For most people, the holidays are a time of celebration, happiness, sentiment, and creating memories. However, they can also be a time of stress, worries, and concerns of "falling off the wagon" with your wellness, only to hope to pick things back up "in the New Year." With colder weather, shorter days, and the perpetual pile of baked goods and sweets in your break room, it may seem like a daunting task to maintain health, make good choices, and stay active.
The staff at the Center for Ideal Health is here to provide you with some tips to help you be more successful with preventing the holiday unhealthiness.
- Plan ahead. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa - whichever holiday you celebrate shouldn't come to you as a surprise. Strategize your meals. You know your mom makes your favorite sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving, and your dad's famous biscuits and gravy is served on Christmas Morning. It isn't realistic to say that you won't enjoy these meals with your family, but accommodate and adjust meals and activity around these planned cheat meals. Want pumpkin pie? Choose to load up on green beans and healthy-fat packed dark turkey meat during the main meal. Talk with your health coach at CIH to come up with a plan in advance to ensure your success when your dear Aunt Edna is insisting you eat her "famous fruit cake" and you'll be able to breeze through the holidays and see gains in health, rather than gains in weight!
- Stay active. It can be hard to want to be active when it is dark when you go to work and dark when you get off work. The holidays are notorious for sedentary activities - visiting with family, sitting around the table, watching the Packers game. Try to plan some activities to get you and your family moving through the holidays. Look for a run or walk in your neighborhood like the Turkey Trot 5K. Make football even more fun - challenge your family to "pick a team" and assign physical activity to each play - like 7 pushups for each touchdown, or 10 jumping jacks when the quarterback gets sacked. Before you know it, you'll find yourself having more energy and feeling less inclined to give into those unhealthy urges.
- Portion Control. If you've got to have the piece of Halloween candy or the slice of challah, we know it isn't realistic to avoid these completely - still enjoy them, but consider decreasing your portion of these goodies. By loading the rest of your plate with healthy things like fiber-rich vegetables, healthy fats, and lean protein, this will leave less room for the more unhealthy choices and leave you feeling satisfied longer and less guilty about your indulgences later.
- Slow Down. Before you find yourself bounding up to the buffet line for another serving of your favorite dish, give yourself 10-15 minutes, drink a glass of water, and assess if you're truly hungry. It can take your stomach this long to signal to the brain that you're actually full. This will prevent you from having the bloated, uncomfortably full feeling, which leads to more fatigue and sedentary behavior and derails you from your path to health.
Give these tips a try - we hope they help you conquer the holidays and come into the New Year with the pride that you made it through and are still on track to acheiving your ideal health.
