Kid’s birthdays are wonderful; endless parties, family events, over tired toddlers, a house that looks like a bomb’s hit it…
While we love celebrating our wee one’s milestones, birthdays, and more specifically birthday parties, can wreck havoc on our routines, our bank balance and our waistlines.
Have you noticed that birthdays seem to come in batches? It’s not just your kid’s birthday; it feels like the whole neighbourhood is turning 5! So instead of being able to keep focus on what little time we extract to get a bit of exercise, we end up spending our exercise time playing pass the parcel and living on Thomas the tank engine birthday cake.
But all is not lost. Before you ban birthdays all together, take on board one or two of these hints to keep you on track.
Remember- party season doesn’t have to be about fast tracking to awesome results, more about reducing the damage so it’s not such a long haul back once sanity returns. It’s not all or nothing. Pick your battles and don’t punish yourself for not being perfect.
Here are a few tricks you can use to keep on track when faced with fairy bread.
• Avoid the alcohol before 5pm. I am a Mum too, so I know when the kids hit the bouncy castle we Mum’s hit the wines. A drink or two makes it easy to pick when you aren’t hungry.
• Skip the high calorie fizzy drinks and fruit juices; a whole lot of extra calories and no more fun.
• Eat something before you go to a party so you aren’t so hungry and end up consuming two day’s energy in cheerios.
• Don’t set yourself up next to the snacks; in fact set yourself up as far away from the food as possible
• Be a great guest but a lazy host. If you are eating at someone else’s house, offer to help tidy after the meal rather than staying at the table picking over the remains. If the dinner is at your place- ditch the leftovers in the kitchen and head back to the guests; you’ll avoid picking as you tidy.
