StayWell Guam Inc.

The holiday season serves as a reminder to slow down, take a step back and make time for friends, family and our community. During a traditional island holiday it is not unusual to have a schedule full of gatherings for work, school, family and even religious events. Naturally, the main attraction at all of our island gatherings is the fiesta table full of traditional eats — some that we only eat once during this special time of year. If you’ve spent the better part of the year honing your healthy eating skills and discipline, perhaps the holidays also present you with a rather insurmountable challenge. How can you participate in holiday cheer without breaking your diet? After all, you don’t want to disappoint the family and friends who put their very best into their signature fiesta dish.

Find Healthy Alternatives

Eating healthy doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice all of your favorite foods even during the holidays. All foods can play a role in your overall health and well-being even the rather decadent dishes. One easy and effective way to keep your holiday meal healthy is by using healthier alternatives for typical ingredients. Baking instead of frying foods such as turkey or chicken and using less butter and unhealthy fats will help avoid excess calories and allow you to enjoy your favorite foods.

Eat Till Your Stomach’s Desire

Sometimes when presented with so much food all at once it can be easy to go overboard. In this regard the typical island fiesta table can seem like an insurmountable obstacle to keeping to your health goals. What is important to remember is that it is absolutely okay and encouraged to enjoy your favorite holiday foods without guilt, however just be diligent about minding how your body feels while you do it. With so much food around you can easily eat to your heart’s content, but perhaps you should try to eat to your stomach’s content. Our bodies are very effective at letting us know when enough is enough and surely you’ve felt this before too! Avoid eating until your stomach is overly full or you feel sick – that’s how you can be sure you’ve overdone it. Taking your time while eating and ensuring to chew your food completely helps your body keep track of your portion intake. Giving your body the time to process food properly will help you to get full and feel full faster and prevent you from overeating.

Use Fresh Ingredients

If you’ll be working hard in the kitchen this holiday season this gives you an even better opportunity to control your diet. Although processed and canned foods can help shave precious minutes off your holiday meal prep, using fresh ingredients will do more for your holiday diet goals. Canned, processed and premade foods are full of excess salt and sugar and thus making your dishes all the more unhealthy for you. By making food from scratch using fresh ingredients you have full control over what goes into your food.

Bring Back the Vegetable Dishes

It is no secret that our island community is known for its numerous meat dishes. The Marianas islands being a melting pot of cultures has certainly incorporated some of the best dishes from all around the world. However, a diet high in proteins and fats can easily blow us off track of our weight loss or diet goals. Meat and protein, although just as much an important part of a healthy diet, can also set you further behind your health goals if eaten too much or too often. This is why it is important to remember food portion rules such as 50% vegetables, 25% grains and 25% protein on your plate. This same rule can be applied to your dinner table. Incorporating more vegetable dishes to help you and your guests fill up half the plate will make it easier to keep everyone on track to living a healthier lifestyle and more importantly not waste the tremendous efforts you’ve put into your diet this year.

Make Exercise a Family Affair

Having all the family at home in one place is a very comfortable feeling. Perhaps too comfortable. Although spending time with cherished loved ones does a heart good it could do the heart even better if those moments were spent engaging in outdoor or physical activities. It could also be the new thing that spices up your reindeer games during the holidays. Plan fun filled family activities that require walking, playing, or enjoying the outdoors together as a family to help keep the holiday pounds off while also making ever lasting memories with your loved ones. If you don’t know where to start, you can try perhaps the easiest activity after your holiday meal — going for a nice family stroll (on foot). After all, research suggests that walking immediately after a meal is better than waiting even an hour.

Don’t Wait Up for Old Saint Nick

Staying up late with the kids, cousins or friends can be some of the most memorable moments during the holiday season. However, a regular sleep schedule is super important when it comes to healthy living. Although it is okay to stay up late a day or two – especially on Christmas Eve — just be sure not to make it a habit that lasts into the new year. Irregular sleep schedules can lead to fatigue and poor eating habits and can sometimes take a long time to reverse. Don’t let the holiday season set the tone for the entire year and get some rest!

Warm and Healthy Hearts

Whatever your healthy lifestyle goals may be, don’t think that you have to hold back this holiday season to stay on track. It is completely possible to enjoy your time with friends and family while still caring for your health. Just remember the most important reason why a healthy lifestyle should be on everyone’s Wishlist this year — and that’s because living a healthy lifestyle means better health outcomes and less time at the doctor or possibly in the hospital away from your loved ones. Eating healthy and exercising are still the number one way to avoid chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes which are diseases that can seriously suck away all the holiday fun due to restrictive diets and maintenance care. What’s more, living a healthier lifestyle means you are doing more to increase your longevity with those you care about most. Let’s all make a conscious effort to live healthier lifestyles this year so that we can enjoy many more to come!