On streets and in shopping centres across the country, the Christmas lights are up and it’s full steam ahead now until December 25. But have you learned from your mistakes of Christmas past?

The elite American armed forces unit, the Navy Seals, can teach everyone a good lesson in dealing with recurring circumstances such as, in this case, the mistakes of Christmas past.

The Seals’ training is severe to prepare the soldiers physically and mentally for the worst possible scenarios of war.

They go into battle and if they are lucky to return home alive, they put the lessons of war that they have learned into ‘the log of lessons learned’.

This book contains the details of all the mistakes they made in battle. Before they go into battle again, they review the log to ensure they do not make the same mistakes twice. Their lives depend on learning from mistakes. What is in your log of lessons learnt from Christmas past?

December

December is the month when you hear stories about how people will gain between five and 10 pounds of body fat in the run-up to the day itself.

The reality is the average weight gain is a more modest pound but studies have found that this seasonal weight gain is the kind that most people don’t lose when the festivities are over. These mistakes of Christmas past hang around to haunt you forever.

You don’t just wake up one morning at age 40 or 50 and wonder how come you are 40lbs fatter. It wasn’t because you ate a 40lb burger the night before.

No, it is a result of the actions and decisions you made in the years and months previous to this.

There are some who do manage to gain 10lbs over the Christmas holidays. But it happens to these people because they are the ones who anticipate letting their workouts fall by the wayside while they blow their diet.

Your goal should be to be fit for life – not just the 11 months before Christmas.

Are you going to be one of the others and allow yourself to eat more, exercise less and instead of taking control resign yourself to maintenance at best?

Mindset

This negative mindset leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy where you set an unconscious goal to get in worse shape in December. In your mind you accept that it’s impossible to stay in shape with everything going on so why bother?

You can try to reason with yourself by saying ‘I’m more stressed over the holidays and the food is there so I eat it. It’s only a few weeks and I can lose any pounds I gain once January comes…’

Come January you are in the worst shape you have been for a year. You are the first in the queue to join a gym because even your fat jeans don’t fit, never mind your skinny ones!

Or you can learn from the mistakes of Christmas past and choose the alternative. The real reason people gain weight in December is because they never set out to do the opposite; that is, to get in great shape in the run-up to Christmas.

Why not be the person who sets their fitness goals for the rest of the year, schedules in their training with set times and set days and plans out their food in advance.

Training four times a week for 45 minutes with a good resistance programme, incorporating exercises that challenge you, will change your body shape. If you alternate this with an interval-style programme you can increase your metabolic rate (the rate at which your body burns calories).

This way, you can you to a New Year’s party where you will be 10lbs lighter than your friends.

That is if you take action, of course…