It’s the holiday season! Which brings so many wonderful, amazing and often time consuming things like parties, baking, food, and most of all eating things we normally avoid..cake, cookies, candy..all full of sugar, white flour and more sugar! So, this article is dedicated to a few tips to help you stay fit during the holidays.
Here’s the holiday season you don’t want to have(but may be all too familiar). Buying gifts, baking(and eating) cookies, parties, and holiday prep takes up all your free time. Even the time that is usually devoted to fitness(happens all to easily, where did the day go?!)! Then you finally break down and have one, two, twenty of the Christmas cookies that you so patiently wait for each year which gives you the ok to just ditch your entire healthy eating plan and eat anything and everything in sight..for the next week and a half until New Years. But! Don’t be discouraged if this has happened to you or is in the process of happening right now! You can recover!
Tips to Stay Fit During the Holidays:
Allow yourself some leeway: I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have at least a few holiday treats during this time of year. Accept that you may break your own eating rules a little more than usual and know that it’s temporary! You’ll be back on track soon!
Don’t let a cookie become the whole cake: So, you’ve accepted that you’re probably going to have an extra few treats during the season. Don’t let that become a binge of every holiday treat in sight! Allow yourself to have the treat/cheat but don’t take it overboard and try 5 of everything. You’ll thank yourself when you aren’t slumped in a sugar coma 30 minutes later!
Choose healthy when you can: This goes hand in hand with the previous two tips, you aren’t always going to be rushing or at a party during the holidays so when you have the choice, choose healthy! Similar to not letting one dessert turn into 15, don’t let one bad meal set you completely off track. Even if you ate horrible things all day but have the option of going healthy at dinner, it’s worth it! Don’t shrug it off as ‘an entire day of poor eating’ and go for the pizza! One healthy choice is better than no healthy choices!:)
It isn’t all or nothing: You’re busy, there may not be time to fit in your full hour lifting session, yoga class or long run but that’s no reason to just nix your workout completely. Why not use the 20 free minutes you have for a quick and intense workout rather than to watch tv! Or even better do them at the same time.
