Suggestions to maintain your health & stay balanced this holiday season

For those who celebrate the Holidays, you know it can be stressful trying to stay healthy during the holiday season.  We encounter general financial, family and dietary stress. The shortened daylight hours and colder temperatures leads to us sheltering indoors and eating more food (especially containing sugar and alcohol). As a result, we’re commonly left feeling fatigued and overwhelmed. We get less sleep, experience mood swings, and have a short fuse. For women it is not uncommon to also have menstrual cycle irregularities or worsened PMS symptoms.

Although it would be ideal to remove all of the holiday stress, this is often not possible. Instead, focus on improving your resiliency to stress while also being able to enjoy this special time of year.

Though most of these tips may seem obvious, we often neglect the simplest practices that go a long way in improving and maintaining wellness.

Here are my 8 tips to improve your stress resiliency this holiday season

1. Get sufficient rest and sleep.

• Prioritize your sleep and down time. We tend to sacrifice sleep in order to get in as much as we can during the day, but sleep is one of the best ways to improve our resiliency. Sleep is the time when our body is undergoing restoration.
• Set a realistic bedtime for yourself and stick to it.  Aim to go to bed before midnight and avoid the use of any electronics with a screen for at least 1 hour before bed.

2.  Avoid caffeine or energy drinks.

• These may provide a boost in “energy”, but the effects are temporary. Lattes and energy drinks often contain high amounts of sugar, which again can provide a quick boost in energy, but often leave you with a lull in just a few short hours.
• Instead, hydrate with sufficient amounts of water, grab a cup of herbal tea like peppermint or rooibos or try a stress-busting Maca Latte (recipe below).
  • To calculate how much water to drink daily, divide your weight in pounds by 2 (this is the number of ounces to drink daily). Divide this number by 8 to get the number of cups of water to drink daily.
    • For example, if you weigh 150 lbs, divide 150/2= 75 ounces. Divide 75/8 = approximately 9.5 cups of water daily.

3. Self-care.

• This can be as simple as doing 3 minutes of meditation daily, taking 5 deep belly breaths upon waking, coloring, going for a 15-minute walk on your lunch break, taking a bath or reading that new book you got months ago that’s sitting on your bedside table. The point is to do something that makes you feel good, ideally every day, but realistically as often as you can.
• Remember that it doesn’t have to be grandiose or take hours. It just has to be something that you’re doing for yourself that nourishes you and makes you feel good.
• Instead of getting gifts for your friends, plan self-care time together, like going for tea or for a massage or to the spa.

4. Get outside.

• Yes, it may be cold outside where you live, but getting outdoors in nature (especially during daylight hours when the sun is shining) is a reliable way to boost your physical and mental well-being.

5. Daily practice

• Do something in the morning that sets an intention for your day.
  • Say or write out 5 things that you’re grateful for
  • Take 5 deep breaths before getting out of bed in the morning
  • Do 3 minutes of meditation
• These types of practices promote relaxation and calm in the body. They activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest, digest and relax branch of the nervous system.

6. Eat protein and healthful fat with each meal and snack.

• During the holidays, we’re often loading up on empty calories, like chocolates, alcohol, baked goods, etc., which contributes to imbalanced blood sugar.
• Eating sufficient protein and healthful fat with each meal and snack helps to bring the body back to balance.
• If you skip a meal or consume a lot of sugar, make sure your next meal or snack contains healthful fat and/or protein to help get you back into balance.
  • Examples include: nuts–almonds, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts; seeds–pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, chia, hemp, ground flax; avocado; beans/legumes; animal-based proteins–eggs, poultry, game, fish, pork, beef

7. Bring greens indoors.

• This doesn’t mean buying a new houseplant. It’s about getting more greens in your diet to balance the higher intake of sugar and alcohol, often causing veggies to be neglected in our diets.
  • Add dark leafy greens like spinach, collard greens, kale, Swiss chard or beet greens to your daily or weekly diet.
  • Toss a handful of greens into your morning smoothie or into your soups or stews to amp up the health profile.

8. Get rid of temptation.

• You can just hear that box of chocolates sitting in the cupboard calling your name, tempting you to eat “just one”, or that carton of eggnog in your fridge. Do your best to avoid bringing these temptations home. Skip the eggnog this year and sprinkle some nutmeg, allspice and cinnamon onto your non-dairy or regular milk. Bring that box of chocolates to your office to share with your colleagues (so you don’t end up eating the entire box).
• Bring a dessert or dish that is a healthier, yet still delicious, option to your upcoming holiday function. This can help in overindulging in other options.

The best way to improve your stress response and to maintain a healthier Holiday Season is to reconnect to the tools and practices that lead you to success.

Try a few of these tips this year or at other times of increased stress! Find what works for you and be consistent.