Eating Healthy During the Holidays

There are a lot of temptations that show up during your daily routine that can throw you off base when it comes to your health journey, and none are harder to handle than eating healthy during the holidays!

The holidays roll around, and suddenly there’s a whole new set of casseroles, desserts, and carbs that tempt you off the straight and narrow. But there’s no reason to despair!

With the holidays right around the corner, the best way to prepare yourself to continue to eat healthy is to have a plan in place before you encounter your first major feast. It’s possible to eat healthy during the holidays and continue to make gains in your health journey.

The Temptations

When you’re in the middle of a health journey, the focus is on eating whole foods and continuing to eliminate the desire to go overboard when eating. The holidays are all about high-fat and processed foods and having all of them in abundance. This leaves you with some distinct temptations that can lead you astray when trying to eat healthily over the holidays.

Overindulgence

After the presents have been opened and the pleasantries exchanged, the feast is laid out! The host or hostess sets out the big plates, and everyone digs in.

Those big plates and having so many choices can be a big temptation! When you fill-up that big plate, even if you only take a small scoop off each dish, your mind thinks it needs to eat everything on the plate. Even if you don’t plan to fill the plate up, it’s hard for your mind to wrap itself around the fact that the plate is empty, and you might end up with more than you planned without even realizing it.

Processed Foods

Even if the holiday host is a great cook, there’s bound to be more than one dish that’s been highly processed this season.

While those processed foods are fine for your health journey, on occasion, spending the whole day eating them can throw your gut health out of line and leave you feeling yucky. Most dishes during the holidays are full of fats and carbs that, while delicious, can completely derail your eating plan as well.

Hydration

Food isn’t the only temptation that can pull you off the straight and narrow this holiday season!

The holidays are full of some of your favorite drinks with new flavors of coffees, rich eggnog, hot cocoa, holiday punch, champagne, and a whole host of other options that keep you from being hydrated. With all those options, it can take a lot of work to get enough water. Being hydrated can cover up a multitude of sins when it comes to getting off your meal plan. But with so many other options, it's difficult to get enough during this busy time.

Stress

The holidays can be stressful. Shopping for presents, extended time with family, the rush of holiday traffic, all of it can start to lead you back toward habits that weren’t helpful in your health journey.

As stress becomes more prominent, even in a transitory state, like during the holidays, it’s much easier to fall back on unhelpful habits. That holiday stress can trigger a reaction that carries on, and if it becomes enough, it can push you off your health journey completely.

I'll post more tomorrow and go over tips and tricks to keep you healthy. PART 2.