Nervous About Remaining Healthy During the Holidays?

How can you keep up with a healthy lifestyle as the New Year is approaching and all the holiday parties are starting? Well, in spite of all the office parties and holiday gatherings you can still maintain a healthy lifestyle.

10 Tips to Being Healthy During the Holidays

Here are 10 tips to enjoy your holidays and still maintain health and wellness.

1. . Eat Before You Party – Eating several small meals during the day will keep your metabolism running smoothly and efficiently. By skipping meals, you are in effect slowing down your metabolism making it hard for your body to burn the calories, thus converting it into fat. As we get older this process of metabolism gets harder and harder to keep at its optimum speed. So if you think that you are saving your calories for the party, you are doing more harm than good for your general wellness.

2. Appetizers or Hors d’oeuvres – The best choice is raw vegetables. Select ones that are high in fiber, like broccoli and cauliflower. This will help keep you fuller, thus prevent overeating. When choosing a dip, choose hummus which contains the good fat, monounsaturated fats.

3. Carb Careful Snacks – As a rule, carbohydrates do not make you feel as full as fats. As a result you will probably overeat on carbs thus increasing the amount of calories you are eating. Select carbs that contain vitamins and fiber, like fruits, rather than those that have very little nutritional value, like pretzels or chips. Select snacks that contain healthy fat sources such as walnuts, almonds or avocados.

4. Healthy Entrees – Choose fish over red meats. Select a fish, like salmon, that is high in healthy omega-3s. Omega-3 is shown to reduce the risk of heart disease and sudden cardiac death. To learn more about fish and heart health read Omega-3 in fish: How eating fish helps your heart.

5. Colorful Veggies – The more colorful the vegetable, the healthier it is for you. Very colorful vegetables contain the healthy antioxidants that are good for heart health. Steaming your veggies is the healthiest but be careful not to overdo as you will then steam out the nutrients.

6. Holiday Spirits – When it comes to drinks, the wise choices are red wine or dark beer. This is because it contains more antioxidants or flavonoids than any other alcoholic beverages. Having a maximum of 8 ounces of wine, a 12 ounce bottle of beer or 2 shots of spirits a day is a healthy dose to wellness. Read more about how red wine is heart healthy.

7. Sweet Desserts – Dark Chocolate! Pure dark chocolate contains a very high amount of antioxidant, thus making it very heart healthy. Yes you can have your chocolate and eat it too.

8. Bagel Breakfasts – The average bagel contains more than 200 calories before the butter and cream cheese! The favorite topping can add another 50-100 calories. Do you think lox is healthy because it’s salmon? Wrong, 75% of the omega-3s are lost during the smoking process.

9. Exercise – Aerobic exercise, running or walking are great ways to work off those holiday calories. Keep track of your daily activity. A pedometer will help you keep track of how many steps you take during the whole day. There are about 2,000 steps per mile. For optimal wellness, take about 6,000-10,000 steps daily.

10. Enjoy yourself – Being happy, smiling and even laughing is a great way to keeping healthy. A recent study demonstrated that laughing during mealtime reduce the surge in blood sugar levels. So enjoy yourself with your family and friends and laugh!

Diet Wise – Healthy Smart

If you slipped on the holiday rollercoaster, no worries! Vitality for Life is a great program to help you get rid of those extra holiday pounds. This program encourages you to log in every day for 90 days. For every day you log in, they pay you $1 after the 90th day. Find out more about Vitality for Life and read all about the success stories and why everyone loves this program.

Let’s stay healthy together!