Tips and Tricks For Staying Healthy During the Holidays

Last week I wrote a bit about the danger of “playing the victim”–you know the old “Poor, poor me,”  mantra. And now the day after Thanksgiving–the time of the year of family, food, fun as well as being thankful–I want to write about FOOD.  Yes, we all need it and yesterday most of us probably ate too much of it!  Yes, we can say “Hey, we were victims of the great aromas and flavors! How could we resist? Besides it’s the time of the year to celebrate!” but that isn’t going to help your health or waistline. Now I don’t want to take the pleasure and joy away from this wonderful time of the year, but maybe my few words in this post can help make this holiday season a bit healthier and give you a head start with your New Year’s resolutions.

There is a great little trick that can help you steer away from those delicious, tempting treats that pop up all over the place around the holidays as well as helping you avoid temptation all year long.  I learned about this little trick from David DiSalvo’s book What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should do the Opposite.

DiSalvo says in chapter 15 of his book, “If you imagine looking at a tempting treat, your desire for it will increase. But research indicates that if you imagine eating the same treat, your desire will lessen.  The reason is that to our brains, imagining an action and doing it are not too dissimilar.  We can trick ourselves into feeling like we’ve already enjoyed the treat, leaving our brain with less reason to target the genuine article.”  It’s a very simple little trick but it works. Try it. If you keep doing it over and over again, it’ll become a habit so you can easily avoid temptation during the holiday season and will continue doing so into 2014.

I would also like to refer you to page 78 and 79 in my book How to Ignite Your Passion for Living. These 2 pages have been highly instrumental and very motivating to me. They have helped keep me slim and trim and in great health which is especially important to me now as I am only 131 days from turning the BIG 70!  Page 78 lists 15 big benefits that you get from doing a periodic “fast”—even for just 24 hours and page 79 lists 14 benefits from following a calorie restricted diet.  Every time I review these lists it pumps me up and helps me stay on a path of good healthy eating habits.  I am very confident that reviewing these 2 lists can do the same for you. And this time of year, we can use all the help we can get!

If you don’t have my book How to Ignite Your Passion for Living or you do have it but you have a person or two on your gift list that you know will benefit from reading it, you can buy a copy on my website here. Now that’s some easy shopping!