Top 5 Tips for Prioritizing Your Health and Fitness Over the Holidays

Tis’ the season for oversized dinners and delicious desserts! Am I right?!

Here’s the deal - the holidays can be daunting when you’ve been working hard to establish good habits with your health and fitness. There’s a lot of uncertainty around what to eat and drink at gatherings and whether or not you’ll have the time to get your workouts in. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone!

Whether you’ve been working on your habits for a few months or a few years, it can still be a struggle to stay on track. Don't worry, I’m here to help! Here are 5 tried and true tips for prioritizing your health and fitness over the holidays!

Tip Number One: Find Ways to Incorporate Movement

The holidays are busy (understatement of the year)! We often find ourselves short on time and high on commitments, which can make it difficult to schedule regular structured exercise. 

Instead of beating yourself up about it, try focusing on getting some sort of movement in. It doesn’t have to be big and fancy. If your regular routine is a one-hour walk every day, make it half an hour. If you do forty-five minutes of strength training, make it thirty minutes. 

Don’t think about what you can’t do, rather, take action on what you can do. Remember that something is always better than nothing if nothing is the alternative option. 

Intentional movement is also a form of self-care - and we all need to keep up on our self-care to stay sane during this hectic season. When you carve out the time to do structured exercise (the way you’re going to be carving into that turkey dinner), it’s your way of showing up for yourself. 

Think of your workouts as an appointment - put it in your calendar and don’t cancel on yourself!

If you have kids who are home with you, try and get them involved. There are tons of options for workouts that they can join in on, like pilates and bodyweight training. Show them that exercise can actually be fun and it’s something they can do too! It’s a great way to be a positive influence for them and their own healthy habits. 

What you do on a day-to-day basis can also count towards your overall movement goals, like carrying laundry up and down the stairs or cleaning the house for guests. It’s still important, though, to take time for structured activity and focus on a specific outcome or goal. Make that a priority for yourself even if it looks a little different than normal. 

This does require some upfront planning, so make sure you sit down and get it in your schedule - book that appointment with yourself!

Tip Number Two: Implement the 80/20 Rule with Your Nutrition Throughout the Holiday Season

What exactly is the 80/20 rule? 

It means that 80% of the time you’re incorporating nutrient-dense foods into your diet. Foods such as fruits and vegetables, protein and healthy fats. 

The other 20% of the time you have non-nutrient-dense aka ‘fun foods’. 

As a rule of thumb, it’s best to fill most of your diet with nutrient-dense foods, but during the holidays when you’re going to gatherings and events, this can be easier said than done. You don’t always have control over what’s on the table. There are also more unplanned meals, goodies and sweet treats. 

Don’t let the food be the focal point of the gathering. Shift that focus to the social aspect instead. 

You also have to give yourself permission to take the pressure off. It’s hard when you feel like you’re on a roll, you don’t want to break your streak of healthy habits. But the more you tell yourself no, the more you want something. This leads to overeating and binging which can have even more negative effects. One day of indulging won’t make or break your progress. It’s the continuing on for days, weeks and months on end that can take you off track. 

Be mindful of what you’re consuming. Prioritize protein, drink lots of water, don’t skip a meal, and incorporate vegetables or greens in every meal. 

You don’t have to miss out on the holidays and you don’t have to ruin your good habits. 

Tip Number Three: Stick To Your Routine As Much As Possible Throughout The Week

Most social gatherings are on the weekends, so you can set the goal of sticking to your healthy habits during the week and giving yourself a little more wiggle room on the weekends. This doesn’t mean you throw your habits out the window for the entire weekend, it might just look a little different. 

When choosing what to eat at a gathering, choose more vegetables, protein and healthy fats if they're available. Fill up on the good stuff so you're less hungry for the treats.

If you already have a great routine going into the holiday season, stick to it as much as possible. If an event or gathering is going to interfere with your routine don’t be scared to set boundaries. Ask yourself, is this something I really need to go to? Don’t neglect the commitment to yourself, to please others. 

To be your best self, you need to make sure you’re keeping yourself as a priority. Stick to whatever that looks and feels like to you, and allow yourself flexibility and adaptability during the weekends. 

Tip Number Four: Schedule Rest

One of the first things to go when we get busy is to let ourselves rest - taking the time to do nothing. 

It helps to find pockets of time throughout the day to just be. You can sit with your thoughts or listen to a meditation. 

We stretch ourselves so thin during the holiday season with no downtime, which leaves us with nothing but social exhaustion and burnout. Then nobody is having fun, especially you!

If you’re starting to feel this way, it’s okay to say no. Take the time for yourself to reset and start fresh when you’re ready. You know yourself and what you can take on better than anyone else and if people can’t respect that then that’s on them. 

Tip Number Five: Give Yourself Grace

We are our own worst critics. We’re the last to give ourselves compassion and grace, even when we give it to everyone else. 

You’re allowed to lower your expectations this season because that’s exactly what it is - a season. 

There will always be times when we can push and there will be times when we need to pull back. 

Allow yourself to be flexible and adaptable instead of just telling yourself you’ve failed and quitting altogether. Sometimes we can have such an all-or-nothing mindset, but if you’re trying and putting forth effort there’s no way you can fail. 

The only real way you can fail is if you quit. 

Giving yourself grace is not a hall pass to ditch the habits and routines you’ve created for yourself. But you can still be accepting when things don’t go as planned and allow yourself to continue moving forward from that. 

These 5 tips are simple, actionable steps that you can take to prioritize your health and fitness this holiday season. Some are harder than others, but if you try to implement them this year I know it’ll leave you with no regrets over the holidays and ready to continue rocking it in the new year. 

Want some extra help with keeping balanced this season? Book a 15-minute no-sweat intro call here.