Holistic health experts remind holiday makers that the holiday season is a time of stress, lack of sleep, reduced physical activity and numerous indulgent holiday foods.
Personal Health Survival Strategies
The following are the top personal health survival strategies for the 2011 holiday season:
- To avoid big weight gain, focus on maintaining a healthy weight not excessive weight loss. Starting a new diet on January 1st is one option, but it’s not the best option. Focus on maintaining a normal, healthy weight all year long so you don’t have to go through drastic measures in the new year.
- Enjoy the foods you like – in moderation. No single meal and no single type of food will make you instantly overweight – it’s the accumulation of to many calories too often that does it. Denying yourself your favorite foods is not way to effect a health eating pattern. So, enjoy the foods you like in smaller portions. Savor them slowly and you’ll not only get more out of the enjoyment, you’ll enjoy consuming less.
- Keep moving through the holidays. With the colder weather, traveling to visit friends and family, and the huge number of commitments, it can be hard to keep your exercise schedule on track. Find ways to sneak in exercise. Craving a long talk with your mother or son? Lace up your shoes, bundle up, and take it outside. You’ll find that the movement will help you focus and enjoy the time with your favorite person and you’ll get a calorie burn besides!
- Implement smart drinking strategies in addition to smart eating strategies. The human body can’t store alcohol until it has metabolized it. That means your before dinner drink gets metabolized first, then the food you eat. If the body has all the calories it needs right now, the food gets stored as fat. Enjoying a light cocktail with dinner helps the body get the nutrients it needs from the food first. Alternating each drink with two glasses of water helps your liver de-toxify too.
Travel Survival Strategies
Crowded airplanes, lack of service, weather delays, and tired, angry people all contribute to needing a holiday travel survival strategy. The following are the top holiday travel tips for 2011:
- Make copies of your travel documents and credit cards. If you are robbed or lose your wallet, passport, and other travel documents, you can rely on the copies to help you replace them. Keep one copy in your checked or carry-on luggage and leave one copy with friends or family back home (you can call them if your copy is also stolen).
- Get there early – really early. Airports can be dull and most people avoid them until they really have to be there, but arriving early gives you the lead time you may just need when the security line gets blocked by someone who hasn’t kept up on the current TSA holiday travel tips.
- Be nice – even when it’s hard. Your niceness in a sticky, tense situation can have a calming effect on those who are standing by and potentially diffuse the situation.
- Carry your bag on board – or even better, ship it ahead! FedEx and UPS have decent tracking systems that can help you track the progress of your bag. They’ll even insure it (the airlines won’t). So send everything you can ahead and pack light. You’ll save on airline baggage fees, hassle, and worry.
- Load up your electronics with plenty of entertainment. This will help tide you over when there are travel delays.
- Remember where you parked the car. This is especially true during the holidays when you may be sleepy or distracted when you park, then have trouble finding it when you return some days or weeks later. See our tips for finding your parked car.
Of course, having the right travel insurance can help you travel safely without incurring a big financial loss too. See what travel insurance covers and what it doesn’t; then, read our tips for saving money on your travel insurance plan.
