Holiday Health

I’m so ready for it.

It’s coming.

Holidays. I love ‘em.

As someone genuinely interested in staying healthy, I should probably fear and despise the holidays. The time of year when people eat too much of the wrong stuff, eat too little of the healthy stuff, get lazy about working out, relax their health habits…you know how it goes. Holidays are like a gateway drug into laziness and being unhealthy…once you start, you keep going. They can make all the New Year’s resolutions they want, but its hard to get back from the holiday mode, and very rarely happens. Despite all this, I will openly admit to loving Turkey Day and Christmas and New Year’s. I could encourage you to make conscious healthy choices about what you eat, because I will wholeheartedly admit that I won’t even attempt such a feat myself. And I can’t encourage early morning runs or workouts, because there’s no way I would leave my warm bed to get all sweaty and stuff either. So, how do I attempt healthy holidays?

While I will not discourage accepting the second helping of mashed potatoes or buttering that biscuit, I will encourage eating those peas and carrots. Everyone puts corn or green beans or some sort of vegetable on their holiday table every year, and every year, its virtually untouched at the end of the meal. Rather than joining in on the aunties’ card game after the meal, I recommend playing with the kid cousins or taking a walk. Keep candy out of the open. If there’s candy available, it will get eaten; if there’s candy available but only after exerting a little effort, it’s much less likely to get consumed as quickly.

Also, the best part of this time of year is that there’s plenty of stuff to do outside. Ice skating totally qualifies as a workout, and its tons of fun. If there’s snow, sledding is good too. If you live in a big city, walk around downtown one night. Exercise, and cities are always pretty during Christmas. Christmas caroling is fun with friends and family, even if they make you stand in the back because you can’t sing.

Most important is when you come back from the holidays. People naturally slip into lazy habits, and its hard to come back from there. My easiest way of dealing with it is to have a workout buddy before I go home for the holidays. If you’re only held accountable to yourself after the holidays, chances are that little voice in your head will let you off the hook if you don’t feel like working out. If there’s actually another physical being nagging you to get up and workout, you’re a thousand times more likely to listen to it. I know people who also put up a picture of their spring break dream-swimsuit in January to encourage working out.

So, I’m excited for Christmas with a clear conscience. I know that my health regime is going to suffer a little (and by “a little,” I really mean “a lot.”) But hey, it’s the holidays and I have some of these plans in mind to keep me somewhat on track for when I return to the real world in January, after the holidays.