How to Maintain Healthy Habits During the Holidays: Rec. Reading v9
We recognize that habit-building and good mental health can’t be isolated to just one corner of the internet. Myrth is our favorite tool, but it’s not our only tool. In our regular Recommended Reading series, we’ll share links to articles, books, and other tools that we think you’ll find helpful in your journey.
The holiday season is coming up, and we all know what that means: schedule disruptions. Parties with huge amounts of food. Pressure to buy, buy, buy. Stressful travel without access to our usual routines. Events happening every weekend and often during the week, too.
Holidays can really throw you off your healthy habits, but we have a saying here at Myrth: if you know roadblocks are coming, you can prepare for them.
So in the spirit of preparing to overcome obstacles, here is a roundup of articles we’ve enjoyed about maintaining healthy habits and self-care practices during the holiday season.
1. Keeping Up With Self-Care is a Healthy Habit
During particularly busy and hectic times, it’s easy to let something slide, and the first something is usually our self-care habits. If you’re the type to prioritize others over yourself, you’ll know exactly how that goes. We loved this list of ways to maintain basic self-care during the holidays, especially this tip:
Hydrate. I am a big tea drinker – specifically red rooibos tea. It is good for me and I tend to down a ton of water in the process. But I realized over Thanksgiving that it was far easier to reach for the wine or soda that was readily available than to make my hot tea or drink water. I ended up using a tracker on my phone to note how much water I had consumed; it gave me a goal to pursue even if my normal hydration was off-kilter.
If you’re also goal-oriented and motivated by filling in your tracker (and we suspect you might be, if you’re hanging out here), this is a great tip for getting through the holidays with your self-care relatively intact.
2. Sticking To Your Routine While Traveling
It’s important for maintaining healthy habits to keep up with your basic routines while traveling, even if you’re changing time zones and everything feels horsed up. We’re not talking about things like getting up at 6 am every day to go for a 10-mile run, though if you can manage that after switching time zones, more power to you. We’re talking about making sure you stay on top of the really basic stuff, like sleeping enough.
You understand your body better than anyone. Make sure you eat the same number of meals while you travel as you would at home. Your body has created a “meal clock” to anticipate when you will eat based on your routine. Messing with your “meal clock” could result in reduced energy and fatigue, excessive hunger and indigestion.
Meals may be more out of your control while you travel. You may be eating later than normal to meet up with friends, or you may skip lunch in anticipation for the evening’s feast. To avoid changes to your meal schedule, have snacks available to help you get to the next planned meal. Snacks can also prevent you from overeating and feeling sick as a result.
Keeping up with these things and listening to your body will help you feel more like yourself.
3. Setting Boundaries Around The Holidays
No amount of effort to maintain routines will matter much if you can’t occasionally tell people “no” when you need to. That’s why setting boundaries during the holiday season is so important.
If you feel overwhelmed, know that your plans can always be tweaked, and everything is an option. For instance, if your family lives far away, and you have small kids, ask your parents to visit instead of enduring a long plane ride, Janson said. Or if you’re definitely traveling, instead of stopping by everyone’s homes, suggest doing a potluck. This way “everyone travels to see you in one location.”
Holiday chaos and emotional demands sometimes require a little extra management, and that’s where boundary-setting kicks in.
4. Using Mindfulness To Manage The Holidays
Mindfulness is one of our favorite tools here at Myrth, and we loved this roundup of ways that mindfulness can help make the holiday season go a little more smoothly. For example, this tip for mindful eating can help when we’re struggling with absent-minded grazing or stress eating:
Take time to enjoy all the flavors of the holiday season. There are five (A,B,C,D,E) basic ways to begin a mindful eating practice:
1. Ask
Why am I eating now?
What am I eating now?
What else am I doing now that may be distracting?
2. Be grateful
3. Chew, and then chew again
4. Dine (don’t just eat)
5. Engage your attention
Mindfulness can help us remember to engage thoughtfully and authentically with our experiences during the holidays, which in turn can reduce stress and will help us feel more grounded during the chaos and maintain healthy habits.
We hope this little roundup helps you prepare for the busy holiday season ahead. As the year draws to a close, we wish you a happy, healthy celebration of the holidays that are dear to you and a fruitful start to the new year.
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