Welcome back to Week 2 of our 8 week Wellness Wednesday series – Healthy for the Holidays! Last week we introduced the series and shared our very first tip – Have a Nutrition Plan & STICK TO IT!! This week we’ll be sharing a little more on mindset in order to have a Happy Healthy Holiday!
Remember that being healthy is a lifetime goal. It’s not a short little sprint, but a marathon. A lifetime of healthfulness hopefully means having an ongoing good relationship with food. And that means achieving some level of balance (which will most likely look different for different people) in your eating habits.
For some, balance may mean sticking to one plate at Thanksgiving dinner (vs 2 and 3 and more helpings). For others, it could look like skipping the dinner rolls to enjoy your favorite mashed potatoes or picking just one dessert to enjoy instead of 3. For others still, it may be a little more restrictive, hitting certain macros for the day or avoiding dairy or gluten all together. You know yourself, so think ahead a bit and figure out what balance may look like for you!
A lifetime of healthfulness also means remembering and accepting that one “bad” meal doesn’t make you fat or unhealthy and one “good” meal doesn’t make you fit or healthy. This IS NOT an excuse to engorge yourself at Thanksgiving dinner or every party you go to. Because a lot of “bad” meals do make you fat and unhealthy (hey, the truth hurts)! But IT IS a chance to enjoy a few of your favorite foods that you may only eat once or twice a year (ie pumpkin pie a la mode or your grandmother’s famous sweet potato casserole) without suffering from enormous food guilt.
Mindset is key!! Go into each day (whether it’s the big event, like Thanksgiving or Christmas day, or just a fun holiday party you’ll be attending), knowing that overall health is the goal! Have a plan (notice a theme here!?) to maintain some level of balance and know that if you ate or drank more than you planned, tomorrow’s a new day to do better!
Plus, next week, I’ll share more about my secret weapon to zap cravings, bloat and unwanted body fat (visceral – aka belly fat)!! See you then!
