Tips to have a healthier holiday season

Ok, it’s holiday time! You’ve survived Thanksgiving...maybe you’ve gorged a bit… and now you’re facing holiday party after holiday party, sweet office treats, and time crunches that crimp your workout style.

Everyone complains about overindulging during the holiday season. I get it. You’re confronted with so many options and often you say, ‘Why not? It’s just this one time.’ But, in reality, it’s not. Day after day goes by as you overindulge more and more. Suddenly, you get to the end of the year and you feel like crap.

With a little bit of planning and attention to some detail, you can have fun throughout the holiday season, while keeping yourself healthy at the same time.

Here are a few holiday tips I use to keep myself on the straight and narrow during the holiday season:

Healthy Eating. This is the most important. You are what you eat and that could not be more true during this time of year. With sugar and alcohol and snacking available to you practically 24/7, it becomes so hard to say no all of the time. But, I’ve come up with a few tips to help out with some of this temptation.

• Tip 1: Vigilance and Planning. Let’s face it, being healthy takes a lot of vigilance and planning, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge this. You can more easily stay in line if you are always aware of what you’re putting in your mouth, and you’re thinking through your week so that you can plan your food accordingly. I like to look at my week and what holiday events I need to attend, and think about when I might get hungry. If I know an event is taking place during the evening, I always grab a grab and go snack (handful of nuts, piece of fruit (or dried fruit), etc., to eat before I leave. This curbs my hunger and helps me stave off any desire I might have during the party to eat because my stomach is crying out, ‘Feed me’.
• Tip 2: Balance the ‘macros’. If you do find yourself in a situation where you have food options, think about balancing your plate with macronutrients: proteins, carbs and fats. I like to split my plate so that it looks like roughly 20% is protein, 20% is fat and 60% is carbs. It’s an easy eyeball trick.
• Tip 3: “Under-do” if you “Over-do”. Let’s face it. It’s easy to over-do it during the holidays. But, with some vigilance and planning, if you do over-do it, you can plan to under-do it over the following few days. If you over-do it a bit on a Tuesday night, plan to eat a little bit less, or a little more cleanly, over the following 2-3 days. It’s all about balance.
• Tip 4: Eat the Rainbow. We should already be eating the rainbow, meaning, eating as colorfully as possible -- which usually includes lots of veggies and fruit -- but this is all the more important during the holidays. If you find yourself in a situation where you are eating from a buffet, think about making choices that will allow your plate to be as colorful as possible. This will ensure that you are eating lower calorie options and also getting the necessary nutrients and fiber, too!

Moderate Drinking. Ah, drinking. What can I say about drinking? It’s so hard to give up alcohol during the holiday season -- and I’m not saying you should! But, it really does mess with the body, the mind, and our decision-making capacities! The more we drink, the worse nutritional decisions we make. I try to follow two simple drinking rules: 

• Tip 1: Alternate Alcohol and Water. It’s no fun to walk around a holiday party just holding water, and I would never ask you to do that anyway! However, drinking alcohol means you’re consuming liquid calories that are immediately metabolized and practically turned into fat, so the more you can prolong that process the better. If you have a drink, take tip to sip it and as you finish, follow it up with a glass of water. If you’re still at the holiday party by the time you finish your water, then take another alcoholic beverage (a lot of times, you’ll have left the holiday party -- so bravo you for having only one drink and hydrating afterward with that glass of water)!
• Tip 2: Choose 1: Alcohol or Dessert. Look, as much as I hate to admit it, alcohol is sugar, and I am wholeheartedly against sugar (even though I am wholeheartedly for a glass of wine)! Because alcohol is sugar, you need to consider it as a dessert, even though many times you start having your drink before you even eat! If you choose to have a drink, limit or eliminate the desserts you choose to have later on in the meal. You can have one or the other, but you should try not to have both.

Exercise. Movement is so important every day -- but even more important during the holiday season. Think about it: it’s colder, so you’re probably outside less anyway. You’re busier, meaning your routine is probably all shaken up. You are sitting around all day (if you work). And, you’re consuming more calories per week than you would if it weren’t the holidays. If you don’t get in extra movement here and there, you won’t be burning anything, and you really should burn a bit more than you consume during this season if you can do it.

• Tip 1: Walk more. It’s that simple. If you’re holiday shopping, park further away from the store entrance so that you can take the extra steps to walk from your car to the door. If you take the subway, get on or get off at 1 stop before or after your regular stop so that you gain extra steps there. The key here is to force yourself to move more.
• Tip 2: Take advantage of quick workouts. Look, I get it. This time of year is really, really difficult to start a workout plan, let alone find more time to workout. But what’s great about this day and age is that we’ve finally learned that you don’t have to put in a ton of gym time to get the benefits of going to the gym. I recommend using the 7 Minute Workout App (Android / iOS) to do a quick 7 minute workout (dictated to you through the app). It literally takes 7 minutes and you feel sore the next day! You should have no excuse to do it -- you can even wake up 7 minutes earlier to fit in your workout in the morning. If you go to the gym, add in a few tabata or HIIT workouts to boost your calorie burn for 20 to 30 seconds every few minutes. It’s easy!
• Tip 3: Take the stairs. Just like the walking tip, above, why not challenge yourself a bit with what you already have? If you take the elevator, can you get off a few floors early and take the stairs the rest of the way? Can you commit to taking the stairs for a few days out of every week? 

The point of the holiday season is to enjoy yourself. And you should -- you deserve to! But, you can do so in a responsible, healthy way, even if you only adopt one of these tips. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Do what you can, with what you have. Happy Holidays!

What other things do you do to keep healthy over the holiday season? Let me know in the comments below!

Grab & Go: Salad in a Jar

In previous posts, we've run through weekly prep, so now it's time to use some of the prep to arrange some Grab & Go salads for the week.

I created a video (above) outlining how to create these Grab & Go salads in a jar. I've seen a million videos about weekly food prep or 'batch day' prep and I cannot tell you how much it turns me off to see a cooked chicken breast, a cup of steamed broccoli and mashed sweet potatoes in five or six separate plastic containers. Ugh! Just the thought of eating the exact same (bland) thing every day makes me ill!

The beauty of the weekly prep that I do is that you get to be creative and have easy options to make your own 'recipes' so that you can have some variation in your daily meals.

Creating Grab & Go salads in a jar is so easy once you have prepped your food. Here's what you need:

• 1 2.5 cup Ball jar (I like the ones with the wide mouth)
• 1 cup measure
• 1 tablespoon measure
• Homemade salad dressing (presumably, dressing you've already prepped, but if not, olive oil and vinegar will also do)
• Protein (beans or chick peas, roasted chicken, steak, tuna, etc.)
• Complex carb (brown rice, sweet potatoes, quinoa, etc.)
• Veggies (those that you have already chopped should be handy)
• Leafy greens (spinach, Bibb lettuce, kale, etc.)

Assembling these Grab & Go salads couldn't be easier. It is important, however, to note that there is a little method to the assembly madness -- making sure you layer the food in the jar accordingly. You want to follow these steps to ensure your greens don't get soggy:

• Add 1 tablespoon of dressing (2 tablespoons if you're a guy) to the jar. (This is the most important step to make sure the liquid stays as far away as possible from your greens)
• Next, add a serving of protein on top of the dressing (in the video, I didn't include a protein, so if you elect not to include a protein, you would add your complex carb here)
• Layer on top of the protein some complex carbs (I generally add about a cup)
• The next two layers should be chopped veggies
• The final layer should be leafy greens. Greens can be 'smooshed' into the jar, so don't hesitate to put at least a cup of greens into the top of the jar.

And...voila! You are done! Close the jar and throw it in the refrigerator. These can be made days in advance, which means you will have the opportunity to prepare salads for the week, complete with your macro nutrients, as well as have healthy Grab & Go options available as you pack your lunch each day.

Let me know what you do to make your meal planning and lunch-packing easier. I'd love to hear your suggestions and tips below!

Weekly Meal Planning: Part II

Now that we’ve had the chance to prepare for our week with pre-planning and actual Meal Planning, it’s time to do some Shopping & Chopping! This shouldn’t take very long and it gets easier over time. You definitely do need to master the habit and once you do, you’ll be surprised how quickly you can accomplish this and save yourself so much time during the week!

Shopping & Chopping

With Pre-Planning and Planning complete, it's now time to grocery shop and come home and chop/prepare the food!

Taking my Google Keep grocery list and my reusable grocery bags, I'll head to the store and begin to shop. TIP: If you bucket your grocery list by area of the store, it saves major time. For example, I put all of the dairy items in one place on my list so that if I'm getting milk, eggs and butter, they're all in the same place on my list and it saves me from having to run from one side of the store to the other.

Here's where you can get really lazy, though. Once you grocery shop and bring your food home and put it away, it's so easy to wipe your hands and say, "Ok, that's done. I've planned my week." However, you've only gone half-way! You've done a lot of the heavy lifting, but if you don't cross the finish line, believe me, you'll get derailed throughout the week.

You have to follow through! And that means chopping and prepping comes next...

At this point, you might feel a bit overwhelmed because you’ll see that you have so much food and so much to do with that food. Never fear! I only prep for breakfast and lunch, and leave dinner for day-of prepping. Any recipe I choose for dinner should take no more than 30-35 minutes to prepare and since I find chopping and cooking enjoyable and meditative, I don’t mind having to do that on the day of.

So, think about what you need for your breakfasts and lunches. Have you planned for hard-boiled eggs during the week? How many are you eating per day? Multiply that by the number of days you'll be eating them and begin to boil water to cook your eggs.

Did you include a complex carb for your lunch? What is it -- brown rice? sweet potatoes? If so, prep that in bulk so that you can just scoop and go throughout the week.

What about veggies for salads? Veggies are more likely to be eaten if they are pre-chopped and washed. Go ahead and do that, too.

At the beginning of your prep, you should have a pile that looks like this:

At the end of your prep, you should have a pile that looks like this:

And if you’re super ambitious and organized, you can even make your own salads, to look like this, so that they are truly grab and go! (I'll create another post dedicated to grab-and-go salads. Easy!

I’d love to hear how you plan your meals and how you prep and any other tips that make your life easier during the week! Please add them below!

Weekly Meal Planning: Part I

I work for a company that makes it pretty easy to not think about preparing for a week of healthy food. However, I realize not everyone has the opportunity to have healthy meals prepared for him/her a few times a day, so I wanted to showcase what I (still) do to make sure I (and my husband) eat as healthfully as possible throughout the week.

When people hear that I prep my week, they look at me like I have three heads. Seriously! Preparing for a week of healthy meals and snacks means I don’t have to do a lot of work during the week to scrounge around for food or go hungry, either. Putting in the time and effort at the beginning of the week saves so much time throughout the week. Believe me, weekly prep is a life saver.

Now, let me be honest: At first, weekly prep is hard to do.

But, once you get the hang of it, it makes life so much easier. I really don't know what I did before I prepped my weeks. I'm sure you've heard the common phrase: "People make time for the things that are really important to them." I've heard so many people say, "I don't have time to prep my week," or, "I'm just not good at preparing my week, so therefore I won't do it." What they're really saying to me is "meal prep and eating healthily just isn't a priority for me."

Look, I'm going to get right down to it:

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail.

It's that simple.

And I want to help you SUCCEED!

I’m going to give you some tips to help you plan your week, but first, you need to commit to doing this for a few weeks so that you can get the hang of it. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes like second nature. These are also just my tips -- I’d love to hear about your tips, too, as I’m always learning and trying to improve my planning time and make it more efficient.

Here are the three steps I follow when I plan my week:

1. Pre-planning

2. Planning

3. Shopping & Chopping

The entire process should take about 1-2 hours, depending on how quickly you can plan your week, grocery shop and prep your food. It will take longer for the first few weeks as you get the hang of it, but it gets easier over time and shouldn’t take as long in future weeks. This post will cover just the Pre-planning and Planning steps. Stay tuned for Shopping & Chopping steps in following posts!

Pre-Planning

It’s important to have certain items on hand before you start to plan so that you can take a look at your week and plot out when you will need meals, when you can use leftovers, etc.

Things to have on hand before your get started:

• Calendar (paper, on your phone, on your computer, whatever works, as long as it’s up to date)

• Shopping list (I use Google Keep, but you could use iPhone Notes, Evernote, a piece of paper, anything!)

• A blank spreadsheet or piece of paper to write down your schedule (I use this template and like to keep it in Google docs so that it’s accessible on my phone, but you could use whatever works for you)

• Access to recipes (either cookbooks or online recipe sites such as Blue Apron, Food Network, etc.)

• Kitchen items: knives, cutting boards, saute pans, sauce pans, cooking sheets, storage containers (preferably glass), Ball jars, etc.

Planning

This is the fun part! I try to keep myself from going overboard by having certain staple recipes as go-tos (especially for breakfast and lunch), and then mixing up my dinners. I don’t like to have too many options for dinners, though, because I also don’t want to be buying a ton of ingredients that will stock my pantry and I’ll never use except for that one time (come on, you know you’ve done this before where you’ve purchased some esoteric spice and it ends up sitting in your pantry for three years…).

First, take your blank spreadsheet and consult your calendar so that you know which meals you need to plan for. I start with Sunday and plan through Saturday. For example, I take a look at my week and my husband’s week and I try to figure out when we need breakfast, lunch and dinner, and when we’re out or traveling or won’t be eating in. I mark all of those time slots as unavailable.

With the remaining time slots, I take a look at breakfasts and ask: how many breakfasts do I need to plan for? Then I take a look at lunches and ask the same question. Because my breakfasts and lunches are taken care of at work, I only think about my husband’s meals, and then I make sure I develop a list that allows him to have flexibility in his meals. (I don’t make his meals, nor do I tell him what to eat for breakfast and lunch, but I make sure there’s enough food available for him to be creative to make his own lunches.) And, to keep it simple, we only have about two or three breakfast options, making sure they are macro-balanced and sugar-free (stay tuned for another post about how we were able to train ourselves to create the “balanced meal”.) I check my refrigerator, pantry, etc., to make sure I have my necessary ingredients and if I don’t have what I need for breakfast and lunch, I’ll add the ingredients to my Google Keep grocery list.

For dinner, once I know when we’ll need food, I take a look at how many days we’ll need dinner. Typically, we eat dinner together about 2-3 times per week. So, I’ll need probably three meals and can use leftovers from those meals to fill in the blanks.

Here’s a view of what it could look like for a given week as a work-in-progress (as I'm planning):

Taken from my weekly template

Once I know how many meals I need, I go on the hunt for recipes -- and often, I’ll consult websites like Blue Apron or Food Network to find some food for the week. The great thing about Blue Apron is that they only have a limited number of recipes per week, so it limits the options I can give myself (and hence the paralysis that can come of having too many options available).

I’ll select a few recipes, add the ingredients to my Google Keep grocery list and also add the recipe link to my spreadsheet.

Voila! My list is done and my week is planned.

Stay tuned for the next post that addresses how to Shop & Chop!

I’d love to hear how you plan your meals and how you prep and any other tips that make your life easier during the week! Please add them below!

Look up!

Last week, I was really inspired by the sunrise. We’re heading into that time of year where the sun rises later and later, so when I left the house at 7:20am, the sun had risen and the sky was all aglow and speckled with clouds.

Because we live on a hill, I feel like I see the sky more often. I don’t know if that’s actually true. But, I’d like to believe it. Even so, I don’t often look up; in fact, I frequently find myself looking down at my phone most of the time. And when I look down, it’s easy to miss what’s going on around me. Have you ever traveled and noticed how everyone in the waiting area is face-down into an electronic device? It’s a really sad sight.

A few months ago, I took a barre class and we were facing the inside of the room with our backs against the barre. The instructor looked around the room and said, ‘Everyone, Look Up.’ What I didn’t realize at the time was that we were all looking toward the floor, and we were missing the physical work that we could be doing by looking up and encouraging one another, too.

When we were in India, we traveled to Aurangabad to see the Ajanta and the Ellora Caves. If we hadn’t had a tour guide, I would have missed half of the tour! Why? I hardly ever look up, and when we did look up, we saw incredibly preserved artwork with luscious blues and faded greens, and stories about how people lived their lives so long ago. The stories were so descriptive!. In one cave, the paint was so preserved you couldn’t even tell it was done in 4 B.C.  

It’s important to look up, not just in everyday life, but also in the metaphorical sense. Sometimes we have hard days and it’s easy to get down about the day or the experience you’re going through. I find this to be especially true on a journey to better health. Some days are just better than others. But with a ‘look up’ attitude, it’s a lot easier to go through those more difficult times, believing that the obstacle is just a bump in the road, rather than a full-on catastrophe. For example, if you don’t eat quite as healthily one day, or you fail to exercise for a few days in a row, that’s ok! Look up to the next day and start over. Every day is a new day and a new beginning.

When we do look up, we can find inspiration. I’ve been trying to take a pause every day to look up and to purposely keep my phone in my pocket or my purse. You might be surprised at what you find!

Here’s what I found - maybe you can find it, too!

Our trip to India!

This year, we made a few trips across the pond and in August, traveled all the way around the world to India. For two weeks, we toured around southern India, experiencing the culture, food, religion, everything! and came back with such an appreciation for this magnificent place.

{I'm just learning how to use iMovie, so bear with me as the quality of these videos (hopefully) get better over time!}

We first stopped in Chennai, traveled a bit south to Mahabilipuram, flew to Kerala where we enjoyed a few days in Fort Cochin and then spent an overnight in the Kerala backwaters, flew to Aurangabad (to see the ages-old Ellora and Ajanta caves), and finished our trip in the massive and overwhelming and utterly charming Mumbai.

Some photographic highlights (Descent of the Ganges--Mahabilipuram, Private yoga in Chennai, Kapalasweewarar Temple--Chennai, Spices--Fort Cochin, Chinese fishing nets--Fort Cochin, Kerala backwaters, Buddha--Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves--Aurangabad, enjoying chai at Crawford Market--Mumbai):

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

We managed to do a few private yoga lessons and meditated every day -- and you can tell, we look relaxed and well-rested, despite the arduous travel that's required when you go to a country such as India!

We've had a few 'trip of a lifetime' trips (African safari, anyone?!) and this trip was definitely up there as one of them. I can't wait to go back!