Tips to stay healthy and enjoy the holiday season

The holidays can be a tricky time. There's that nostalgia and fantasy we build up in our heads from years past, but it's hard for real life to live up to our fantasy of the season. Add in all the expenses and no time for exercise or healthy meals between the feasts. The result is a season of high stress and low energy, not exactly the magical feelings we anticipated. But there is hope and we have some ideas to help! Healthy recipe swaps for the holidays, plus some daily tips to reduce stress and enjoy the season. 

Recipe swaps

• Greek yogurt instead of sour cream 
• Coconut sugar instead of cane sugar
• Coconut oil instead of butter in sweet recipes
• Olive oil instead of butter in savory recipes
• Soda water instead of soda pop

These wont work for every single recipe, but experiment and see which ones work for your family. It's ok to indulge, but if it leaves you feeling like crap, was it really worth it? You can really stay healthy and enjoy the holidays! A Little deeper on that, fixing your diet isn't the only culprit, let's discuss removing some of the stress that comes with the season. 

Stress reduction

• Plan family walks every other day of vacation
• Put this in your family’s schedule for holiday vacation. Don’t make it mandatory, it doesn’t need to be a fight, but make sure even if it's just a solo walk, heck, it may be better that way, that it still happens.
• Maybe by next year it will turn into a daily routine!
• Start a new, active holiday tradition 
• Holiday hike, touch football, games with movement like twister, virtual reality, etc
• Try something new and try to get everyone involved by allowing all ideas and using family members for important roles like scorekeepers, cheerleaders, team captains, weather forecaster, supply list manager etc
• Delegate cleaning 
• If you're reading this it's probably because you are the one in the family who tries to do it all so your family can live in the holiday fantasy. When in reality, they are all relaxing and watching TV while you are running around endlessly to prepare. Make a chore chart or simply make it known that your family will be participating to help make the holiday special for everyone. 
• Use the time to do some yoga, take a long shower, or just rest!
• Get 8 hours of sleep
• We tend to forget how important sleep is and tend to stay up way too late over the holidays. While this time can be so fun, keep it in check.
• Drink at least 64 oz of water each day
• Try drinking 20 oz of water before getting out of bed. Make sure you have a glass of water or water bottle with you the rest of the day.
• Drink less alcohol, especially late at night
• Try drinking one glass of water or sparkling water per each alcoholic drink 

As you can see, there’s a trend with these tips. Increase your healthy movement to decrease your stress. Maybe you can’t apply all of these this year, but that’s ok. One of these you aren't currently doing could help lift some of the heaviness and have you enjoying your family time a little more!