The holiday season can be a magical time filled with joy, celebrations, and togetherness. However, it can also be a period where routines and habits fall by the wayside, making it harder to stay on track with personal goals.
Whether it’s maintaining your healthy habits, managing stress, or feeling good about your choices, the key to a fulfilling holiday season lies in setting realistic goals.
How do you support a healthy balance of fun festivities and honor your healthy living goals too? With the help of these 7 simple tips!
1. Start Small and Be Specific
A common mistake during the holidays is setting overly ambitious or vague goals. The result? Disappointment when things don’t go as planned. Instead, aim to break larger goals into smaller, more manageable, and specific tasks.
Examples of Small Goals:
If your goal is to stay active, commit to walking 20 minutes a day instead of planning hour-long gym sessions that might not fit into your busy holiday schedule.
Rather than trying to cut out sugar during the season, decide to limit sweets to special occasions, like holiday parties or special family dinners.
Why It Works: Small, specific goals feel more manageable making them easier to achieve, which helps build momentum and confidence in your ability to support your goals and enjoy the season too.
2. Be Realistic About Time
The holiday season is often packed with events, family commitments, travel, and preparations. Recognizing that your time is limited will help you set more realistic and attainable goals.
Adjust Your Expectations: If you usually work out five times a week, maybe aim for three workouts during the holidays. If you wind up with more time, you can always add more, but leaving a bit of a time buffer allows room for the unexpected when it pops up.
Focus on the Essentials: Prioritize the most important tasks. If a particular goal is more important to you, set aside and schedule time for it, creating boundaries to then honor that carved out time.
3. Aim For Balance, Not Perfection
The holidays are about enjoyment and spending time with others, and aiming for perfection can set you up for frustration. Focus on maintaining a healthy balance of self-care and enjoying the season, rather than trying to stick rigidly to your normal day to day routine.
Plan For Indulgence: It’s okay to indulge during the holiday season. The goal is not to eliminate healthy habits or throw caution to the wind, but to find a balance of fun and health that works for you. By planning for fun, you'll find you feel more in control, and when you feel in control, you act in control.
Set Flexible Goals: Life happens, especially around the holidays. Allow room for flexibility. For example, if you’re trying to stick to a healthy food plan but when you arrive at a social gathering you can't seem to find much that works with your plan, look for your best options and practice portion sizing, realizing that one meal won't make or break your progress.
4. Focus on Habits, Not Outcomes
One of the best ways to stay grounded during the holidays is to focus on building simple and sustainable habits rather than trying to achieve specific outcomes. This makes goals more manageable and less dependent on immediate results or "perfect" circumstances.
Shift Your Mindset: Instead of saying, “I need to lose five pounds this month,” reframe the goal as, “I will focus on eating more vegetables and moving my body daily.” This allows you to stay positive and committed to the habits that will support your larger goal, even if the desired outcome takes just a bit longer to achieve.
Celebrate Small Wins: Every healthy meal, every 15-minute walk, and every act of self-care counts. Celebrating these small daily wins reinforces positive behavior and helps you maintain motivation.
5. Prepare for Challenges
Let’s face it, the holidays come with plenty of temptations, distractions and stressors. By acknowledging potential challenges, you can prepare simple strategies to help you overcome them.
A Few Common Holiday Challenges:
Overeating: Plan ahead by eating a small, healthy snack before attending parties or family gatherings. While at gatherings, drink lots of water and load up fresh foods first.
Skipping Workouts: Pack your workout clothes when traveling or instigate a family activity like taking a walk around the neighborhood to stay active. Get your workout in early so you won't be tempted to avoid it or "too busy" to get it in later.
Lack Of Sleep: Avoid late nights of food and drink, holiday movies marathons and online shopping and head to bed instead. The more rested you are, the easier it is to make healthy choices and navigate holiday stressors.
Why It Works: Setbacks happen, but they don’t need to define your success. Instead of feeling discouraged by a missed workout or a day of eating too much, prepare yourself to bounce back the next day, realizing one mis-step doesn’t mean all of your progress is gone or your goal is ruined.
6. Create a Support System
Accountability and support are crucial for staying on track with your goals, especially during a busy season like the holidays.
Share Your Goals: Tell friends or family members about your goals so they can support you and help you stay on track. Whether it’s a workout buddy, someone to meal plan with, or just someone who understands your wellness goals, having support makes it easier to stick to your plans.
Set Collective Goals: Involve others in your goal setting. For instance, you can decide to cook a healthy holiday dinner with friends, organize a healthy snack rotation with co-workers, or implement an evening family walk.
7. Practice Self-Compassion
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, things don’t go as planned. The holidays can already be a stressful time, and adding self-imposed pressure can lead to burnout. Being kind to yourself is key to maintaining your well-being.
Let Go of All-or-Nothing Thinking: Just because you missed one workout, at one too many cookies, or didn't get enough sleep one day, doesn't mean that you've failed. What about all the other moments, choices and efforts you've made? Acknowledge all of your efforts each day and give yourself credit for what you have achieved.
Focus on Enjoyment: The holidays are about joy, family, and connection. Don’t let your goals become a source of stress. Remember, you can adjust your goals if necessary, keeping them small, simple and doable. The ultimate goal is to enjoy this special time while feeling a sense of balance that enables you to show up as the best version of you!
Conclusion: Setting realistic goals during the holiday season is all about balance. By starting small, being specific, and allowing for flexibility, you can support your healthy living goals and enjoy the holidays too, without the fear, frustration and overwhelm. The holiday season is a time to be present with others and celebrate special moments, and with the right mindset, you can enjoy it all fully while still honoring your health and wellness goals.
Comments