How to Eat Healthy at a Holiday Meal

So you wanna learn how to eat healthy so you don’t have to unbutton your pants at the table this year. I get it. It’s almost become an accepted way of life that a huge holiday meal equals planning to stuff yourself, then actually stuffing yourself, then beating yourself up for stuffing yourself. What if this year could be different? What if this year you planned on enjoying your favorite holiday foods, actually enjoyed the holiday foods in an empowered manner, and then congratulated yourself for enjoying the holiday foods and ending the day feeling great about yourself? Guess what? It’s not as hard as you think. Learning how to eat healthy is a skill that takes practice, but you have to decide to do the work. And what better time than now? I want you to enjoy the holidays this year, and ring in the new year in your same pant size. How great will it be to not vow to lose 10 pounds this year come January, because you never gained them?! There are 5 rules to holiday eating that I always share with my clients, and I’m sharing them with you today. How to Eat Healthy at a Holiday Meal 1. Be a Wo/Man with a Plan. Before you embark on your Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Hanukkah adventures, take a minute to decide what you are going to eat, indulge in, or taste. If you take a few moments before you begin to really think and plan, you will set yourself up to be successful. Sometimes a little planning is all you need to get you through the day enjoying your meal and feeling good too! 2. Take Control with a little Portion Control. Remember to load up on the cleanest cooked vegetables available, salad, and turkey breast, ham, or whatever lean protein is served. Limit the sides and desserts. Choose 2 tablespoons of 2 decadent sides to indulge in and keep the rest of your plate green and lean! Of course, you should enjoy your meal, but get the leftovers out of the house and definitely do not take a doggie bag home. Removing tempting indulgences will help you get back to your Nutritious Life as soon as the holiday is over. RELATED: The Best Portion Control Hack to Avoid Overeating 3. Drink Up, Up, Up! Unwanted calories from beverages can undermine your work. Have a full glass of water or seltzer (with lemon) before the meal and match each glass of wine with a glass of water. Avoid the eggnog and fancy coffee drinks—those calories take the worst revenge and can plump you up in no time. End your meal with an herbal tea instead. 4. Choose the Most Nutrient Dense Foods. Roasted chestnuts, a tablespoon of cranberries, roasted root vegetables, turkey breast, and a spoonful of winter squash are loaded with nutrition! Make sure you are getting these powerhouses in, in place of the stuffing, mashed potatoes and corn bread, which may be less healthful. Making these nutritious choices on the holiday will have you feeling proud and inspired to make better choices the day after and beyond. RELATED: The Power of a Healthy Breakfast: Setting You Up for a Healthier Day 5. Get Up and Go. Do the best you can to move during the day! If it’s snowing outside, build an enormous snowman or have a super competitive snowball fight. If the weather is nice outdoors, rally the family for a 30 minute walk around the neighborhood or a game of touch football. If you’re stuck inside, try a competitive karaoke session with mandatory dance moves or teach your family their first yoga sequence. If all else fails, just offer to chase around after the little ones, since they never can sit still. Their very tired parents will thank you. Remember: Listen to your body! Stop eating when you are slightly satisfied even if it seems to go against the spirit of “stuffing” on Thanksgiving or Ho-Ho-Ho-ing on Christmas. ENJOY your holiday. It is one meal that should be cherished and celebrated. Keep your Nutritious Life in the forefront of your mind and know we’re cheering on your holiday efforts! You’ve got this! (Image: Shutterstock)

5 Ways to Feel More Festive Than Frazzled This Holiday Season

If your blood pressure spikes and your jaw clenches at the thought of a holiday season full of hustle and bustle, you’re not alone. A whopping 38% of Americans say they experience a spike in stress during the span between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, according to a survey by the American Psychological Association (APA). Be it due to the financial strain of gifts, anxiety related to traveling, balancing work and socializing, the tension involved in family dynamics or something else entirely, it certainly is the season of wearing your shoulders like earrings. Read on to discover why holiday stress is so pervasive, plus how to feel more festive than frazzled this season. Why Holiday Stress Is So Common Stress can manifest in many ways, including feeling down or depressed, anxiety, headaches, overall body aches, sleep troubles, irritability and more. So, what causes it? First of all, the holiday season is heavy with expectations. Can you make Mom proud by acing her Christmas turkey? Can you attend all the neighborhood holiday happy hours? Can you complete all of your work in A+ style while being there for all of your children’s pageants and parties, all of your pals’ events and your family obligations … oh yes, and make it to your regular workout classes? How about the expense and time of finding the *perfect* gift and booking travel? It makes our heads spin just thinking about it. And we haven’t even mentioned any potential stress related to family members that many of us have lost recently. This can make holiday “celebrations” more melancholy than usual. RELATED: 3 Interesting New Findings on How Stress Affects Your Health (and Life) 5 Ways to Ease Holiday Stress Eliminate the Need to “Keep Up with the Joneses” With instant access to what everyone else is doing via social media, it can be a challenge to not feel like you’re behind schedule (say, sending out holiday cards or decorating) or celebrating with enough style (perhaps your neighbor or college classmate’s outdoor light show rivals that of an epic movie scene?). The bar is set high—often impossibly high—by external factors like these, which may easily blur the lines between what you really want to do and what you feel like you have to do. Ask everyone in your household to create a “hell yes” list of the traditions you’re each excited to keep up with or the parts of the season you truly look forward to. Then compare notes and give yourselves full permission to ditch any old routines that don’t serve you anymore. Don’t Be Afraid to Say “No” Now that you’ve honed in on what matters most, start flexing your “no” muscle. It may feel tempting to accept any and all invitations to catch up with family and friends you haven’t seen in a while, but then all of a sudden, you notice your calendar is booked nightly through January 3. Or perhaps you do truly want to attend, but the host is known to be one to constantly refill all wine glasses endlessly throughout the night. Remember that you reserve all rights to stick with a no-ABV drink or to sip on just one pour of vino and politely decline the rest. Prioritize Self Care ‘Tis the season for giving, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t remain on your “to gift” list, too. Consider how many evenings you’d like to block on your calendar each week to do only what *you* feel like doing, be it getting a pedicure or a massage, sneaking in some stress-relieving yoga or simply catching up on your favorite streaming show. This will also allow for a bit of introspection as the season speeds along; enough time to reflect on the real reason it’s full of celebrations as well as what you’re grateful for. RELATED: Give Yourself the Gift of Self-Love and Care This Season Acknowledge that Things Can Be Hard The first holiday season after losing a loved one is emotionally taxing, to say the least. Allow space to feel all of the feelings—not just the positive ones. If it feels beneficial, jot them down in a journal or discuss with a loved one. Create a “Carrot” For the New Year Part of the stress of the holiday season might lie in the “wait, it’s all over?!” feelings of January. With the holidays in the rearview mirror, it can feel like there’s a long haul until there’s an occasion to celebrate again. If you can, plan ahead to plant a “carrot” to look forward to once the holidays are over. It can be as small as signing up for a cooking class for you and your best friend in mid-January, or as big as booking a trip to a tropical island for a warm and sunny escape. Take Your Passion for Health and Wellness to the Next Level From managing holiday stress to the latest in nutritional science, Become a Nutrition Coach delivers all you need to make your passion for health and wellness your life’s work. Request a sneak peek of our course and start your journey toward becoming a nutrition coach today. (Images: Shutterstock)

5 Tips to Preserve Your Mental Health During the Holidays

The holidays are wonderful because it’s a time dedicated to giving back to our loved ones and to our community, but it’s also a time where we can become too hyper-focused on meeting the needs of others and slip on taking care of ourselves in the process—the lines between self-care and self-medicating start to blur. It’s imperative to always keep yourself at the top of your to-do list, especially during the busy holiday season. To get yourself in the habit, think of your mental health as hygiene and give it the same priority you would with a workout plan or even brushing your teeth. It is essential to take care of your mind on a daily basis and the best way to do this is by creating an actionable plan for ensuring that each day you do what you mentally need—hydrate, sleep, eat healthy, take time to reflect, move your body, and connect with people.   Below, I’m sharing my top five tips for making your mental health a priority during the holidays (and beyond) to hopefully help kick-start your own mental hygiene routine.  Beginning and end-of-day routines Once my day gets started it can feel like it has a mind of its own. That’s why I set aside 30 minutes at the start of each morning and at the end of each night where I can do my simple rituals—wash my face, brush my teeth, take my vitamins, take my PYM Mood Chews, journal for 5 to 10 minutes, stretch, and drink a glass of water. While this isn’t a holiday-specific tactic, finding that time each day to concentrate on your needs is the first small step to gaining strong mental hygiene habits.  Focus on nourishment The holidays are not the time to worry about dieting, but it is important to think about nourishment. This means don’t worry about your waistline, do worry about getting the right nutrients, sleep, water, and air. Eat the festive cookies and then have a side of vegetables, drink the eggnog and then wash it down with a big glass of water, make your shopping list and then take a few deep breaths. Too much sugar and carbs inevitably sends anyone on an energetic roller coaster throughout the day, but if you’re doing other healthy habits it should counterbalance that holiday rush. Also, in the name of sleep, I suggest keeping your sugar and carb intake to the earlier hours of the day, otherwise it can disrupt your slumber and have you waking up tired the next day. Sleep is nourishment for your brain, so don’t skimp. Being tired makes anxiety all the more likely.  Don’t get SAD We live in a fast-paced and frankly chaotic time and it can be hard for our bodies to keep up. There are a few key areas that I suggest supplementing when it comes to mental health. First, vitamin D is something our body primarily gets from sun exposure, but chances are during the winter months you’re not hanging out in the sunshine as often or the sun is too far away to be powerful enough to do its job. Without enough vitamin D, you could get Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which legitimately makes you feel sad.  Second, I suggest taking a compound of amino acids, GABA and L-Theanine, which I find essential for taming the stress, overwhelm and anxiety I feel during the holidays. They are naturally occurring in our bodies and in foods, but it’s hard to get enough concentrated naturally to make an impact, so I take a daily chewable that’s made by PYM. In full disclosure, I’m a cofounder of PYM, but I created this product because it was impossible to find an effective and delicious way to get these supplements I already relied on. Lastly, I’ve personally found 5-HTP, which helps the body regulate how much serotonin it produces, helps stabilize my mood. Note, I’m not a doctor or nutritionist, so you should consult your medical practitioner and do your own research, this is just what works for me! Holiday fun vs self-medicating During the holidays, it’s easier to write-off toxic coping mechanisms (i.e. avoidance or drinking) in the name of festive fun. The simplest way to navigate this is asking yourself “why?” Why is it that you’re choosing to_____. If the answer is to escape or avoid thinking/feeling bad/sad things, then you’re probably self-medicating. Overspending, overindulging, and straight-up ignoring inevitably lead to things being worse than wherever you are now. Tough love. If all you can do right now is acknowledge your thoughts and behavior, that’s still a step in the right direction. Seeking community programs or therapy is a great way to start exploring and addressing these habits. Complaint gratitude I know you know already—there’s no shortage of people telling you to account for what you’re grateful for and it would be borderline obnoxious if it wasn’t so damn wholesome and legitimately effective. Here’s my spin on it: complaint gratitude. When I find myself complaining, annoyed, or facing a problem, I try to reframe and ask myself why I’m lucky that I get to have this issue. For example, let’s say a friend or significant other breaks up with you. With this practice, I would say to myself “I’m lucky this person showed me their priorities, and now I have the space to find someone who equally values me as I do them.” Or when I feel sick, “I am lucky that I don’t feel this way all the time and overall I am in good health.” I know not *everything* can or should be spun like this, but when it comes to the little things you find yourself hung up on, it’s helpful to try to find a way to take a step back, look at the big picture, and find gratitude in the fact that you have the luxury of having that problem. I hope these quick tips at the very least get you thinking about what your