Conquering Health During the Holidays (Re-Run)

The holidays are something I look forward to every year. It’s a beautiful time spent coming together with friends and family in celebration. But there will always be certain challenges that come with the changes in environment, routine, etc. And It can be really hard to figure out how to navigate these get-togethers and support yourself and your health at the same time. 

I offer my three biggest tips in this episode to help you navigate the holiday season and still come out on top with your health. These are things that I have learned over the years and found to be personally helpful, and I hope you can take something away from these as well. I want you to be able to have a fulfilling holiday season full of everything you enjoy, while still finding ways to incorporate habits and options for yourself that support your health. 

Click here to listen to Episode 18 - Balancing Blood Sugar to Curb Cravings

Audio Stamps

02:18 - Dr. Rentea introduces her three biggest tips for tackling the holidays and still feeling great 

02:26 - We learn about merging supportive habits from our daily routine into our holiday events in a healthy way

03:34 - Dr. Rentea shares some info on how to celebrate and support your own health simultaneously, including contributing healthy foods that you love at gatherings

06:05 - Dr. Rentea explains the importance of having a re-entry plan

12:00 -  Dr. Rentea shares a bonus tip: the importance of regaining balance when your routine gets thrown off 

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

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Transcript

0:28

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I am right now on a holiday break and I thought what I would do is re-air a really amazing episode. It was from November 20th, 2023 and it talked about supporting your health during the holiday season. There are tons of gems in this episode and I thought it would be super helpful to play it again right now. I hope you enjoy and we'll talk soon. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How is everybody doing? How have your weeks been going? How are you dealing with if your days are shorter? Are you experiencing that darkness coming in quicker? No. For me, I saw a meme the other day and it was like, well, it's five 30. Good night, the day's over. I'm definitely feeling that. I wanted to take time a little bit earlier in the season to make an episode on holiday success because I think that for some of us, again, depending on where you live, I know we definitely have an audience. It's not just the us. I know we have some Canada and some other places, but for us, we're coming up. If you're listening the week this comes out, it will be Thanksgiving week. Now, some of you, if you live in Canada, you've already had it. And again, different parts of the country have different. Celebrations at different times, but pretty much universally. Everyone that celebrates things will have something coming up between now and then the beginning of January, so sometime in there, depending on when you celebrate things. And I wanted to make a quick little episode here to maybe provide a few. Tips and tricks that I've seen that have worked really well, again for me, for patients, for coaching clients, and maybe you can get some ideas from this, some inspiration. I don't wanna say motivation, I think that's always fleeting, but maybe just to get some ideas. Hey, could I implement any of this? So I wanna go over three different areas. A lot of what I talk about today, it's quite similar to, I did a few episodes back. I did one about traveling success and really I see holidays. Get togethers, a lot of these different events, I see them as being part of the same continuum, which is your routine has changed a little bit. There are some factors that maybe you don't know about, but I always like to look at it. How can I support myself no matter what? So I like to think about three different things. I want to go over these with you. Of course, this is. Endless as far as what we could plan or do, but you tell me if any of these are helpful to you. So number one, I like to think about what can I still do that is part of my routine that makes me feel great. I always come back to things like water and protein and maybe. Not skipping all food until the 6:00 PM dinner that you're gonna have. Looking at, are there things that I do day to day that I still wanna do on that day? For me, again, it's continuing to get that walk-in because it's funny, I used to with holidays, like everything's thrown out and then we sleep in and all these things happen, and then. Lemme tell you a little story. It's called Stress of Being Around Family. I love my family. They're all great, they're all amazing. There's no big drama, but there's just this element of, there's actually a lot of kids around now. Between my family, all my sister's, families, there's a lot of little kids, it's loud. Kids are running around and I get more distracted and I realize, okay, if I've already got my walk-in, and if I'm drinking my water, if I'm still getting some amount of protein, I feel a lot better. Come the meals. So what can I do that is still part of my routine? That is question number one that I would ask yourself. Question number two, if this is a bigger event for you, assuming that it's more of a family get together that's happening and it's not you going to a restaurant, that's a different scenario. But let's say that you are gonna be in some type of a communal get together, whether it's a work holiday party, like a pitch in. Whether it's at home, it's a few family, relatives getting together, friends getting together, things like that. I always like to think, what can I bring? There's asking what the host wants you to bring, and then there's also deciding what am I gonna bring for myself? So maybe that's the same thing. Maybe it's different, but I wanna give you some ideas here. I always like to think about if there were nothing else at that party and I were to bring one thing to it. What would I be really happy that's there? And I'll tell you the thing, I always go to hope I'm saying this name right, but like Acru te platter, right? Like making sure that there's some carrots and peppers cut up and just different veggies. I know a lot of the platters that already come pre-made, they'll come with raw broccoli and cauliflower, things like that. I am not a fan personally of eating raw cauliflower or broccoli, but I do like the carrots and the hummus and I will sometimes. Make my own. You all know how obsessed I am with Greek yogurt, with ranch powder. I just love that combination. So I think to myself, if nothing else happened tonight, if I was at this thing and for the appetizer or for the meal, I had these veggies with this thing, I would feel great. So is there anything that you can bring for yourself? The other thing that you might think to bring are from a standpoint of drinks. So I'm someone that, again, I want you to think about whatever your values what you like to have, what you don't. I'm just not someone that's into alcohol. We just, it's was not part of our family growing up. I never developed a taste for it. There's no moral problem with it. It's just not a thing for me. But I definitely like certain sparkling drinks. I definitely like certain things and so that's another thing that I'll look into is could I bring. Something again, where I know that I will love to have that with ice. Or if it's a hot tea or whatever it is. We don't have to just think about bringing food items. It could also be drinks that we are will appreciate. Or if there are different condiments or sauces, again, what can you bring so that you know that you are still supported? And again, you can always ask that person, I'm always about being social. What do they actually need? What's a need in their table that you can bring? But I want you to think about, you can still give yourself this gift. All right? That's thing number two. What can I bring that can still support me? And then thing number three, and this is always, I don't know why I always put it number three,'cause I think it needs to be number one. I really think you need to think about your reentry plan. You can plan as much as you want. That when I go there, I'm, and this, these are things that I work on with patients. Okay? I will first, I'll make sure I'm still drinking my water that day. When I get there, I will first be eating some protein and veg, and then after that I'll decide what else I want and I will scan the table and I'll make the best choice at that time because there's no good or bad food. It's always good, better, best of what I decide I'm gonna do. All of that can go down. You can have the best laid plans and then life's gonna happen. There's gonna be more noise going on than normal. There's not gonna be the options there that you thought all of that. So we need our reentry plan. Reentry plans need to be extensive. Reentry plans are, what am I going to do after? And you get to decide. So for example, with us growing up, it was very normal that the food we would make for Thanksgiving, we would've leftovers for probably two to three days. And I actually loved it. And I still find that's a really nice part of the holidays, that you might spend a lot of time making food for one day, but then you get to enjoy that for a few days. For me, the reentry plan is not none of that food. We eat it after my reentry plan actually includes. No, I still want to have. A little piece of pie each day. I still wanna do this, I still wanna do that, but my reentry plan includes that I will still have those other foods available to me. I will decide kind of when this holiday begins and ends, if you know what I mean, that it doesn't need to be. An eight week experience over the holiday time of having something every single day that you don't really love or enjoy, but it's just, well, everyone's eating cookies or, well, I got all these things at work, sort of. Everything's always being imposed upon you. I want you to be very intentional with this time. Your reentry plan is. What am I wanting it to look like the next day? Do I wanna just get back to the same way that I eat? Do I want to actually still plan to have those leftovers or things like that? You might, that might not even be a consideration for you, but I want you to think about, maybe I'm gonna give you an example I can already think about. Thanksgiving and there are some things there that I like to eat that are just not part of what I normally eat. Stuffing being one of them, like bread in a, in a little dish. It's just like not something that I would normally do. Also, mashed potatoes, again, not that any of these things are bad. But mashed potatoes, I love the taste, but they instantly put me to sleep. Like anything that's a hundred percent potato based, that's not balanced, I, you could just stick me right into bed. I don't know what tryptophan response is happening with that. And so to me, I still wanna have some of those things, but I know, and this is a combination that I like, but I know I will have some cottage cheese with it. I will make sure to have some new fresh veggies that I've made. We do make something called broccoli Divine. Which is like broccoli with cheese and a little bit of like a mushroom soup concentrate type of thing on top. Some of that will be there, but I know for me, I'm gonna need a lot more veggies. I still wanna have some of these other things and I, but I want my veg and protein. I'm gonna need to make sure that even before Thanksgiving day, I make sure that all that stuff is already in the fridge.'cause I know I'm then not gonna come home to my home and start making that stuff. We're gonna be at the family home this year, I really want you to spend time with your reentry plan because that will determine. Sometimes what the whole season is gonna look like for you. Remember, there is not ever any amount of damage that you can do on 1, 2, 3 days that is not super quickly recovered by you having a plan of what you're gonna come back to. So for these holidays again, number one, what are you still gonna do? That's part of your routine. Number two, what could you bring that could help support you? If, by the way, caveat to number two, that I wanna say, if you're not actually going somewhere where you're bringing stuff or it's communal, some people will go to restaurants on those days and they will go celebrate in that way. Can you look up what's the menu ahead of time? Can you prepare yourself? And let me tell you why. Why do you wanna look? There might be a set menu. You're like, Matea, you don't know, you haven't been to a restaurant on Thanksgiving. It's a set menu. Okay, great. If there's a bunch of things that support you I'm gonna come there hungry and I'm gonna eat and it's all gonna be great. If you know that like 90% of what you're looking at you don't really like, you're not gonna enjoy, you're just sort of there for the people. Maybe you kind of. Preet a snack or a meal a few hours beforehand. So you're actually quite good. You're actually not overly hungry. It's not a big deal. You can focus on who's around you, you like more, the drink that you have versus the food, all that kind of stuff. So that is part of the. Instead of what can I bring? It might be looking at what's there and then planning how I want it to go. Okay. And then the reentry part. What do I want it to look like? Do I want to get back a million percent to what I'm doing? Do I still want to figure out in the entire holiday time how to plan stuff in? I wanna give you a quick example here. I'm someone that. Chocolate and I like these little German Christmas cookies. Think gingerbread type of thing with like, I need to put a picture onto the show notes because I feel like I talk about this stuff so much, but I'm someone that I want a few times a week to plan this stuff in. That's already part of my holiday plan. I don't normally have this stuff all the time. I don't normally even want this stuff. I want the option over the holiday time that that might be something that I'm doing more. And so I'm already starting to think about it, and then I'm thinking what are the things that I can do with it so that I don't have increased urges and cravings with just having cookie on its own or chocolate on its own? Because if you've listened. 10 of my other stuff. I would really recommend, by the way, if this is a struggle for you, that after the holidays you have a lot of urges and cravings afterward, that I would listen to my episode about how to balance blood sugar. We'll make sure in the show notes to link to that because this holiday season, I would probably say thing number four out of all of this is how can you balance things no matter what you're doing? Let's say we don't wanna just have. Pie on its own. We wanna have had some protein and veggie beforehand. Why?'cause you can have the same amount of pie, chocolate, cookie, whatever it is, and your blood sugar response will be less, your insulin response will be less. And this will help you to not only maintain your weight and your metabolic health and not have your blood sugars go up in. All of that great stuff, but it will also help you to not have as many urges and cravings later to not maybe get as achy in the joints, if that's something that you struggle with, to not feel like you need to pick up all the pieces so much on the backend. This sounds counterintuitive, but this balance, and again, I would go back and listen to that episode'cause I talked a lot about. For example, if we're gonna have dessert, we wanna have it right after a meal. Again, this sounds counterintuitive because some of us, at least I know growing up after the meal, everyone would be so full that then we would take a break until we would have dessert. Then it would be. Two, three hours later, we're coming back and eating cake. That's just not a way I'm gonna roll anymore. I'm not gonna do it anymore because I know it doesn't work for me. So either I will see if it's appropriate, can I have it right then? If I'm not hungry, I might just let go of it and take it home and balance it with another future meal. I want you to remember this. You have all the control in the world. Do not get locked into this group. Think where you think that, well, everyone else is doing X, Y, Z. There are no rules here for you. You are the one the next day that needs to like how you feel. That needs to not have a week of having joint pain because you ate things in a way that didn't work for you or feel so much shame or guilt or whatever the case might be. I want you to do what feels good for your body. I want you to think about what you actually wanna do. Don't do planning where you think everything's gonna go perfectly. When I do these meals, and this is again, this is all just me personally, I feel, I feel like I don't wanna give you all these examples'cause it's just purely what I enjoy, but I already know. For example, we have a pretty upset routine menu for what we do for Thanksgiving. I love. Being a vegetarian, we do hard boiled eggs. We cut'em in half and then there's this mustard sauce on it. I know between that and the broccoli that we have and the salad, I already know right there, I'm good to go. And then after that, it's just a little bit of what are a few tablespoons of the things that I do or don't want, and I get to, like Ally Naski says, get snobby with my extras. What are the things where it's like, yep, I don't, I literally don't ever make mashed potatoes at home. Great. We're gonna have some of that, but it's gonna be real nice and balanced with the veggie and the protein from the eggs. That's for me personally. And by the way, if anyone messes up that mustard sauce, I was so disappointed. I remember one year I have a sister that she kind of did a not so great job and I was like, look, you can't make this again. Okay, you're off that duty. So we, on Thanksgiving, we all come together. Everyone gets a dish or two, and then that way we can get it all done. But anyway, back to the plot. I want you to not view this holiday time as this big scary time where there's gonna be all these foods around and all this stress. Do the same things you normally do. Make the best choice in front of you that you can. If you can plan it a little bit to make your life easier, it just ensures that you have a greater chance of having a thing or two around that you like. But at the end of the day, even if you think it was a complete nightmare, how it went down. I totally don't care at all. The next day or two you look at, alright, right now what can I do? And we get right back on track. So I just wanna leave you there. I will link underneath again the blood sugar episode because I think that it is so relevant to this holiday time when there are more sweetss around. When there are more usually carbohydrate rich foods around, and just knowing that we can still balance things out no matter where we're at. Balancing the plate means we get some veggie and protein first. We get those things and then everything else comes after that, and we just have a nice little balanced plate where we get all the things we want, but we still feel amazing afterward. Last story. I remember the first Thanksgiving. When I just felt like I didn't overeat, it was balanced. I felt amazing. This was a few years ago, and I realized, oh my gosh, this does not need to go down in a way where it's this. Thing that just gets in the way and it's so stressful. It just felt so amazing. And I remember how beautiful the plate looked and I was talking to everybody and just wasn't about the food. That's what we're going for, right? The connection who we're with that we're grounded in our body, but we're not. Gonna do this anymore where it's a hard experience where you don't have control over things, where you feel like everything is proverbially gonna go to hell in a hand basket. That's not gonna happen for you this year if you don't want it to be. I want you to enjoy the holiday times because I feel there's enough stress with other things going on. Alright, I hope you enjoy this episode. If you find any of these helpful, please leave a review where you're listening. I greatly appreciate that so much. Have a great rest of the week.