Healthy gut flora can battle a sugar hit or a Christmas lunch blow out.

“Rich food requires really good stomach acid levels and immunity, which are both compromised when our gut flora is out,” says Wilson. “If we can boost our guts during this period with food-based probiotics, we stand a better chance,” she adds.

The right bacteria also crowd out the competitive, crave-causing, sugar-loving bacteria in our digestive system. Make kefir and kimchi a part of your food ‘flow’, or look for a supplement that’s fermented and packed with a spectrum of probiotics such as The Beauty Chef’s Hydration Inner Beauty Boost (www.thebeautychef.com).

4. Find your food flow
If you tend to lose control of your eating when life gets crazy, you need to change your flow, believes Wilson.

Just like nailing that vinyasa sequence, there’s smug satisfaction (and good health) to be had from a food rhythm. “When you have a batch of par-cooked and frozen broccoli florets in the freezer, their enzymes snap-frozen, a few portions of slow-cooked lamb shanks and some greens stored on the right shelf of the fridge… you're three minutes from a healthy, Instagrammable meal,” she says.

The best thing about prepping your flow? You can do it now. Be smug later.

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5. Squeeze in some action
Failing to get your workouts in?

Get some of those steps back into the day, but be careful of buddying up – “if you can gossip easily, you’re not working hard enough,” says Dunn. Instead, she says, “put your runners on at lunchtime and do some laps up and down the stairwells at work. You can do lunges in the corridors, and squats by your desk.”

And be conscious of your calorific intake that day; you’ll require less than on days you do work out, so make sure you reduce your daily total to match.

6. Review, plan, celebrate
“I like to look at the festive season as a game of netball – it’s played in four quarters, is fast, high intensity, you’re going to come across some better players than you and some mean girls too,” says Thamsin Dunn, National Master Coach for the Australian Institute of Fitness.

Check in with your goals each week and align your behaviour strategically.

“Before NYE revisit your goals – spend a day making some clearly defined ambitions for the coming year, including setting yourself some limits for the big night,” adds Dunn.

Williams calls this the ‘What’s Been Awesome’ session. “Enjoying your success builds confidence, self-worth and creates a positive energy around you,” she says.

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