A Fun Approach to Healthier Holidays
While the holiday season is festive and fun, it can also be a time riddled with guilt and anxiety. Anxiety around over-indulging, navigating increased social time, and for some, negotiating time with family and differences in lifestyle. I find that the best way to handle this is to approach with a plan that addresses your personal priorities while also leaving space to enjoy the season and indulgences. Here are three ways that I like to do this:
Play The Sneaky Vegetable Game
If you’ve never heard of this game it’s because I just made it up. The sneaky vegetable game is simply this: sneak a vegetable (or additional vegetable) into every meal you can. This includes family meals, party meals, meals at home by yourself. ALL THE MEALS. You can even keep score if that motivates you!
Eating more vegetables not only gives you the nutritional benefits of those vegetables, but also crowds out some of the less nutritious foods that magically appear in abundance around the holidays. It’s a win-win: you still get to eat the tasty, less nutritious foods AND tasty vegetables.
*if vegetables don’t taste good, you’re probably cooking them wrong. Sorry to be blunt, but someone needs to tell you.
Keep Moving
Exercise looks different for different people. This season may not be the time to start any new exercise regimes, but rather to keep moving in the ways that you can, even if it is the most minimal amount.
For example, walking is a very underrated form of exercise and a great way to keep moving while taking a break from your normal routines. Body weight strength training is also a great way to maintain strength even if you are away from your gym or your weights.
All in all, it doesn’t matter how you move, just make sure you move!
Enjoy Yourself!
Find the threshold for what you need to feel good and then let go of the rest and enjoy! This may take a bit of experimentation: how much of your normal routine do you need and how much can you let things go topsy turvy? This will be different for everyone, feel free to find out what works best for you!
If you’re someone who usually feels wrecked and out of sorts in your body by the beginning of January, consider adjusting to include more of your normal routine. If you’re someone who feels anxious about the holidays and stressed, consider loosening the reigns a little more.
For myself, eating my “normal” foods and maintaining some kind of daily movement while I’m on my own allows me to enjoy parties and social time more. I think of it along the lines of the 80/20 recommendation: 80% of the time I keep to what I know consistently helps me feel good and then 20% of the time I enjoy the holiday festivities! This percentage will fluctuate some at different points in this season and may be slightly different for you, but it’s a helpful starting point.
Finding your threshold and balance between maintaining regular routines and leaning into the festivities isn’t about showing control and restricting yourself in the face of holiday cheer, it’s about finding the boundaries that work best for you. This builds trust with yourself and allows you to really enjoy the deviations from your routine instead of feeling guilty about them.
Good luck out there & happy holidays!!
