Six Holiday Stress Management Techniques to Avoid Weight Gain

One way to avoid holiday weight gain is to plan how you’ll deal with your eating in advance. Don’t wait until you’re faced with the choices to set up a system that helps you make good choices. You want to enjoy the things you like that make the holidays special for you and stay as healthy as possible with no setbacks. With planning, you can do it.

Here are six stress-management techniques to incorporate this holiday season to stay healthy and avoid weight gain:

• Set Healthy Boundaries – Obviously, you will eat some things that you normally don’t during the holidays. However, the fact that you will eat pie or cake does not make you a bad person. You can say no or yes to this. Choose to do what’s best for you by setting healthy boundaries for yourself and others. For example, you can have one piece of pumpkin pie on Christmas, not two and not one every single day.

• Don’t Sacrifice Your Normal Routines – As humans, you’re wired to like a routine. The routine makes you feel calm and sets up your digestion to work better. So find a way to keep to most of your healthy routines during the holidays, like your sleep-wake schedule and your caloric intake.

• Lower Your Expectation and Requirement – The holidays cause a lot of stress mainly due to expectations and setting perfection requirements on your holiday. If you build the holiday up in your mind to be so spectacular that reality cannot live up to it, you’ll end up more stressed out.

• Incorporate Daily Walking – While you’re busy due to the holidays, it does involve so much cooking and eating it’s imperative that you continue the practice of daily walking. Even if you have company over, you can encourage all of you to go outside for a walk around your neighborhood or play a game of tag in the yard.

• Simplify – Who says a holiday has to include so much food that no one can or should eat it all. Why not have a very simple holiday with a normal meal with one or two things that make it feel special to you. Every holiday dinner or event doesn’t need to be fancy and huge every time. You can even go out for the main meal and then have hot chocolate and fondue to celebrate at home.

• Be Generous and Thankful – The more you focus on gratitude and giving instead of judging and receiving, the happier you’ll be, which means you’ll feel a lot less stress throughout the holiday.

Try to understand in your mind that the holidays will be more stressful than normal times due to the additional activities and chores that you need to do. However, you already have a busy schedule, so it’s okay to take the time to plan in advance, lower your expectations, make it super simple, and focus every single day.