With Christmas and New Year’s around the corner, the festive season is upon us. A time to connect with family and friends, whether it’s a workplace party, a friend’s get-together or even a quiet night at home watching Christmas movies. While enjoyable, these events can disrupt your healthy lifestyle habits. A recent survey reported nearly 45% of people take a break from exercise during the holidays, more than half say they feel more tired and have less time for themselves and about one third report drinking more.
Often we think of having fun over the holidays as meaning we can’t continue our healthy ways, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Having fun, and enjoying yourself is also an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Here are some ways to help you stay healthy during the holidays and have fun.
Eating Right
Cakes, chocolates, spiced ham, turkey stuffing, mulled wine (did I mention chocolate?) and other delights abound during this time of year. Most of these foods are high in fat, sugar and calories. So it’s no surprise the holidays are associated with a greater consumption of food. And it’s even been pegged people eat close to 6000 calories on Christmas Day. That’s 2-3 times the daily caloric recommendation for most people.
With this amount of eating, there are many claims the holidays result in weight gain. While it’s common to see media report a weight gain of 5-10 pounds, in reality it’s much less. It actually may be around 1 pound according to a study done in 2000. However, some people still gained five or more pounds.
When looking at what you might eat during the holidays, one or two occasions aren’t going to derail your diet. If, however, you have a holiday circuit you do or you end up with lots of holiday treats in your house, you may want to develop a strategy on how to manage your diet. First ask yourself if you need to go to all of them. For those you do go to, pick one or two occasions at which you’ll indulge in. These might have the best food, or your closest family and friends are present. For the others, try staying on the healthier side of things.
Before you go, make sure you eat well during the day leading up to your event so you’re not going to the event hungry. Also, make sure you get plenty of sleep. A lack of sleep is can make you more likely to reach for high-energy foods and eat more. Try to enlist a health buddy, whether a friend or even the host. Someone who knows your desire to eat healthy. And be mindful of alcohol intake, which can impair your self-discipline.
Staying Active
When it comes to exercise, most of us are creatures of habit. This is a good thing, because having a routine is the best way to maintain regular exercise. But the holidays are anything but routine. Gyms, pools and community centres may have shortened hours or be closed. Your trainer or aerobics instructor may have taken time off.
Now missing a few exercise sessions isn’t going to affect your fitness and long-term health, but it can affect your mood. Exercise is known to increase energy levels, improve mood and reduce stress. All of which can be helpful during the frenetic holidays. And missing an exercise session can be like not having your morning coffee.
But the holidays also present numerous opportunities to get in a lot of activity—from shopping to Christmas markets to walking around your neighbourhood looking at the decorated houses.
You can also get into the holiday spirit by singing Christmas carols (or any other song). Singing can reduce anxiety, potentially increase your lung capacity and increase the amount of infection fighting molecules in your blood. And singing with others is known to build social bonds and release oxytocin, which can improve one’s mood. While the quality of your singing doesn’t matter for most of these benefits, the more you do sing, the more you’ll likely benefit.
Managing Stress
Nearly 90% of US adults associate the holiday season with some form of stress. While the holidays are meant to be a period of joy, it’s not uncommon to feel overwhelmed by the shopping, hosting events, expectations of others and the added financial costs. This may be one of the reasons why the number of heart attacks and cardiac-related deaths increase during the holiday period. In addition, it’s believed people delay seeking treatment during the holidays as ER visits spike after they’re over.
Stress occurs when we feel we don’t have control over what’s going on. Setting up a holiday plan can be a great help. Your plan can include a spending budget, which events you’ll attend and which you’ll say ‘no’ to. If you’re hosting a dinner, plan the menu ahead of time, enlist help from others or even get take-out. Other strategies for managing, and preventing, stress include getting regular exercise, ensuring you get enough sleep, avoiding unrealistic expectations and setting aside some quiet time to do something just for yourself.
While we all want things to be perfect, even the best plans may go astray. If that does happen, that’s okay and go easy on yourself. And if you find the holidays challenging, make sure you speak up to the people around you for their support.
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This post was originally published on December 5, 2018 and updated on December 20, 2023.
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