Episode 28: Maintaining Health Goals Over the Holidays

The holidays are in full swing. This episode discusses flexible thinking and how to make adjustments so you can have a healthy, well, and joyful holiday season!

Episode Transcript:

The adjustments are actually essential to being able to go forward or else we stay stuck in the same process.

INTRO MUSIC: Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm Alex Treanor. I'm a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and I am so excited you're here. The wellness industry is full of do's and do not's, should's and should not's. But I like to take a different approach. I'll be sharing all things health and wellness from a joyful, real-life compassionate perspective. If you're ready to drop the cookie-cutter approach and create a life you truly love, while eating a cookie or two along the way, let's dive in.

Hey, friends! Welcome to this week's episode. Before we dive in, I just need to take a moment to say thank you. This week is Thanksgiving. I've been reflecting on gratitude over the last few weeks and I am just so grateful for all of you who listen to this podcast, who share your thoughts on the episodes and your feedback and your experiences. I've just so enjoyed the different conversations we've had and the connections that we have made. And so I just really, truly appreciate you being here and showing up for yourself and for carving out this time that we have together each week. So thank you for that.

For today's episode, I want to talk a little bit about how to maintain progress towards our health and wellness goals, especially throughout the holiday season. We know this is a busy time of year, and that is hard. So I want to talk a little bit about that. Of course, the best way I know how to talk about something is to compare it to something else, to give you a metaphor. So I want to start by giving a little bit of a metaphor on how we can think about progress, how we can think about the goal setting process and making headway towards the goals that we have.

The metaphor that comes to my mind is actually a sailboat. I grew up in a household where my dad enjoyed sailing, so we were often on the water. He gave us sailing lessons, put my brother and I out in a dinghy in the middle of the lake and told us to figure out how to get back. He stayed in a boat next to us, so we weren't completely abandoned. But we did learn how to sail, which was an enjoyable experience. It's still something I find kind of scary if I'm being honest. But isn't the change process scary. That's probably fitting.

I want to tell you a little bit about sailing and the 101 of sailing basics. So when you have the sailboat, and I'm talking about no motor, right? a boat that just has sails that we are using to navigate towards the destination. The goal is to essentially use your sail like a catcher's mitt or a baseball glove, to be able to catch the wind from whichever direction it's coming from. You move your sails, you adjust your sails, depending on the wind to be able to catch it, which then propels your boat forward.

The tricky thing is that wind is constantly changing, right? It changes speed, it changes directions. And so you are constantly having this awareness of what's happening around you and then using that to change and pivot and figure out the best way to continue towards whatever destination you have in mind. I think you can probably see where I'm going with this just based off of that, but let's dive into that metaphor a little bit more.

The ideal situation when you're sailing is that the wind is coming from behind you because then you can put your sail out and you've got the momentum from behind that pushes you forward towards your destination. In this case, you might have really strong winds, which will push you quickly. You will have big speed. Or you might have light winds, which will push you a little bit slower, but you can head directly towards that destination when the wind is behind you.

As we know, it's not always the ideal situation. So sometimes the wind comes from the side that we can also work with pretty well by just adjusting the sails and you can still continue forward. However, one of the challenging parts of sailing is that sometimes the wind is coming from the direction that you want to go. You are sailing into the wind. And in this case, what we do is something called tacking. So I'm going to try to explain this as always, I wish I had more visuals, but I will try to explain it in a way that makes sense.

Alright, so let's think of it as being like a clock and you are positioning your boat towards 12 o'clock and the direction you want to head then is 12 o'clock. The wind is also coming from 12 o'clock. So we can't put our sails out to catch it because then we won't be going the direction we want to go. So this is when we are going to do tacking, and what tacking is, is instead of sailing towards 12 o'clock, we're going to sail towards 2 o'clock. And we're going to move our boat towards 2 o'clock so that we can catch the wind that's coming from 12. And we're going a little bit off path, it seems. And as we're going off path a little bit at some point, we're going to pivot and we're going to position our boat towards 10 o'clock. And now we're going to go off path the other way. So it's basically like a zigzag. And you'll continue that going from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock to 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock, zigzagging your way into the wind. Instead of heading directly to 12, we pivot consistently. And that's how we move and make progress towards getting to the destination that we want. This is an incredibly useful skill and the best way to make progress. It is necessary to pivot and to take the longer way around, right, you have to get off path to be able to actually be on path.

I want to relate that back to our health and wellness goals. Because sometimes when we're trying to sail into the wind, or we're trying to push forward in a busy time, like maybe the holidays, we feel like I should be able to make it work by heading straight in the direction I want to go. And that may not be the case, we may need to pivot. The adjustments are actually essential to being able to go forward or else we stay stuck in the same process.

When you're on a sailboat, the goal is to acknowledge where the wind is coming from and pivot. As someone working on health and wellness goals, it's exactly the same, we have to acknowledge what's happening around us where the wind is the speed, the direction, what circumstances are applicable right now, noticing what the situations and the circumstances are that are happening around us that are going to impact how we can move our boat, accepting them recognizing we cannot change those things.

Sometimes you cannot change the wind. But we can work with it.

So we acknowledge those circumstances, we accept them. And then we use them to make the decisions that then we can act on that will help us to make progress towards our goals.

With that metaphor in mind, can we just acknowledge that holidays are incredibly unpredictable and busy, and a unique time of year. This is not the everyday situation where the wind is at our backs and it's smooth sailing. We might have to do things differently, and sail into the wind and put in some unique efforts to make progress towards the goals that we have.

I do also sense, both in my clients and conversations I have with others and myself, that sometimes there is a resistance to this pivoting or adjusting or changing of our goals. I think it stems from maybe diet culture, maybe this idea that there should be a way to just do it. And that's not the case at all. The situation, the scenario going around around us is different. And so we just are pivoting, we can take the emotion out of it and the judgment out of it and just recognize that that is an okay and necessary part of the process.

So I want to give you five tips to help you adjust your sails or ways that you can adjust your sails throughout the holiday season, so that you're able to continue making that forward progress towards the goals that you have.

My first recommendation would be to set your minimums. This is an idea that we talk about a lot in coaching, actually, because it gives us a way to practice flexible thinking. If your day completely goes not according to plan, everything goes wrong, at the very minimum, what do you want to do in terms of your health and wellness? We're looking for something here that you can do every day. So that might be going for a five minute walk. That might be drinking one glass of water. It might be eating one vegetable. Setting your bare minimums so that even on the hardest day, you can achieve it and feel like you are still making progress towards your goals. As you're heading into the holiday season, take some time to consider what what are your minimums at very least what can you accomplish every day to continue having some progress in your routine.

The second recommendation is to look for what you can do instead of what you can't. This is a simple shift in perspective that makes a huge difference in helping us to stay motivated towards our goals instead of deflating any motivation that we have. It also helps us to dismiss that all or nothing thinking with the holidays. It can be easy to say like,

"Oh man, it's Thanksgiving. I'm not going to be able to to eat healthy today. I'm not going to be able to stay mindful with all the craziness that's going on". And we immediately dismissed that anything can happen. It's already on the can't list. So even if you feel that way, there are still things that you can do. You can have a glass of water. You can add a few extra green beans to your plate. There are always things that we can do. And so looking for those opportunities and focusing on what we can do, instead of dwelling on what we feel like we can't, is going to help us feel like we can maintain that momentum.

The third recommendation is to prioritize yourself, your time, your wants, and your needs. This is a busy time of year. We are acknowledging that right? We know the wind gets crazy this time of year. With that in mind, it's okay (and I would even say necessary) to prioritize yourself, to take a few minutes to do some deep breathing, to do something that you enjoy. Something that fills your cup and brings you some sense of reward. There are a lot of events, a lot of activities, and a lot of busyness. You don't have to attend them all. You don't have to do every extra task that gets thrown your way. You're able to say no, and you're allowed to say no. It's okay to prioritize your time and respect any boundaries that you want to put in place during the holidays. You have every right to do that.

The fourth recommendation is to plan ahead. This kind of goes with the last one of prioritizing your time. But taking a few moments at the start of your day to run through the list of what is happening, Where is the wind coming from? How strong is the wind? How do I want to approach this day? can be a game changer for helping you to navigate it. If you know your day is packed, take a few moments to say okay, what are the minimums that I set? And when can I get those in? When can I take those five minutes for myself? When can I get two minutes to get outside? Whatever it is that is essential for you, plan ahead and figure out how you can fit that in. Let's look at Thanksgiving. If you know dinner is going to feel overwhelming, you're going to be maybe cooking all day, maybe you're going to feel overwhelmed by all the different foods and how to make those choices and overwhelmed with just the decision making. Taking some time to plan ahead and having a game plan of how you want to approach it is going to be so much easier in the moment.

My fifth and final recommendation for you is to embrace gratitude and enjoyment throughout the holidays. When we have health and wellness goals, it's easy to head into it already feeling overwhelmed, and already feeling like "oh my gosh, I'm going to feel guilty or feel shame or whatever it might be that I won't be able to make progress". And that's where I would encourage you to embrace the enjoyment of it. Holidays are meant to be enjoyable. Traditions are meant to be enjoyed and it's okay to enjoy them. This timw does only come once a year. It's okay if your wind is different right now. It's okay if you're tacking and pivoting constantly, and maybe your boats moving a little bit slower. The wind is different right now; the wind is not at your back pushing you forward with tons of momentum. And that's okay. The speed changes throughout the year. If you are someone who has constantly beat themself up and has that tendency of feeling the guilt around eating choices, especially throughout the holidays, I would just ask you how is that working for you? Is that working for you? How does that benefit you to beat yourself up? And is there a different way that may be a better approach for you? Enjoy the time that you have with family enjoy the time that you have with friends, enjoy your traditions enjoy the special foods that are available this time of year. Truly savoring them, allows them to fill our cup and to fulfill our needs and feel satisfied with them so that we can move on and enjoy the rest of our day. When we don't enjoy them, they're not satisfying. We still are looking for satisfaction and now we're also beating ourselves up and we get caught in that spiral. So when it comes to your food choices or enjoying this time of year, embrace that enjoyment, embrace those foods, savor them, eat them slowly. Enjoy the taste and the texture and let them actually satisfy you so that you can have positive feelings about them and about yourself.

Okay, so to summarize those five ways ways that we can adjust our sails heading into the holiday season.

1. Set your minimums for each day.

2. Look for and focus on what you can do instead of what you can't.

3. Prioritize yourself, your time your wants and your needs.

4. Plan ahead.

5. Embrace gratitude and enjoyment.

I wanted to keep this episode short today. I know it is a busy time of year and as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm just so appreciative of your time and spending each week with me. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday this week. I know there are more holidays to come still but have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm so grateful for you and for all that you do. I hope that you have a wonderful week this week and I truly look forward to talking with you again next week.

OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for joining me on this episode of the compassionate wellness podcast. If this message resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. I'd love to connect with you as well follow me on Instagram @alextreanor.coaching, or visit my website alextreanorcoaching.com. And as a reminder, Treanor spelled kind of goofy, it's T-R-E-A-N-O-R. For any references mentioned in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful day and don't forget to make time for something you enjoy.