The easiest hack to feel your best and stay healthy over the holidays

Confession: as we head into the holidays, I can feel nervous about my tendency to overindulge and get a liiiiiiitle too excited about my brother's overflowing cheese boards, my aunt's perfectly crispy and melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies, and my grandma's famous pecan pie.

I mean, I certainly plan to enjoy these delicacies, but I don’t need to eat alllll the brie and pie, ya know? That never makes me feel good.

This year I’m planning on pro-actively supporting my will-power so that I can practice moderation with ease and feel my best.

I know there are a million pieces of sound advice out there on how to do this – stay hydrated, exercise, drink apple cider vinegar, get sleep…. but that’s too much to think about, I just want to focus on one thing that will make a big difference.

Here’s the ONE hack that makes self-control WAY EASIER:

…. Keep blood sugar stable.

Specifically, focus on preventing your blood sugar from dropping – because this is what launches us into an out-of-control over-indulgence party.

How do you do that? In a nutshell, eat protein and don’t skip meals.

That’s it. It’s easy and it has huge effects.

Here’s what usually happens – I wake up and in anticipation of an overly indulgent meal later, I skip breakfast thinking this will compensate for all the food I’ll eat later. But this is actually shooting myself in the foot and setting myself up for failure because it drops my blood sugar, my brain and body think they’re starving because they don’t have the glucose they need to function, causing me to have out-of-control hunger later that leads to eating alllll the pie.

The better plan is to wake up and eat my usual protein and veg-packed breakfast of a spinach omelet or fried eggs over greens. This stabilizes my blood sugar and prevents the dip that can send me on a will-power-free-cheese-board-raid later. It sets me up for success so that I can enjoy a normal-human amount of cheese, feel satisfied, and not have an urge to keep noshing.

So that’s my recommendation:

• don’t count calories
• absolutely do NOT deprive yourself
• focus on eating healthy meals with protein and veggies
• never go longer than 3-4 hours without eating
• enjoy and indulge a little
• and if you do over-indulge, don’t punish yourself by skipping the next meal – just go back to your healthy eating on schedule
• And maybe go for a walk around the block which will re-stabilize your blood sugar

This one thing – keeping your blood sugar stable – is a huge hack to help keep you on track and feeling your best.

I hope you have a good Thanksgiving.

I’m so grateful for you and everyone who makes The Point such a great place to be.

xo

Katie