Reduce Holiday Stress with 5 Easy Tips

 

The holidays can be stressful in a normal year. With all of the events of 2020, this year may be more stressful than normal. Sometimes this holiday stress can cause us to feel like throwing in the towel and completely giving up on all the health goals we have spent the year working towards. Combat holiday stress and stay on course with these five tips.

5 Tips to Reduce Holiday Stress

1. Positive Mindset

Our mindset plays a huge role in the amount of stress that we feel and how it affects you. If you are in an area that is putting restrictions on whether or not you can get together with family, it could be raising your stress levels. It may also be leading you to start focusing on all the negative things going on. Once this starts, it is really a downhill spiral.

Gratitude

Gratitude is really the antidote to a negative spiral. It even helps to combat holiday stress. I recently uploaded a video about ways to develop a gratitude practice. I will link that here. 

 

Realizing you have entered the negative spiral is the first step. Then intentionally taking steps to turn it around is what you need to do to change your mindset. Start to focus on things you are grateful for. This will put you into a better mindset and will improve your outlook on life 

Journaling 

Writing in a gratitude journal regularly can so be helpful on so many levels. If I were to ask you if you have anything to be thankful for, your immediate answer would be yes. However, how long would it take for you to name ten specific things?

Writing it down helps to bring these things to the front of your mind. Writing them in a journal also serves as a place where you can go to reflect on your daily blessings when you find yourself spiraling into that negative mindset.

2. Meal Planning

If you set any goals to improve your health this year, healthy eating was probably a part of that plan. When you start to feel that holiday stress, it is easy to begin emotionally eating. This is a huge problem for me. 

To make matters worse, when it is happening around the holidays, there is even more access to yummy treats that are both high in sugar and fat.

I have heard that the average person gains 5 – 10 pounds over the holiday season. As I was looking into the research on this, multiple sources said that is not true and that the average person really only gains around a pound. 

That being said, with the year we have just gone through, I can see 5-10 pounds being more accurate this year. That could be catastrophic, particularly if you happened to gain a bit of weight during the first “lockdown.”

One way to combat this problem is to continue to meal plan even though it is the holiday season. I eat so much healthier when I have planned out my meals and I do some meal prepping. If you are intentionally planning your meals, it will allow you the flexibility to still enjoy the holiday treats in moderation.

If you have never attempted meal planning before, the holiday season might be a great time to start. Many people have some extra time off and it could give you some time to try out this skill.

You may even find that you want to continue meal planning because it saves money and helps you stay on track with healthy eating.

It may sound like a daunting task, but I promise you that it is achievable. Like most things, you can go as deep and detailed as you want.

If you are someone who prefers a more basic approach, keep it simple with predictable meals. If you like to try new things, add in some new recipes. It really can be tailored to exactly what you need. 

 

 

3. Movement

It probably seems obvious, but movement has so many benefits for keeping you healthy. It reduces holiday stress, helps you feel more motivated, and improves your overall outlook on life. This tends to be harder to do during the wintertime because many of us live in areas where it is cold, wet, and dark early. 

Don’t allow these to be obstacles that keep you sedentary during the holiday season.

I hear the protests now…don’t you know that the gyms are closed and I can’t work out? This may be true for your area. However, there are still options. Look for some nice days when you can go for a walk outside. Even a couple of laps around the block can invigorate you.

There are also many workouts you can do at home that don’t require any special equipment. You can find these videos on YouTube. 

If you don’t feel like doing a full-blown workout, you can always engage in some stretching or foam rolling. Anything that engages your muscles will help your body to feel better.

This just takes a bit more effort during the winter. However, once you complete the activity, you will feel so good. That holiday stress will seem like a distant memory! 

4. Hobbies 

Hobbies…who have time for them any more? You could have time for them! Remember how you had that special hobby that was so much fun? Remember how it used to relax you and you felt like the stress just melted away?

If you are not going anywhere over the holiday season, you may have some extra time at home. Use this time to resume your favorite hobby.

Or maybe you realize you don’t actually have a hobby. Take some time to study what it is you want to do. Learn something new. Not only will your brain be growing, but you will also be relieving that extra holiday stress.

Additionally, if your hands are busy with something, you won’t be mindlessly eating either. There are so many benefits to this area. 

5. Reflection 

Take some time to reflect on the past year. What goals did you set for yourself at the beginning of the year? Are you still working towards those goals? Did they completely get tossed out the window?

Do be careful that you don’t start going down the path of negativity about how this year prevented you from reaching your goals. You may have had some derailments this year. It is okay! There is still time to regroup and move forward towards reaching them.

The main purpose of this reflection is to celebrate victories, see what you are still working on, and determine if some of the unattained goals are important enough to work on next year. This is more of a fact-finding mission so that you can prepare to set goals and create a plan for the upcoming year.

Many of us are planners. I find that holiday stress is greatly reduced if I can focus my energies on planning for the future. This can bring feelings of hope!

Conclusion

Whatever the holidays might look like for you, just know that you are not alone in feeling a wide range of emotions. It can be hard to know what to do with yourself. I hope these 5 tips were helpful and give you some ideas about how you can combat holiday stress.

If you have some other tips feel free to share them in the comment! Have a great holiday season!