We all know the silly season is a great time to get a bit loose, have a blow out, and enjoy ourselves in ways we normally wouldn’t throughout the year. Most people spend it relaxing, but with that generally comes plenty of food and drinks on top. The challenge is for those that like to maintain their bodies in a certain way, this comes with calories and unhealthy body for a few days. Of course, you can restrict your calories, but that’s not a whole heap of fun and becomes pretty socially challenging around Christmas parties. Plus, this doesn’t help with hang overs.

Here’s a few simple tips if you are having a few drinks to help recover your body, especially if you are trying to train on days after drinking to balance energy in and energy out.

Water to rehydrate but with a few extras….

• Adding magnesium will make a massive difference. Add a scoop to your water or you can take it in tablet form.
• On top, but I wouldn’t suggest with for your bowel’s sake, is a pinch of Celtic salt, which you can grab from all health stores. This is great especially those training in the heat normally, but also for the morning after a few drinks.
• Greens, and for me it’s liquid chlorophyl that makes a massive difference. It helps alkaline and helps hydrate, neutralise toxins, and reduces inflammation.
• For the drinkers something to support the liver. Livertone Plus, a great B-Multi vitamin, Zinc, and Selenium are some of the secrets that a few “social athletes”, let’s call them, have used with success.
• And lastly, if you wanted to add an antioxidant that would be a good idea. I think a good option is NOW Foods, Super Antioxidant, you could go something like Astaxanthin or lean towards Chaga

Be mindful that with almost all of these, adding too much is not a great thing for your stomach.

Those that train religiously probably need a bit of extra recovery time. You’ll know this if you’ve been drained everyday waking up lacking energy. Maybe this is the time you need to rest and restore. We all know it’s rest that allows us the adaptation to the training stimulus or conditioning. Therefore, it’s not such a bad idea to have a few days off in most our cases, to allow not just our muscular system to super compensate, but also the nervous and endocrine more than anything. We’ve all heard of sweating it out, and training super hungover may help control calories, but it’s basically adding more pressure on already strained systems; training hard is not normally the best option so be mindful.

Detoxing typically takes three to ten days depending on what and how much.