This holiday season, your schedule is more likely filled with festive gatherings with all kinds of tasty foods and beverages. It’s easy to get tempted and overindulge in various delightful treats.
Even the most disciplined people can find it challenging to stick to focusing on healthy eating and nutrition when they are surrounded by appetizing food and drink. Fortunately, there are many ways to help you stay on track with your fitness goals while keeping your festive spirit, such as the following:
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Stick with a routine
Regaining healthy habits due to interruptions to your routine can make your hard work go down the drain. Prevent this by sticking with several elements of your routine so that the post-holiday blues won’t hit you too hard.
One simple way to make sure you don’t go overboard during meals is swapping out larger plates for small ones. This will trick your brain into thinking you are eating more—a concept based on the Delboeuf Illusion, which claims that using a smaller plate will help you consume less food and make the portions appear larger and more filling.
The plate swap trip is connected to a promising study published by the International Journal of Obesity that used the same theory and applied it to plates with wider or more colorful rims around them that make the inner plate look smaller. The results show that the color of the rim seemed to trick participants into thinking there was a bit more food on a plate.
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Try fun and creative exercises
The holiday season can be hectic, but you can get creative about squeezing in some exercise to your busy schedule. Being active doesn’t have to mean hitting the gym. Some heart-pumping activities that can help you shed unwanted holiday weight are sledding, skiing, running back up the hill, or planning an indoor scavenger hunt.
Best of all, you can get the entire family involved and promote staying active while spending time together. Crank up the music and get moving to have a happy, active holiday season. Catchy and feel-good songs can help motivate you to enjoy exercise. You all won’t even notice that you’re getting a workout in because of all the fun you’re having!
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Know what you’re drinking
Aside from your favorite meals, the holiday season is full of alcoholic beverages that contain lots of calories. Raising glasses can cause you to overeat, suffer from a bad hangover the morning after, make it harder for you to be active, and quickly sabotage your plans for healthy holiday living.
Stay on track of your health and fitness goals while enjoying some holiday cheer by familiarizing yourself with actual serving sizes for alcoholic beverages. Make sure to drink lots of water in between drinks or follow every alcoholic drink with a non-alcoholic one.
Conclusion
Overeating at holiday parties this season of overindulgence is tempting, but you can get back on track with your health goals by following the tips mentioned in this guide. On the other hand, you can cut yourself some slack and give yourself a break. You can always regain control the next day if ever you give in to the temptation of delicious food.
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