The Benefits Of Healthy Eating During The Holidays
The holidays are a time for family, friends, and of course, food. While it's tempting to indulge in all of your favorite comfort foods during this time, it's important to remember the importance of healthy eating. By incorporating some healthy foods into your holiday diet, you can feel better both mentally and physically. Keep reading for a few tips on how to make healthy eating during the holidays easier than ever!
1. Improved mood and energy
Healthy foods that contain lean protein and veggies provide your body with the nutrients it needs to stabilize metabolic functions, which results in making you and your body feel good! This means an improved mood and the energy you need to get through the holidays and into the New Year!
2. Heart health
Cutting back on all those foods we often over-indulge in during the holidays and substituting with healthier options is great for cardiovascular health. Proper nutrition helps you to maintain a good blood pressure level and reduces risk of heart attack or stroke. In fact, in another article: 5 Foods To Avoid During The Holiday Season for a Healthier Period And Why, I shared briefly how consuming foods unfriendly to our heart health and hormonal imbalances can actually increase our risks of cardiovascular disease!
3. Improved memory
Yes! Foods that help your heart also help your brain. Maintaining a healthy diet can help keep your memory sharp and also keep signs of dementia completely at bay. Brain fog is a real problem for most women, and truthfully, it's something that I used to struggle with so horribly when I was younger - especially in my luteal phase! But eating a hormone-friendly diet all year round, including the holidays, can be helpful in ensuring that your digestive system stays clean and clear of toxic sludge, hormones, and damage than can contribute to decreased memory functions and thinking ability!
4. Weight loss
Obviously, a huge benefit of eating healthy through the holidays can result in weight loss (instead of the usual holiday weight gain we’ve all experienced before)! Eating a diet with plenty of nutrients (think fruits and veggies) and fiber can help you feel fuller longer, thus eating fewer calories, and leading to weight loss. You’ll also be much less likely to indulge in sweets if you’re feeling full via the essential nutrients!
Many of my clients struggle to eat the recommended 7-13 servings of fruits and veggies every day, including a wide variety of nutrient-rich and fresh ones. That's why I recommend a simple supplement that can help them get the nutrient and anti-oxidant benefits of fruits and veggies! It's a bonus that recent research on the products has shown that they improve metabolic function, increase lean body mass, and support the body in using insulin effectively. You can check out My #1 Recommended Supplement Line and try a no-risk order today!
5. Cancer prevention
Although many of us are not necessarily thinking about cancer around the holidays, it's important to recognize that our daily choices add up. If you're currently eating a nutrient-poor diet, any additional unhealthy choices you make over the holidays will continue to tip the scales in favour of illness and disease.
According to reports, eating a healthy diet may relate to cancer prevention. This is because eating healthy can also prevent obesity, which is directly linked to a higher risk of cancer. Fruits, veggies, and nuts are some foods that can also help lower the risk of liver and colorectal cancers, specifically.
So does that mean we can never eat any unhealthy foods?? No, It's all about moderation. One thing that I tend to see this time of year is women just throwing away their goals and commitments to their health, with the intention of 'restarting' in January. This is not the best mindset to have when it comes to our health because we're more likely to continue to 'diet' rather than take a lifestyle, holistic approach, to our health.
One amazing analogy that I teach many of my clients looks like this: If you were to eat McD's every meal for a whole year, but had ONE salad during that year, are you going to be healthy?
No, of course not. It's a start in the right direction, but it's not the end-all solution, either!
The same goes in the opposite direction. If you're committing to eating healthier more times of the year, then a few treats here are there are not going to push you over the edge of illness and disease.
Now, if you're dealing with a medical condition or you know what foods cause you symptomatic flare-ups, then you may want or have to be more mindful of the foods you choose to eat this holiday season. And don't worry, I'm right there with you. Once I learned which foods were causing me serious problems, it actually became very easy to keep away from them and avoid them like the plague!
Healthy eating is a necessity during the holidays, but it doesn't have to be hard. With some planning and creativity, you can enjoy your favorite holiday staples while also remaining mindful of what's going into your body.
If you're ready to start your health journey (or maintain it), and you're needing direction, guidance, accountability, support, meal plans, or help discovering YOUR trigger foods, book a free discovery call with me to learn the many different ways we can work together to achieve this!
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There is nothing like a good spinach dip on the table that screams holiday parties! As a die-hard cheese lover before moving to a plant-based diet, this was one that took me a long time to let go of when I was transitioning. I used to tell myself: "oh it's okay, I haven't had much dairy lately, I'll be fine". How wrong I was! A1 dairy proteins have caused me a lot of hormone havoc, and I'm not alone, plenty of women struggle with their hormones because of A1 proteins. So when I came across this recipe, I was pleased that I'd still be able to enjoy my favourite holiday dip without the pain and hell I had attached to it!
Not everyone loves mushrooms, but I think we can all agree that a party isn't complete if there isn't a tray of stuffed mushrooms on the table! They're a tasty little appetizer and a great way to add some non-traditional veggies to your snacks!
Skip the gluten-loaded crackers and white bread this year and try using sweet potato instead! This tasty little recipe is so simple to make and can be dressed up or dressed down to your liking.
I promise you, there's no crab in this little snack, but it's not lacking flavour! If you really want that fishy taste, you can even sprinkle in some kelp flakes to deepen the flavour of this dish!
