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6 Healthy Holiday Celebration Tips — And a Few for the New Year

by | Dec 21, 2024 | Healthy Holidays | 0 comments

My name is Alisa Turner and I’m a certified integrative health coach specializing in nutrition planning, fitness, and overall well-being. If you’re ready for clarity and a sustainable approach to a healthier life, I’m here for you. Contact me!

1. Don’t skip meals on the big day. Keep hunger levels and blood sugar balanced.

Skipping a meal with the goal of saving calories prior to a holiday event can often backfire and lead to overeating due to ravenous feelings of hunger.  Refer back to the hunger/fullness scale in your welcome packet or reach out if you need a refresher.  Aim to keep your hunger levels balanced between 3 and 7 throughout the day to stabilize blood sugar and maximize impulse control.

Having a high-fiber, high-protein snack before the holiday party (think cottage cheese or yogurt and fruit, turkey roll-ups on a high fiber wrap, or a smoothie with protein powder, yogurt, spinach and berries) can curb your appetite and help prevent that icky, overstuffed feeling after too many indulgences.  Once you’re at the actual event, eat slowly, savor the flavors, and check your fullness levels periodically.

2. Bring your own dish (or host the event).

If you’re hosting, you can control many of the food options, and you can even give gentle nudges for healthy options to those guests who are bringing their own dishes.  Flood your table with veggies, protein, a reasonable amount of healthy fats (nuts, avocado, yogurt or imported cheese if you do dairy) and maybe just one or two sweet treats with some healthy ingredient swaps. You can almost always use less butter, oil, and sugar and more vegetables!  I swap nonfat Greek yogurt for oil in many of my baked goods and usually sub out some sugar with monk fruit. Just be sure to make a practice round!

If you’re not hosting, ensure at least your contribution is a nutritious choice, such as a vegetable plate with yogurt dip, a festive green salad with pomegranate, peppers and any of your other favorite colorful veggies, or a healthier curation of any of your holiday favorites (message me for ideas if you’re stuck — you can make just about anything more macro-friendly and higher in fiber with just a few simple tweaks.)

3. Choose your splurges. You definitely should not sacrifice everything you love.

You just might not want to indulge in everything that looks amazing every day in unlimited quantities.  Like everything in life, it’s all about choices and priorities.

Choose the number of events that feels authentically reasonable for you this year given everything else you have going on.  Think about how you felt last year after attending every holiday party you were invited to on top of taking care of your family, buying, wrapping, and fulfilling your career obligations.  Were you still able to show up for yourself?  Were you still able to prioritize your walks, gym workouts, meal prep, meditation, and sleep?  Or did you put your own care on the back-burner to show up for everyone else leaving you feeling depleted and exhausted with a bad case of the post-holiday blues?  Declining holiday parties may seem rude but it’s actually a healthy boundary that honors your truth, and there’s only so much entertaining a given person can fit in without feeling overwhelmed (and completely blowing their nutritional targets).

Once you’re at the event, prioritize your favorites.  Scan the buffet or dinner table and choose a couple holiday splurges instead of foods that you can have any other day of the year.  Make sure you take time to really taste and enjoy that special treat when you have it.

Some family members may get offended if you don’t try everything but that’s ok — remember that you are in control of what you eat and own that. Be confident, decisive and polite. You should not feel shame with wanting to stick to your goals.

4. Choose drinks wisely.

Stick to calorie-free drinks, such as water, tea or seltzer, instead of high-calorie festive drinks. Put them in a festive glass if that helps you feel more comfortable.  Alcoholic beverages contribute empty calories and can cause you to make poor judgments with food. If you choose to drink alcohol, do so in moderation —commit to the number of drinks you will have at the party and stick to that.  If that’s difficult, I can relate (I’ve been alcohol free for almost 6 years now) so we should talk!  Alternate each alcoholic drink with a glass of water.

5. Visit the people, not the food.

Move socializing away from the buffet or appetizer table to prevent mindless eating.  What are you there for most anyway — connection or nutrition?  Yes…it can absolutely be both…it’s just harder around the holidays especially when you’re not in control of the options in front of you.  So, check your intentions, your mindset, and your priorities before you walk out the door.  If the options available are not healthy, then they’re not really filling the nutrition box.  So, pick a few favorites, move away from the rest, and get on with the connecting!

6. Give yourself GRACE.

If you overindulged, don’t beat yourself up because that shame can keep you stuck in a downward spiral of worsening choices and more guilt.  It’s disempowering, demotivating, and unhelpful.  Just focus on the next right action — make sure you prioritize at least one small healthy choice the next day that you can feel good about.  This will help reset your brain/body and empower you to make the next healthy choice.  My personal favorite reset for this is intentional movement!  Go pick up some heavy stuff at the gym or do a few rounds of intervals on an assault bike and tell me you don’t feel better!

Other tips this holiday season:

1. Prioritize sleep — The holiday season can be a busy, stressful time of year, and getting 7-9 hours of sleep can seem impossible with all the extra obligations swirling around you (Remember #3 above). But being well-rested over the holidays (or anytime) will be a game changer for your physical, mental and emotional health.

I get it — It’s so tempting to stay up late to cross off that ever-expanding to-do list, but I promise you’ll get more accomplished and have more emotional bandwidth to manage the next day’s stress when you’re well rested.  It’s like time expands!  I didn’t even know I was tired until I prioritized extra sleep, longer meditations, and other mental/emotional health tools.  Now everything seems brighter and easier.  Once you get a taste of quality sleep, you’ll be prioritizing it forever!

Sleep quality is also linked with how much, how often, and what types of foods we eat.  If you’re not rested, you’re more likely to eat more than you need and crave less nutritious foods, so get as much quality sleep as you can over the holidays by committing to adopting some improved sleep hygiene strategies.  Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day including weekends (within a 30-minute window), and plan to wind down with dim light and a warm bath, a good book, or a nice long meditation about 30 minutes before you go to bed.  Get off screens, stop eating, and put down the glass of Chardonnay (better yet just skip it) a bit earlier than you’re used to. Make sure your thermostat is cool enough, and don’t rely on caffeine for that afternoon slump.   You’ll fall asleep sooner and sleep more soundly.

2. Manage Stress — When you wake up, spend 5 minutes doing some deep breathing (I like the 4-7-8 breath or box breathing) and/or a quick meditation, gratitude list or other journaling exercise to set your day on the most positive track you can. Then when life shows up in ways you didn’t predict, bring those deep breaths back and surrender to the flow as best you can.  I often find myself practicing the mantra: “It’s ok.  I’m ok.  I’m just re-prioritizing my day”.  It might take me a minute to find my feet and my grace, but the more consistently I practice these 4-7-8 breaths throughout the day in times I don’t need them, the more quickly I find them when I do!

Build extra space in your day to be still.  I know it seems impossible.  I used to schedule my day pretty much straight through with activities.  And they all felt high priority.  Then I would wonder why I was so keyed up, constantly rushing, and over-reactive when things didn’t go exactly according to schedule.   I’ll probably always be a high energy, goal-oriented person with a bit of a buzzing energy.  But now I build extra cushions between clients, and I schedule connection time with friends and family a week in advance to minimize the chances that I feel overwhelmed during my day.  I say no to many more things than I used to.  This way there’s plenty of space for life to show up in ways I didn’t expect without leaving me feeling taxed and frazzled trying to fit the last-minute things that pop up as priorities into an already full schedule.  It also creates space in my head.    The swirling thoughts slow down.  There’s more room for creative and intuitive pings to pop in.  And I am amazed how that space just fills up so quickly with things I didn’t expect.

And remember to give yourself and those around you GRACE!  We are aiming for progress not perfection.  I still occasionally have overwhelming weeks.  Just last week I logged about 10 or so unplanned hours helping my son study for midterms.  It wasn’t on my radar at all because he’s been very self sufficient all year, so the request came out of the blue on Sunday evening.    But this was one of those things that was ACTUALLY important, so I fit it in.  And because I practice these tools on a regular basis, I was able to pivot and re-prioritize my week with infinitely more grace than I would have if I didn’t have my nutrition, sleep, meditation, and movement dialed in.

3. Prioritize Movement. Even a few minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity can deliver some health benefits and count toward reaching your weekly goals. Maybe in this season, you don’t have time to log your typical 3-4 hours a week strength training or your typical 2.5-5 hours a week of zone 2 cardio, but a 20-minute brisk walk around the block with some sprint intervals, running up and down a few flights of steps or doing short bursts of any other high intensity activity is better than nothing, and it can still have a short-term positive impact on mood, cognition, and even sleep.

I could probably fill an entire book on the positive impacts exercise has had on my life, so I never miss my scheduled daily movement, and it very rarely even gets shortened.  It used to feel like a chore.  Now it feels like a tool.  It used to feel like punishment.  Now it feels like the ultimate self care.  My body craves it.   My brain craves it.  It is the anchor for all my other health habits in part because of the impact it has on my mood and cognition.  I sleep better.  I make better food choices and remember to hydrate.   I literally use exercise of various forms for everything.  Stress management.   Insomnia.  Anxiety relief.   Appetite regulation. A quick dopamine hit, or a mindset shift if I’m feeling down.

If you incorporate any of these into your life, I’d love to hear how they’re working for you!

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