The holidays are quickly approaching which means it’s time for all things food, family, and friends. These seasonal festivities can be both cheerful and stressful. Whether you’re looking forward to a full house and a full belly or slightly dreading it, understandably, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day our health sometimes gets put on the back burner. But the holidays don’t have to be hard on your health. That’s why the greatest gift you can give yourself this holiday season is to do it the Well Balanced way. Here’s how:
Walk it off:
It’s all about regulating and controlling insulin. Elevated levels of insulin can have a major impact on your metabolic health. Studies have shown that simply going for a walk (or movement of any kind) after a meal helps regulate blood sugar and reduce the overall increase in insulin. Encourage your friends and family to get on their feet after any feast!
Don’t be like a turkey and overstuff yourself:
There are lots of meals to be had this time of year, but make sure you give your body time to digest in between. If we eat too much too frequently, we often end up eating more than we need and feel overstuffed. It is also important to slow down and savor the food you’re eating to prevent rushing through a meal. The more mindful we are of the food we’re eating, the more we can enjoy it.
Don’t be like Santa and eat all the cookies:
Portion control is your best friend when it comes to those holiday dishes. But just because you want to stay healthy doesn’t mean you can’t have a Christmas cookie. Remember it’s about moderation. A great way to reduce your portions is to opt for a smaller plate. This will allow you to eat the foods you enjoy while making sure your portions are reasonable. And when it comes to the sweets remember that one is fun! Whether it be one cookie, one slice, or even one bite, it’s important you enjoy all the treats within reason.
Gift yourself with personal time:
Self-love is the best love! Don’t forget to love yourself this holiday season. Taking a moment to check in with yourself, whether it’s a 10 minute walk or reading a few pages of a book, will help you remember to take time each day to prioritize yourself.
Deck the Halls with Hydration
This time of year is filled with festive beverages, which means water sometimes gets forgotten. It is important to remember to hydrate all day and have a glass of water for every alcoholic beverage to avoid dehydration. Following up a glass of wine or cocktail with a glass of H2O is an easy way to space out your spirits and meet your water needs.
Don’t skip out on sleep
It’s easy for our sleeping schedules to get thrown off by all the holiday cheer. However, getting a consistent 6-8 hours of sleep per night during the holiday season will allow you to feel energized for wrapping, cooking, and attending events. Studies have proven that sleep is often the missing key for achieving weight loss or health goals, making it extra important for you to sleep like a Christmas baby the next few months.
Imagine sitting down at your team meeting conference table at 8:30 am. You smell a lovely free buffet-style breakfast and can’t wait to dig in. Now you are told to get your breakfast plate together and sit back down but don’t start eating yet. This is how my (Lucy’s) first experience with mindful eating began. It was an interactive demonstration that our former director graciously coordinated for the Nutrition team.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting in front of my hot oatmeal thinking “okay lady, my oats are getting cold…” We were told to close our eyes and assess how hungry we feel on a scale of 1-10… and the oats got colder. Then, we were instructed to look at the food and smell it. Decide what we liked about the food on our plate (or bowl in my case). Now I’m thinking “I don’t care! I just want to eat.” Finally, she gave us permission to eat our first bite. Only one bite then set the utensil down to notice the taste, texture, temperature, etc.
All the while, we were sitting in the dark and not allowed to speak to our neighbors or have any distractions. We continued at this glacier pace of eating for the next 15 minutes – in dark silence. After about 7 minutes I got on my iPhone under the table and posted on Facebook that clearly, mindful eating was a new form of torture that I would not recommend.
For a bit of background, up to this point in my life, most of my meals were eaten while on the way to school or work, sitting at my desk, in front of the TV, or while socializing with my friends or family. So the idea of getting quiet and tuning into my hunger was completely foreign to me!
Fast forward several years, many books, and self-exploration later, I’ve come a long way. Since then, I have adopted my own mindful eating habits that are much less involved than the demonstration and can be done more easily in everyday life.
What is Mindful Eating?
It’s more than just slowing down. Eating mindfully is about awareness and intention. It calls for deliberate engagement on our part. It is making thoughtful decisions on what we gather, shop for, and select. The absence of mindful eating is eating with distraction, on autopilot, or letting your environment be the sole influence for your food choices. When we learn how to be mindful eaters, it allows us to make meaningful, clear choices about the food we’re eating and why.
What are the Core Principles of Mindful Eating?
Mindful eating can be a challenging topic for a lot of people, mainly because they are unsure of exactly what mindful eating means. The core principles of mindful eating are simple:
Bring awareness to nourishing properties of food through the process of food preparation and consumption
Select enjoyable and nutritious foods
Acknowledge food preferences non-judgmentally and give permission to enjoy fun foods
Recognize and honor physical hunger and satiety cues
Use wisdom to guide eating decisions
Mindless Eating
You can’t talk about mindful eating without discussing mindLESS eating. Mindless eating involves looking at environmental cues and triggers around eating and recognizing that you are often eating on autopilot. Without awareness and intention, your choices can easily be influenced by the outside world. This happens a lot when you are…
eating on the run (in the car)
eating while distracted (TV, phone, computer)
eating from large plates and/or buffet style
alcohol consumption and eating
Mindful eating involves making adjustments to avoid these triggers that may compel us to eat an unbalanced diet, eat too much, or both.
How do you practice mindful eating?
Here are Well Balanced Nutrition’s favorite tips for overcoming mindless eating using tools and adjustments you can make in your daily life.
Sit and savor your food – try not to eat standing up or at the counter. Make a true effort to sit at the table while eating.
Eat off of a plate [not out of the bag] – this will help you recognize and enjoy the food you’re eating by seeing what food is truly in front of you.
Do your best to avoid electronics when eating – focus on your meal by putting away the cell phone or TV – at least for a few minutes.
Eat from smaller plates or start with smaller portions. You can always refill after a mindful check-in with yourself.
Stock your environment with Well Balanced choices that you’re excited to eat.
How to become a more mindful eater?
It takes time and practice. Let us guide you on that journey with individual sessions. We’ll share strategies, help you take action, and keep you moving forward. Book a clarity call to get started today.
Who would have thought we’d be here? Suffering as a nation. Hunkering down for the safety of one another. Trying to stay connected while social distancing. Working, teaching, and schooling from home. Praying for the essential workers who are on the front lines and keeping the world going to the best of their ability.
During this crazy time, Well Balanced Nutrition is here to support healthy habits, provide clarity around food choices, and help you overcome stress eating. We know that change is tough. Adjusting to your new normal at home may be challenging. That’s why we are here to support our communities in Durham and Clemmons, North Carolina. We have the wellness tools and strategies that will help bring a bit of balance back to your life, help you feel comfortable and in control around food, and manage the stress and anxiety that this situation brings.
How can I keep my food safe during COVID19?
The Nutrition Source from Harvard Health has the low down on food safety. This article provides the answers to your questions including how long does coronavirus live on surfaces?
Try These Strategies for Managing Emotional Eating
We asked and we heard you say that being so close to your kitchen all day long is hard. The fun snacks are calling your name and the stress can lead you down a slippery slope of emotional eating. Here are some strategies you will find helpful as you try to manage those urges. Remember to be kind to yourself! We are all human and Well Balanced eating is not fail-proof. (Start here. If you are new to Well Balanced Nutrition or just need a refresher, start here with What the Heck is Well Balanced eating?)
Meditation is a great way to feel all the feels, release some of the anxiety and find your center again. Several companies have shared free resources to help you continue or start a mindfulness and meditation practice during COVID.
Running out of fresh Fruits and Veggies? How do you maintain a colorful diet full of produce when you are trying to avoid multiple trips to the store? One solution is to have your produce delivered! Below are several options or you may have a local farm near you that has a delivery box.
Hungryroot – get prepped veggies, sauces, and proteins delivered to your door
Winston – Farm Fresh Box to pick up at Saturday’s Cobble Stone Farmer’s Market.
If you buy more fresh produce (and other food items) than you can eat, make them last by sticking them in the freezer. Here is a resource to help you know what foods you can freeze and how.
Working with an extra tight budget now? Check out Struggle Meals. You’ll find super budget-friendly dishes in these free cooking episodes. Not too mention, he is so fun to watch!!
What are some healthy pantry foods?
Check out our healthy pantry staple checklist HERE.
Here are 4 more resources to help you cook from pantry staples.
Pantry Power – get access to our meal planning dashboard that is stocked full of pantry staples. If you are new to the platform, we are gifting you 30 days free. Use the code GIFT30
Still feeling overwhelmed? We understand. This is hard. If what you really need is someone to walk you through these wellness strategies and take it one baby step at a time, we can help you feel more Well Balanced and supported through our virtual nutrition coaching services. Reach out today for an appointment.
“I love you Binky, but I don’t have to like you right now.” -How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days
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How can I love and respect my body when I want it to be different?
Some days we feel fabulous in our body. Strong, vibrant, attractive and healthy. While the other days, we feel weak, bloated, unattractive and overall dissatisfied in our skin. It’s normal to go through these phases.
On the days that we feel the latter, which may be most days, we can work on improving our relationship with our body – even when we wish it would be different – by choosing love and respect.
Here are 5 ways to love and respect your body:
Gratitude – being grateful for our bodies may sound hard to do when you aren’t feeling good about yourself, but it’s a powerful mindset shift. When you choose to focus on the good things your body can do for you it can pull you out of the dumps. Try saying or writing this… “I choose to be grateful for my legs that allow me to walk or run.” “I choose to be thankful that my body was able to bring babies into the world.” “I choose to be grateful that my body allows me to lift my kids up, play basketball, do yoga, walk and play with my dog, etc.”
Stop comparing – “Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they’ll never be you.” Instead of comparing yourself to friends or what you see on social media, compare yourself to the person you were 1 year ago or 5 years ago. Have you become wiser, stronger, healthier or happier? Celebrate that progress! Take pride in any areas that you have grown. If you can’t find something to celebrate, explore what seems to be throwing you off course and be sure to pay close attention to #5.
Be respectful with your words and actions – When your friend is having a bad body image day – would you tear her down further or lift her up and try to show her that she is beautiful? If your son was feeling less than his peers, would you bully him about it or remind him of his strengths? We would never treat our loved ones the way we can treat ourselves sometimes. Take a step back and ask yourself, would I say or do this to someone else? Learn to be your own friend.
Shift the momentum – Sometimes, one feeling or event can trigger us into a downward spiral of shame, blame, and defeat. When you catch yourself in that downward motion, stop the momentum and take a single small step in the opposite direction. Say something nice to yourself, choose a balanced meal, or mindfully indulge a craving, move your body, get out and socialize, journal or call a friend. It usually just takes one step to shift your momentum. That one step will make it easier to take the next step up and so on.
Know the difference between perfectionism and healthy striving – Brene Brown taught me this life-altering lesson that is so profound for me. I think this concept sums up how we can love and respect our bodies, even when we might want to change something about them. It’s about avoiding perfectionism, and embracing our flaws while striving for improvement. You see, perfectionism is always wanting to avoid all flaws and imperfections. It’s wanting and expecting the unattainable. It’s the thought: “I won’t love myself until I lose 50lbs, have a booty like Beyonce, abs like a bodybuilder and be able to swing around on a pole like JLo at a halftime show. 🤪” Unless you have the money and time to spend uprooting your life to spend hours in the gym and on plastic surgery, for most of us that’s not likely to happen. On the contrary, healthy striving is setting stretch goals that might be challenging but can realistically be met with some effort. When you are striving for a healthier self, it looks and sounds more like this: “I love myself, flaws and all. Nobody is perfect. I want to feel good and be strong. I know that today I can challenge myself to be a bit better than I was yesterday. I know that mistakes are normal (they don’t indicate that I’m unworthy) and growth is possible.”
I hope these suggestions help you love and respect your body even on the days it’s hard. I also hope it helps you understand the concept of radical acceptance of every step along your journey AND a realistic desire for growth and improvement.
If you’ve been thinking lately “I could be healthier if only I wasn’t so lazy,” we’ve got just the guide for you. Below you will find a relatable story and the 3 steps to transform you from a lazy person to someone with momentum and healthier habits.
Recently, while talking with a busy small business owner, Kat Reher of Synergy Fitness for Her in Durham, Kat explained she would like to cook at home more consistently and states “but I’m just too lazy.”
To put things in perspective, this fun-loving, independent, and strong woman is not only running a fabulous fitness gym for women, but also is regularly adopting young kittens and helping find good homes for (or keeping) her furry friends. She may be up as early as 5 AM to help open the gym or cover a group fitness class then go to bed at 11 PM after wrapping up emails or other work tasks.
The point is, she is anything but lazy! We suspect the same is true for you.
Unless you’re living a life where you can lay on the sofa all day, not working, not making food for yourself or your family, and not cleaning up around the house you are probably quite busy and productive.
3 Steps To Overcome Lazy Vibes and Build Momentum
Stop calling yourself lazy.
It’s not helping you. As explained by Dr. Rick Hanson the author of Resilient, we all have an inner critic and an inner nurturer (or helper). Your inner critic is often louder than the nurturing voice. This critic is kind of mean and may sometimes call you fat, ugly, or lazy. It would be nice if we could just turn that voice off, but often the critic is stubborn and insists that if she was not there you’d be even worse. The key is to turn the volume down on this critical inner dialogue. Some find it helpful to say “cancel, cancel, cancel,” when the voice creeps in. Others, have a saying or mantra that turns the internal conversation around.
Find out why you’re *really* not doing what you say you want to do.
For instance, with our example above, Kat wants to prepare her own meals at home; however, she hates grocery shopping. The crowds and the abundance of choices are overwhelming and causes her to retreat to old habits like mac and cheese and chocolate ice cream. What is the biggest speed-bump or hurdle standing in the way of you making this change?
Identify how you prioritize.
If cooking dinner at home is important to you; however, you keep winding up in the fast food lane on the way home, convenience is driving your decision. Perhaps you haven’t yet mastered making quick and easy dinners at home and you don’t know where to start. It may also mean you are letting other things become a higher priority without stopping to think about it. We tend to do what we must do first, such as going to work, paying bills, feeding the kids, etc. The calendar then gets filled up with several other things squeezed in between. This often zaps our bandwidth or energy leaving us too drained to do the healthy habits we know are good for us.
Is it time to make a shift in your priorities or schedule? Are the things on your calendar truly what you want to prioritze? Are there new habits you could put on the calendar by first taking something off or breaking it down into baby steps?
Sometimes, we are in a season that doesn’t allow for all the healthy habits that we want to have. If that is the case for you right now, become OK with good enough. Before your inner critic chimes in to say good enough is not enough, what if you were to cook dinner at least two times a week instead of once a month? Wouldn’t that be better? Focus on progress, not perfection.
How to stop being lazy and gain some momentum toward healthy habits
To sumarize, first, stop calling yourself lazy! Every time you catch yourself saying that, make an intentional shift to listen to your nurturing voice instead. Thinking of what you would say to your best friend if she came to you with the same issue that you’re having. What would you say to her?
Then, get to the bottom of what is really preventing you from the habit you want to create and brainstorm how to overcome that barrier. Lastly, take a look at what you prioritize in your life. Is it time to take ownership and control of how you spend your days? What if even a small shift in your priorities could make a big impact in your health?
Have you ever bought fresh herbs at the grocery, used a few sprigs, then found them rotting away weeks later in your produce drawer? Herbs add flavor and nutrition to any meal, but paying $5 for two stems of rosemary is an expensive and wasteful proposition. Meanwhile herbs can be some of the easiest and most rewarding plants to grow in your garden.
Getting started
If you don’t have a kitchen garden, herbs can be grown in a pot on a sunny windowsill in the kitchen. I prefer to tuck them in the ground or in a pot in a sunny spot outdoors, keeping in mind that different herbs have different needs. Mint and parsley, for instance, can take a bit of shade in the south and prefer more water. Other woody herbs like rosemary, sage and lavender will suffer from too much water and prefer a well-draining, sandier soil. In general, potted plants need more watering than those growing in the ground.
Many woody herbs are perennial, which means they can last for years. Some only last a season or two. Annuals like cilantro prefer cool spring weather, while basil needs the heat of summer. Parsley is a biennial in the carrot family and will flower and die in its second year. Don’t be surprised, though, if it reseeds itself!
How to use herbs
Once you have herbs readily available, you’ll find yourself reaching for a few sprigs for most any meal. Herbs are delicious in soups, salads, eggs, mashed potatoes and grains, breads, and meats…the list goes on. Besides making food more flavorful, various herbs can be packed with vitamins A, B, C and K. Many are rich in polyphenols, those anti-inflammatory compounds that can help protect against cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, joint pain and other conditions.
Another good reason to grow herbs
Herbs also feed the bees and butterflies in your garden when they bloom. The caterpillars of the black swallowtail butterfly will feed on parsley and fennel, so I recommend putting in extra plants to share the bounty. If you’re not sure about your green thumb, start with one potted plant and grow from there. Even if it doesn’t survive as long as you hoped, you are sure to get plenty of enjoyment and use out of growing your own kitchen herbs.
About the Author:
Brandee Gruener When she’s not blogging for Greener Gardens, Brandee Gruener is a freelance writer and editor who specializes in gardening, food and sustainable living. Brandee also offers consulting services to homeowners who would like to grow a greener garden.
