How to Stay Healthy, Balanced and Present this Holiday Season
This time of year may be extremely hard, especially if you have been working to heal your relationship with food and yourself. Being surrounded by the abundance of food and the desire to want to partake in celebrations but not feeling you can or should partake is very triggering for some. Especially if you have been following a set of strict diet rules for awhile.
I know for me in years past, I would feel so much stress and a deep desire to diet throughout the season, workout as hard as I could to proactively make up for the foods I wanted to eat, and to power through the season without indulging too much. I would make promises to myself I would only indulge on the actual day and that would be enough, and feel disappointed in myself when I indulged on more days.
Parties were impossible with the food table calling out to me.
Cooking baking was miserable because I believed if I ate one cookie I would eaten them all.
Holiday dinners out were stressful and my internal battle with ‘what am I allowed to order that will fit into my rules’ was paralyzing.
The holiday’s can still be a bit triggering for me with old diet thoughts creeping in, but my relationship with food continues to heal and I have a few tools I lean into harder this time of year to make sure I am protecting myself so I can be healthy, balanced and present throughout the holiday season.
So today I am sharing with you, my tips so you can implement these too to protect your health and wellbeing.
Here are my tips to be healthy, balance and present this holiday!
Set your intention: Grab a cup of coffee, your favorite journal and curl up next to your Christmas tree. It is so important to set your intention for the day and for the season. How do you want to experience the holiday season? How do you want to feel this season? How do you want to feel today - physically, mentally, emotionally? Set your intention, visualize what it would feel like to be healthy, balanced and present and feel into those feelings.
Breathe: When stress, overwhelm or diet rules creep in, take a step back. Breath into it. Acknowledge your feelings. Release the tension. Then feel back into the feelings of the intention you set for yourself and reset.
Awareness: Be aware of your triggers and when food thoughts are most prevalent. When you understand when you are the most vulnerable you can proactively shift yourself back into health, balance and being present.
Boundaries: Feel empowered to excuse yourself from triggering conversations, setting boundaries with friends and family members about what you are comfortable with speaking about, and proactively protecting your mental and emotional health from conversations and people who don’t support you in where you are in your journey.
Eat: Continue to eat normally, avoid the "saving up" mentality or any other restrictive habits with food and know you don’t have to justify anything you want to eat. Eat what FEELS GOOD to you and you want to enjoy this season. Plus eating consistently keeps your blood sugar balanced, which will help you feel more mentally present, and you will mostly likely make more intentional choices around food that feel good physically and emotionally.
Movement: Remind yourself that you do NOT have to burn as many calories to ‘make-up’ for the foods you eat. Instead, pick movement and exercises that feel good in your body, help you stay in a mentally and physically balanced place, and bring you joy this season. Also, tell yourself if you miss a day, that’s okay, a walk with loved ones can be just as nourishing!
Consistent self-check in: Do a consistent self-checkin and ask yourself "How am I feeling? What do I need?". You can do this in the morning, at night or in the middle of an experience/event to ensure you are feeling healthy, balanced and present.
Focus on being in the moment: Notice when your mind starts to wander and bring it back to whatever you're doing in that moment. Observe and make sure to be full present - all senses firing - in the moment. It’s about you choosing to redirect your attention to what you deem important and how you want to experience the moment. A great habit to build!
Don’t review pictures immediately: Take pictures, but don’t review immediately. Protect yourself from nitpicking or not feeling great about what you immediately see. Sometimes you just need to step back, give it some time and then review the pictures to see how great they actually are.
Listen to your body - hunger and fullness: Tune into your body and listen to your hunger, fullness and satisfaction cues. Eat slowly, enjoy every bite of what you are eating, and be mindful of your full eating experience. Enjoy the taste, the colors, the smells and more while allowing your body and mind to connect to help cue you when you are full and satisfied.
Self-care: Practice self-care this season. Take a time out to enjoy a bath, a walk, or a quiet moment by the Christmas tree to breath, check-in, reset and take care of yourself. Your mental, physical and emotional health is just as important as anyone else’s so you deserve to take extra care of yourself this time of year, even for 5 minutes.
Compassion: Yes, you may eat or drink a little too much, or feeling like you didn’t protect yourself well enough and diet thoughts are intense, or you were not as present as you wanted to be. All your feelings are important and are okay. You are human and it’s important to give yourself compassion during these moments. It is not about being perfect, but about you believing you made the best choices for you in the moment and that is good enough. Think about the moments you were present, balanced and experiencing pure happiness and be grateful for those moments and know you are capable of creating more of those moments in the future.
Lastly, enjoy the moments and memories you will be making this holiday season. It is a special time of year and you are deserving of feeling healthy, balanced and present in each and every one of these moments. xoxo