Navigating the Festive Season
The festive season can be quite a challenging time with regards to making healthy food and lifestyle choices. Finding a balance between maintaining your health goals and enjoying the festive season can be quite difficult and overwhelming.
In this blog we help you to navigate the festive season so that you can still enjoy the delicious food and drinks without undoing the progress you have made and hard work you have put in throughout the year.
How can you do this? Here are a few tips:
Try to avoid arriving to the event or celebration overly hungry as this may cause you to overeat. Instead try to eat your typical breakfast or lunch, and even a healthy snack, prior.
Plan your other meals for the day in advance to avoid overindulging the entire day. In this way you will still be able to eat nutritious meals as you usually do with a bit more indulgence during the festive meal.
Arrange to have a few healthier options available, such as vegetable sides, salads, fruit platter, barbecued meat or fish, etc. If you are eating at someone else’s house, perhaps bring a beautiful salad with you to share. That way your festive foods are complemented with some nutritious options also.
Try to eat smaller portions of the festive foods and choose more of the vegetables, salads and lean proteins.
Avoid overly filling your plate with food. Start small and if you are still hungry then you can go back for more food. Often our eyes are bigger than our stomachs and if we overly fill out plates to begin with we may find that we eat beyond our comfortable threshold.
If you are wanting to try different desserts available, consider sharing each portion with another person.
If you are drinking alcohol, try to break it up with water or sparkling water in between to avoid drinking excessively.
Physical activity and the festive season:
We also may find that our exercise and physical activity levels decrease during the festive season with so many different events on and some gyms being closed. First of all it is important to accept that this may be the case and is okay. Do not beat yourself up over it. However, in saying that, trying to fit some physical activity in, even if it is less than your usual, is still great. For example:
Try plan for a walk or jog prior to your planned celebrations or go for a light walk afterwards
Perhaps incorporate some type of physical activity during the festivities - this may be swimming in the pool, playing games outdoors or going for a nice walk.
Schedule exercise in to your day, perhaps earlier in the morning or later at night. This way you have planned for it and factored it in to your schedule for the day.
At the end of the day, this time of year is such a special time to be spent celebrating with friends and family, especially after the year (or two) that we have had. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you overindulge during these festivities and remember that no food or drink is off limits completely, it is all about moderation.
On behalf of all of us here at Nutrition Solutions Sydney, we wish you a very happy and safe Christmas and New Years. We thank you for your support and look forward to working together again in the new year.
xx