Self Care During the Holidays
SELF-CARE DURING THE HOLIDAYS
Daily schedules can quickly become overloaded with the responsibilities of the holidays, such as shopping, cooking, wrapping, and planning. As a result, it's easy to push self-care needs, like regular exercise, to the bottom of the list to avoid overburdening.
However, skipping workouts might make it harder for our bodies and minds to cope with additional holiday stressors.
Utilizing the less-is-more principle when working out will help prevent schedule overload without compromising your health. Additionally, this will help you lower stress and protect your general well-being.
#1 Take Time To De-Stress
Despite all the good intentions, the holidays can be hard on our physical and mental health. Family obligations like grocery shopping and meal preparation produce stressors of various kinds, and we are also more likely to indulge in high-fat, high-sugar foods and alcohol consumption.
Plus, winter's shorter, dimmer days only make it worse for some people.
Taking deliberate breaks from mental and physical energy expenditure is crucial to recover from stress. Of course, recovery should always come first, but the holidays are especially vital. As a result, in this instance, more is better than less.
Unplugging is essential at least once a day. That entails stepping away, at least for a short period, from all of your obligations, including your phone, to refresh your body and mind. You can accomplish this through breathing exercises or meditation, walking, or lounging comfortably.
#2 Get Enough Sleep
Keep sleep in your schedule because your body needs it to repair and renew itself. Plus, a lack of sleep can affect our moods, memory, and concentration ability.
Set a timer to remind yourself to go to bed and get at least 7 hours of rest. This will lessen the listed symptoms and make you feel less sluggish.
Even better, it will make you feel more at ease and supply you with energy all day long.
#3 Get A Short HIIT Workout In
Make an effort to find four minutes to exercise a few times per week, even at the busiest time of the year. And with high-intensity interval exercise or HIIT, less really is more. Studies have shown that HIIT is more effective in reducing visceral (or belly) fat without dietary changes and can burn 25%.
That’s why four-minute HIIT workouts could be your time-effective plan for remaining in shape over the holidays if you're up for the challenge.
For instance, mountain climbers and jumping jacks are two extraordinarily different yet practical total-body exercises you can alternate between to get an effective workout.
#4 Optimize Your Screen Time
While it may seem like a habit, using your smartphone is usually more of a time waster rather than an essential component of your routine. Additionally, many people report increased mobile screen use in the weeks before the holidays. Whether they are online shopping, responding to texts, or scanning social media to see what their friends are doing for the holidays, many people unavoidably spend a sizable portion of the day staring at their phones.
What if you could optimize your health for even a tiny portion of that time and convince yourself not to stare at your phone too much?
How?
By including core, leg, and posture-improving wall sits in your smartphone time.
The difficulty of wall sits is intentional. You will only want to hold them for a short time. Therefore, if you combine them with smartphone use, you'll probably cut down on scrolling time merely to avoid them, which is sometimes good, especially for your mental health.
It only takes a more systematic approach to training to stay in shape over the holidays rather than depriving yourself of all the goodies the season offers. And by using the advice above, you can improve your lifestyle and benefit yourself long after the holidays.