Five Good New Year's Diet Resolutions

Christmas is a time when most of us put on weight as we binge ourselves on all the wonderful seasonal foods, which combined with frequent snacking soon leaves us showing off a few more pounds in weight than we had before the festive season began.

These are a few helpful New Year's Resolutions for how to shed those extra pounds that you put on during Christmas, and for getting your body back into a fit and healthy state again.

#1 New Year's Diet Resolution: Cut Down On Salt

Salt is not only a killer if you digest too much of it, but it also helps retain fluids in the body, which are often part of the cause of weight gain after eating salty foods.

Christmas with it's parties and snack foods, which are usually loaded with salt, really do make a difference to your body's water retention, and it's not impossible to weigh yourself the day after eating a lot of chips, dips and other party food, to find that you only ate 3lbs or less of food, yet for some magic reason you have gained 5lbs.

If you have ever eaten a lot of junk food over the weekend and then eaten healthily during the following week, have you noticed how your weight goes up significantly by the end of the weekend, yet by midweek, after several days of frequent trips to the bathroom, that extra weight has disappeared again.

This is because my eating healthily the salt level in your body has reduced, and therefore the water retention has lowered, causing you to head off to the bathroom more than normal.

If you want to see a quick weight loss in the New Year, step number one is to cut down on the salt.

#2 New Year's Diet Resolution: Drink More Water

Along with salt, all that rich Christmas fayre is loaded with fat, sugars, chemicals, colorings, and other ingredients that need flushing out of your system.

You probably also drank lots of soda, both regular and diet over the holiday, and both kinds are loaded in sugar and chemicals as well.

Now that the New Year is here, it's time to switch to drinking water, as much as you can manage each day, ideally at least 6 to 8 pints.

The water serves multiple purposes. Firstly, by drinking a lot of water, you remain filled up, and feel less hungry. You are more likely to eat less, and less likely to snack as a result. Secondly, by drinking a lot of water you are going to cause those impurities to be flushed out of your system, so not only are you using water to help stop you feeling hungry, you are using it to purge your body of the junk that you loaded it up with the previous week.

Drinking water with fresh squeezed lemon in it works even better, as this helps to boost the metabolism. Green tea is a great diuretic as well, so drinking iced green tea with fresh lemon or lime really helps.

#3 New Year's Diet Resolution: Eliminate Junk Food

Without exception, junk food is full of salt, fat, sugar, coloring, preservatives and other chemicals, most of which are harmful to the body and cause you to gain weight for one reason or another.

If you can learn to live without junk food in the New Year, you will very soon see the pounds drop off.

#4 New Year's Diet Resolution: Make A Healthier Meal Plan

It's not only snack foods that are loaded with salt, fat, sugar and preservatives, most processed foods are too.

A good diet plan consists of as much fresh food as possible, and that means fresh fruit and vegetables, and home cooking, rather than frozen microwave dinners.

If you want to lose weight and go on a healthy diet in the New Year, you have to give up the processed foods.

#5 New Year's Diet Resolution: Adopt A Better Snack Food Strategy

Finally, most people snack, and very often it's the snacks that are as bad as anything else in creating our bad diet.

Instead of munching on chips (need I repeat the salt, fat and sugar thing again?), chocolate, and other candies, buy some small zip-lock bags and prepare daily portions of fresh fruit, nuts (preferably un-salted), and other natural things, or take a banana, apple or orange to eat for a snack.

It's very easy to put on weight and to really do your body a lot of harm over the Christmas period, but if you follow these New Year's Resolution dieting guidelines, you can very soon lose those extra pounds that you gained, and begin to feel healthier again.

The secret though is not just to do this for a few weeks in the New Year, but to make this your regime throughout the year.

As the year goes on, and you treat yourself to the occasional treat or fast food item, you will find that you enjoy it so much more than if you were eating it all the time, and it is also amazing just how fast the pennies add up if you are not spending out on fast food meals.

Let's all enjoy our Christmases, and then make a resolution to diet successfully in the New Year.

Happy Holidays everyone.