Happy Thursday!! Holidays are here, we are moving through them fast as ever, and I think that it’s important to acknowledge the different feelings, thoughts, and motivations when it comes to how health fits into the holidays. 

The reason behind this article is to shine some light on very common feelings and thoughts when it comes to the holidays and how we manage our health and fitness, or whether we do at all (I have some thoughts about this that I would love to run by you, so if you are one of the people who tend to go “wild” during the holidays and completely forget about health and fitness in the name of January 1st being right around the corner, this is for you!). A great deal of this is going to be my own personal thoughts and feelings around this time of the year (which really isn’t my favorite if I’m being completely honest). Hopefully some of the things you read will help you feel more heard and understood, less alone, more validated, possibly baffled (if we think very differently), and allow you to put some thoughts and feelings into words to analyze and change if need be. 

I personally do not enjoy the holidays. There seems to be a cloudy, foggy feeling of grogginess and borderline-depression that everyone gets stuck in during this time, even those that absolutely LIVE for the holidays tend to feel the lack of motivation and drive to get up off the couch and turn off Elf. This is most likely from the colder and darker weather, the lack of Vitamin D from the sun to give us energy and boost our immune systems, and the overall tiredness from working or going to school all year round. Things that used to drive us seem to have lost their touch, and discipline begins to become VERY important if we have any hope of maintaining our current fitness, or progressing towards long-term goals. 

There is brightness, however. This is a time where it is a very good idea to allow ourselves rest and time to recover. I very recently read a quote that went something like this: “Allowing yourself rest doesn’t mean taking your foot off the gas, it means putting fuel in the tank” (Unknown Author). This I feel is the perfect way to describe what this time of year is for. The good news is that if you do feel as if you get stuck in the funk of the holidays, then you probably feel the burst of movement and excitement about starting “fresh” on January 1st. Even if you aren’t the type of person to make New Year’s resolutions, you can’t help but get caught up in the energy of the New Year anyway. That can be utilized very easily and efficiently, as long as you use some of this time of rest to give yourself a bit of structure. (I feel like this would be a good place to pause and remind you that I am no expert in efficiency and time management, or an expert in really anything at all; I am merely a personal coach and martial arts instructor who has been through many of these kinds of seasons, and is expressing my own beliefs and ideas and feelings about what could possibly help). 

You could start a fire (in the fireplace of course, we aren’t trying to become a bunch of pyromaniacs here), grab a cozy blanket, a hot cup of something (coffee, tea, Bailey’s (I’m not judging), hot chocolate), a notebook and pen, and an idea of a fun, restful activity you get to look forward to post-planning session. From there write down what makes you the most excited (usually), even if it feels slightly dulled during this time. Imagine where you would be excited to see yourself, and who you would be excited to realize you are, and start writing down some big goals. Then put them into categories, and give yourself a rough outline on how you could get there. And then put the notebook and pen down, finish off your Bailey’s, and go do that fun, relaxing activity you planned on doing as a treat afterwards. And that’s it! You’re set up as much as you need to be before the 1st. You have a path, and a semi-plan/draft of who you want to be and what area of your life you’d like to move into next. When you gain all that energy and drive in January, you can start creating better drafts of your game plan and start putting some things to action. 

So what I just talked about is what I feel would be helpful if you prefer to allow yourself to rest more during the holidays and give yourself a chance to put more fuel in the tank (for me, fuel is structure, hence the notebook and draft-writing). I still highly recommend that you continue doing the bare minimum (which is different for everyone) when it comes to maintaining your fitness, so you feel good and don’t have the feeling of needing to “catch up” after going “crazy” during the holidays. Your future self will thank you, trust me. Some things to do to maintain your current health would be continuing to drink water regularly, stay around calorie maintenance (while still allowing yourself treats), prioritize protein, and exercising in some way (whether that be a gym routine, yoga class, walk, etc.) daily. These small, easily doable tasks are a great way to give yourself leniency to enjoy the holidays, while still being able to maintain your current health and fitness level with the most minimum effort, and allow yourself rest and to feel good overall. 

The other side of the spectrum would probably be those of you that feel like you NEED to continue pushing the same way you have been all year to get to your goals. I totally hear you. I hear you loud and clear. I, too, was one of those people, and at times still am. First of all, I absolutely respect and love the drive you have to want to keep going hard all the time, whether that drive comes from excitement or a deep need to prove yourself. If this is you and you feel you still have a great balance between work, exercise, and all of life’s joys, and you are truly content with going hard at all times, then great. You can skip this section! If you can tell you do NOT have a good balance, and feel really really shitty about yourself if you do not meet your own expectations of yourself (even the most ridiculously difficult and overwhelming ones), then this next part can hopefully help you or give you some insight! 

Something that has helped me tremendously is by looking at things way further out. It’s really hard to see the outcome from making certain decisions or changes if you’re stuck in your own “reality” and not the actual, true reality. Let’s think about what going hard all the time and never allowing yourself rest will accomplish. Let’s take a hard look at this, where you go hard all year round, don’t rest unless forced to, and then feel bad about yourself when you very validly don’t get certain tasks done or meet intense expectations that you set for yourself. Growth happens when we rest; this comes to muscle building, learning and memorizing, and so much more. We work hard, then we have to rest equally as hard to be able to take in all the new lessons learned and replenish the muscles and heal them so they grow. (In case you were wondering, this is scientifically proven, and I highly recommend looking it up if you don’t believe me; PubMed is a great site for that). What happens if we never rest? We never grow. Our muscles are always tired and worn out, we don’t get good workouts, we don’t get to heal, our memory is worse, we aren’t able to hold onto or put to action lessons we learned, and overall if you keep forcing yourself to go hard, it gets more and more difficult because you get TIRED, and burnt out in the end. And this keeps happening until our body FORCES us to rest, either by physically getting us sick or mentally breaking down. I speak of this so intensely because for a great deal of my life I have lived it. And I can understand how hard it is to see the damage we’re doing to ourselves until we zoom out and realize. 

A mindset shift that helped me tremendously was obtained by zooming out and asking yourself what the point of life was. I personally do not believe it is to suffer and grind your entire life, especially when death is imminent. (Tough and intense turn here). Rest is good; it feels good, and it rewards you by building your muscles bigger and stronger, allowing you to gain skill and brain power to learn, and by making you feel REALLY good when you are well-rested. Things tend to fall into place when you’re well-rested, and there’s a reason for that. When you’re not, you tend to get sick, be cranky, lack brain power to learn any new skills, and feel icky overall. So, rest. At first it might be hard, especially if you are used to grinding all the time and tend to feel restless and unhappy when you feel like you aren’t going enough, but just like any new skill, you will learn. This is where therapy can play a major role as well; your therapist can help you talk through thoughts and feelings that may not be helpful or accurate, and allow you to learn to rest much quicker and more efficiently. 

This post is going to have an abrupt end to it, and this is it! I hope some of this gave you insight into thoughts or feelings you may be having during this time, and hopefully made you feel more seen, heard, and/or understood. It took me a very long time to realize I wasn’t alone in these types of thought patterns, and once I did and once I started therapy it helped tremendously. Now I feel much more comfortable allowing myslef rest, and I am able to see the signs of when I need it, and when I don’t. 

Have a wonderful Holiday Season everyone!! And please, rest. Rest, while still keeping yourself healthy with the most basic and necessary health tips I talked about above. It will make your rest “restier”, trust me! 

-Taylor