Simple Health Tips for the Holidays

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We’re just over a week away from the beginning of Hanukkah, Kwanza, and Christmas-to-New-Year week, and I know that the work and neighborhood holiday parties have already started.

So I thought today would be the perfect time to offer a super-simple list of strategies/tactics for helping you maintain focus on your health and fitness through the end of the holiday season (and beyond).

Of course there’s always more that each of us could do on this front. But as I often point out in these tips, consistency and mindset are the primary exponentializers of progress. And the best way to improve both is to put simple habits into practice!

Let’s get to it.

Five simple health & fitness practices for the holidays and beyond

Start with protein

Any time you’ll be going anywhere there will be food, especially cookies and other holiday treats, add protein to your plate first. It’s not only satiating, which means you’re likely to eat fewer cookies afterward, but also helps to buffer the terrible-for-your-health blood sugar (and, subsequently, insulin) spike that comes from eating too many of said sugary treats.

Keep in mind that this might mean eating something before leaving home if you expect few protein options at your destination. In this case, nothing beats a few eggs in terms of simplicity and effort!

Move—and remember that any movement is better than no movement

While I’m certainly not advocating that you skip the gym, activity of any kind, for just about any length of time, is extremely beneficial to your health.

So don’t just sit around chatting at your holiday festivities. Go for a walk or play with the kids (or pets). As an additional benefit, doing so after a meal (which may or may not include cookies) will also help reduce that aforementioned insulin spike.

Prioritize sleep

It’s been said that “the best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep”. Sleep also affects our immune health, emotional and central nervous system control, metabolic health (there’s that insulin thing again), and just about every other bodily process.

Of course, we can’t exactly make ourselves sleep. But we can practice good sleep hygiene by aiming to be in bed, with our phones out of reach(!!!), for a bit longer than the generally recommended 7–9 hours of actual sleep that promotes better health.

Practice breathing

In through your nose, hold briefly, and then exhale (preferably through your nose) slightly longer than your inhalation.

Doing so can:

Meditate

Yes, I’m serious. And, no, this isn’t woo-woo. I’ll offer more thoughts in upcoming weeks, but for now:

  • Sit or stand up straight.
  • Close your eyes.
  • Take 1–3 breaths—applying the details from the practice above—while focusing your attention on your breath.
  • Open your eyes and move on.

Yes, that counts as a meditation.

Think of it as “brain exercise that improves your focus muscle”. And the more that “focus muscle” improves in strength, the more presence you’ll be capable of exhibiting when spending time with your friends and family. Which is not only mentally healthy, but also kind of what the holidays are about in the first place.

Putting it into practice

If the stuff above seems a bit fuzzy, that was intentional. I wanted you to begin formulating your own ideas about implementation while you were reading it. If you want more details about any topic, follow the links to related past tips.

That said, consider what follows as a springboard template if you’d like something specific:

  • Protein: If you’re eating at home or otherwise in charge of making a meal, add one extra serving of protein to your plate compared to what you normally eat. If you’re heading to a party and not in charge of making the meal, eat an extra 5-6 grams of protein—the equivalent of one egg or an ounce of most meats—for every increment of 50 pounds of body weight before leaving for the gathering. (e.g. If you weigh 175 lbs, you’re into the fourth increment of 50 pounds, so eat four eggs.)
  • Movement: Go for a 10-minute walk after dinner every night.
  • Breathing + Meditating + Sleeping: As much as possible—kids, pets, and on-call duties considered—schedule your bedtime the same way you schedule your wake-up time: with an alarm. Turn off your electronics (e.g. phone, TV, computer) when the alarm sounds, an hour prior to bed. Three to five minutes before climbing into bed each night, sit in a chair and practice the breathing and meditation suggestion.

If you do exactly and only that, you’ll have added about fifteen minutes to your day. As minimal as that sounds, the health benefits will be greater than the time commitment implies.