Enjoying Balance During Holiday Seasons

When you’re working on healthy lifestyle goals, October through January can be one of the most challenging seasons to maintain your trajectory! There are so many possible obstacles – Halloween and Thanksgiving are sandwiched between a host of religious holidays (and football games, if you observe!), with New Year’s Eve being the cherry on top just as Christmas ends and winter starts. Even if you don’t celebrate certain holidays or don’t have children for Halloween, other people do – and co-workers will happily bring leftover treats to the break room.

(I was guilty of this myself this week – I just dropped off my daughter’s leftover birthday cupcakes at her school for the teacher’s lounge!!) 

But the good news is that you don’t have to have a love-hate relationship with gingerbread lattes, Halloween candy, or Christmas cookies this time of year. You can enjoy balance, by adapting your normal routines and cultivating a mindful approach to savoring what you truly love about the season.

Here are 5 tips for enjoying balance during the holiday season!

Tip 1: Treat most days as normal days

This can be challenging, but it is possible. Even during holiday seasons, there are many days that are “non-holiday” days, and you can still meal prep, do your workouts, eat your veggies, hit those protein and fiber goals, get your steps in, and take care of business.

If we add up the days that are not actual celebrations/holidays, there are far more normal days than there are special days (I estimate about 70-80 routine days between October 1 and January 1, allowing for 10-20 unusual days).

Keeping the normal days normal makes the special days… more special!

Tip 2: Be mindful of self-sabotage

Self-sabotage can take the form of buying Halloween candy far in advance for absolutely no reason, making 1,000 Christmas cookies when you only need 12, or buying an excessive amount of food for a party so that there are days and days of sweet leftovers.

Something that really helps with “keeping the special days special” is having just enough of the holiday food for the event itself. Keeping lots of tempting, distracting food around (either long in advance or lots of leftovers) is just self-sabotage – unless that kind of food doesn’t appeal to you, you’re probably going to nibble on it constantly.

Tip 3: Focus on your favorites

On the flip side, do focus your enjoyment on season favorites that you truly love! So much of our overeating is not enjoyable eating – it’s simply mindless. We eat lackluster leftover Halloween candy because it’s in our cabinet. We keep going back for stale cookies because they’re in the break room and we’re bored. We nibble on chips at a football game because they’re on the table.

I encourage clients to focus on food enjoyment and satisfaction – is something actually good? Is the taste, texture, and freshness something that lights you up? If so, that’s a great food to prioritize and be very present to while you’re eating. In the process, try to edit everything else out. It’s just not worth it and it weakens our healthy relationship with food!

Tip 4: Make a plan for leftovers

With some holidays, excesses are almost a guarantee – an objectively unhealthful amount of food will be present.

Having a plan for leftovers is smart! Of course, there are some things that you can just throw away. Other things you can give away. But there will be some things you want to keep, and my suggestion is to store things out of sight, out of mind.

For example, keep candy for kids put away, but not off-limits. Many parents experience that once their kids have eaten their favorites, the rest of the candy is eventually forgotten and can be thrown away months later.

With adult holiday leftovers, freezing individual portions is often a good solution – it makes the food a little harder to eat on a whim, but if you really want it, you’ll do it. If you don’t want it that badly, it just sits in the freezer until you throw it away.

These are called behavioral “nudges” – this concept of “choice architecture” uses environment to make healthier choices easier and less-healthy choices harder. A “nudge” is putting out fruit, applesauce pouches, and granola bars on the kitchen counter for your kids, but putting the candy out of sight (but not banned). For adults, a nudge is the moment where you have to decide you want to go through the trouble of thawing a slice of pie, or if you’re just fine without it at the moment.

Using environmental nudges is a great way to think about dealing with leftovers!

Tip 5: Make some healthy seasonal swaps

All this being said…

I love the holidays. I’m basic. I love all the food and flavors and warmth and fun associated with them!

Life isn’t meant to be a never-ending treadmill of protein shakes and salads and chicken breast. I highly encourage my clients to find ways to indulge in the pleasures of fall in smart, mindful, healthful ways!

Here are examples (with some affiliate links): 

• Find and enjoy local seasonal produce at farmer’s markets, like apples, greens, beans, and squash (honestly, lots of beautiful, colorful veggies are in season in the fall!!)
• Buy an extract (like hazelnut or caramel or pumpkin spice) to flavor coffees or lattes at home
• Switch your menu to a more cold-weather palate, moving away from smoothies and salads if they seem seasonally unappealing (use the ideas in this blog post, for example)
• Put seasonal ingredients in protein shakes, like pumpkin puree… or make a peanut butter cup protein shake for your Halloween workout, using my favorite Nutricost Chocolate Peanut Butter whey protein powder (use code RACHT10 to save)
• Find healthy versions of game day favorites for tailgates, parties, and barbecues (if that’s your thing)
• Add a little protein powder and unflavored fiber (like psyllium husks) to treats like pumpkin muffins just to boost the nutritional value and help to balance blood sugar better
• Switch up workouts to include some outdoor running, walking, or biking to enjoy the change in weather
• Find other senses to indulge outside of just taste – burn scented candles, decorate with seasonal pillows and blankets, and update your seasonal wardrobe!

Key Takeaways

If you have 70-80 “normal” days between October 1 and January 1, that’s a lot of progress you can make! In other words, your health goals don’t have to go on hold once things start feeling festive. By staying on routine most of the time, being selective about savoring your true favorites, minimizing mindless temptation, and making some healthy swaps, you can leverage tons of momentum over the holiday season.

Need help staying more consistent during this season? Shoot me an e-mail or book a free 30-minute consultation, and let’s chat about a good plan for you!