You can enjoy the holidays without regressing on your fitness and overindulging in excess—here’s how!
The holiday season is typically seen as the best time to indulge and be merry with drinks and lots and lots of food. However, for anyone trying to stick to a workout routine, this season could also set your progress back if you overindulge in fatty foods and stay cooped up on your couch. If you want to be mindful of your active lifestyle, continue reading for tips on how to stay healthy while ultimately enjoying yourself this holiday season. These tips are also useful for getting a headstart on your New Year’s resolution to be healthier and fitter.
Avoid sitting down all day
While good advice year-round, it’s particularly tempting to be lethargic during the holidays since there’s less work to be done. To help remind yourself to move around once in a while, get a fitness tracker from Garmin, for example, or use wellness apps to hold yourself accountable relative to your goals. Notably, apps like Insight Timer can encourage you to move more by introducing you to helpful yoga poses in classes. You can also do mini HIIT workouts to stay in shape, as instructed by Coach Eduardo Lara on Rebel’s Instagram page. Remember, any movement is better than none.
Find vegan alternatives
Knowing how unhealthy certain Filipino dishes can be, it would also be helpful to find vegan alternatives for them to ensure balanced meals throughout the holiday season. Known vegan alternatives include using tofu as a replacement for meat in dishes like barbecue, or mushroom as a replacement for animal-based gravy. Notably, mushrooms are rich in B vitamins and tofu is heart-healthy, high in protein, and can taste just as good as animal-derived meat so long as it’s marinated or seasoned well.
Making home-cooked meals is also a great bonding activity between family and friends, and encourages mindfulness since you become more aware of what you eat. That being said, you can also opt for Paella de Pio’s “Paella Setas” for the holidays. It’s saffron-infused paella rice that is then topped with roasted garlic, mushrooms, pimento, and a drizzle of balsamic glaze.
Take your vitamins
Keeping up with your daily supplements is also a good tip for the whole year, but is especially important during the holiday season when your overall well-being can still be threatened by illness. If you don’t have supplements included in your daily routine already, you can look into food supplements like JLo Organics’ Vitale Rich as it’s helpful in ensuring balanced nutrition, or their Vitale Forte that contains antivirals. You can also ask for advice from your fitness coach or doctor when looking for supplements aimed to improve your gut health and metabolism to make sure that everything you put in your body is good for you and your goals.
Stay hydrated
Last but not least, remember to stay hydrated, especially when you’re out drinking with your family and friends. Make sure that you drink enough water to counterbalance the alcohol in your system since alcohol dehydrates you at a much quicker rate than other liquids. Alternatively, you can drink mocktails, which are non-alcoholic cocktails that typically replace ingredients like tequila and vodka with sparkling water or juice.
