We should all enjoy the holidays to their fullest! With our calendars full of family events and to-do items, it can be hard juggling our fitness routines. Here are some tips for enjoying your holidays while maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle:
1. Incorporate more activity into our family events.
a) Play games that require some movement: charades, scavenger hunt, flip cup (doesn’t have to involve beer), potato relay, and more!
b) Walk or ride bikes around town and enjoy the neighborhood’s decorations.
Watch my grandfather play the potato relay!
2. Incorporate more mindfulness into our family events.
a) Go around the table and share what we are thankful for! If health is something you want your family to focus on, you can set a theme. If you share thanks for your health or lifestyle, it might help others remember its value too.
b) Go around the table and share our goals for the Holiday season. With the New Year around the corner, we might forget that micro-goals are a key to overall success. By asking your family about their goals for the Holidays, you’ll all be able to stay in the moment!
3. Remember “Come Back Rate”.
This is the perfect time of year to get into your Come Back Rate mindset! Enjoy your holidays and celebrate each moment you get back on track! If you take a day off, do something to maintain your routine the next day. If you over-indulge at dinner, don’t be too hard on yourself! Celebrate making a healthier choice moving forward.
4. Keep a pitcher of water at the table or bring water with you to events.
What we put into our bodies affects the way we feel. Do yourself the favor of staying hydrated over the holidays. When we are dehydrated, we often feel sluggish and fatigued, which makes performing physical activity even harder to maintain.
5. Mini-Challenges.
Set up a mini-challenge with your friends or family! Don’t aim for something crazy; aim for something attainable. We recently started a 25 Days of Crunchmas challenge, where everyone is aiming to do 25 crunches each day from December 1–24. If you get behind one day, you can catch up later. This challenge is keeping us active each day, even if it’s just a few minutes of crunches. You could set up a Steps Challenge, or any other simple challenge that will keep you motivated to get active throughout the holidays.
Healthier Holidays
We often take on a scarcity mindset going into the holidays. We think we’re going to “miss out” on all the good food and drinks if we want to be healthy, and we end up blowing our nutrition out of the water. We let the stress of the season interfere with our fitness routines, and before we know it, we haven’t been physically active for over a month. We’re here to say: enjoy your holidays! But, don’t let the holidays ruin steady progression toward your goals. Use these tips to incorporate physical activity into your life where it genuinely fits, get back on track often, and make it fun!
Shout Out!
This was my very first guest blog article featured on the Medium site: In Fitness & In Health! Check out my blog and all of their authors for tons of great stories and tips for living a healthy and fit life!