By Joy Duginske, Guest Author
Do you fall off the healthy wagon during the holidays? It’s easy to use the holidays as an excuse to make bad decisions, but this just leaves us feeling guilty when the new year arrives. This year get ahead of the holidays so that you can stay healthy and happy all the way through. Follow these three easy tips:
Tip #1: Find a Partner in Health
Two key ingredients for getting to a healthier place in life and staying there are ACCOUNTABILITY and SUPPORT. To help with these, find a friend, coworker or family member to do healthy activities with – walks during your lunch hour, yoga on the weekend or a healthy cooking class. Keep each other posted on progress via text or Facebook.
Tip #2: Start Menu Planning Now
We all have good intentions for making healthy meals, but without a plan it’s easy to just give up and return to our unhealthy staples like grilled cheese or pizza. Same goes for the holidays. If you want to make a healthier holiday feast this year, start planning NOW. Search for healthy recipes and test them out ahead of time rather than waiting until the week before which will likely leave you stressed for time and returning to your usual menu. Find healthy ideas on Whole Foods Recipe Page where you can search by categories like dietary type (ex “sugar conscious”) or type of dish.
Tip #3: Ditch the “next year I’ll do better” mentality
Your health cannot be put on hold based on what time of year it is. It’s time to ditch the “I’ll start my workout routine after the holidays” or “I deserve this because it’s Christmas” mentality and commit to your health once and for all. This doesn’t mean you’ll never eat a cookie again or you won’t experience temporary set backs. What it does mean is A NEW VIEW ON YOU, which is a healthy, balanced and consistent you.
Ready to get healthy once and for all? Check out my 3-Month Wellness Program!
Joy Duginske, MA, Certified Holistic Health Coach, is the owner of Joy to Wellness Health Coaching in Chicago, IL. Once an unhealthy vegetarian, she transformed her own health by changing her diet, which included eliminating gluten.
Joy specializes in helping individuals establish and maintain healthy lifestyles, and believes achieving health is about personal empowerment. She created her Gluten-Free Coaching Program to help others make the transition to a gluten-free diet easier and more enjoyable. For gluten-free lifestyle tips, check out her Joy to Gluten-Free Blog
