Harvesting Healthy Holiday Habits

Harvesting Healthy Holiday Habits

Guest Post by Dr. Brent Hunter

This is a wonderful time of year! It is a time of happiness and joy with family and friends. It is a time of enjoyment and fun at Holiday parties all season long. It is a time of anticipation of what the new year will bring. The holiday season is one of my favorite times of the year!

However, this time of year is also filled with many situations that are potentially hazardous to your health! Are you like most people who dive into these holiday health hazards disregarding the consequences? Then, January rolls around and brings the new year blues with it. You are 15 pounds heavier, your clothes are ‘suddenly’ tighter, you don’t feel like working out and to top it all off, you’re coming down with the flu!

How did happy and excited turn into sad and sick in just one month? This does not have to be your experience again this year! It is all about the lifestyle decisions you make! So, this year, let’s make some better decisions. Let’s harvest healthy holiday habits and continue to build health rather than succumbing to the sickness of the season.

Healthy Holiday Nutrition

There are plenty of nutritional holiday health hazards this time of year, notably the many Christmas parties you will likely enjoy. These all threaten to destroy the nutritional achievements you have made all year. Here are some healthy holiday habits that will help you dodge these hazards.

• Before you head off to the Christmas party, have your fill of nutrient dense foods first. Start your day with a delicious green smoothie or healthy protein shake. Sweeten them with some extra fruit to satisfy your sweet tooth instead of filling up on sugar cookies later. Eat some healthy snacks on the way, like nuts, seeds, berries, or pre-cut veggies.
• Bring your own healthy desserts with you when you go to Christmas parties. Your host will appreciate your contribution, your friends will learn that healthy desserts are delicious, and you build new, healthy holiday traditions! Here is a great recipe for delicious superfood-filled raw Christmas Fudge! Bringing a cheesecake will certainly make you popular at the party! This cheesecake gives plenty of rich flavor with no dairy and no refined sugar! Of course, you can’t have a Christmas party without cookies! How about some Pecan Sandies? These cookies will add healthy nutrition to your party with no refined sugars!
• Before you go to the party, decide whether you will allow yourself an indulgence. Of course, with delicious and nutritious desserts like the ones above, you won’t have to. However, maybe you have one particular holiday food or dessert that you just have to have. That’s okay. It’s not about perfection, it’s about not throwing away your health! Plan ahead for this as well.

Healthy Holiday Exercise

During the holiday season, it is easy for your schedule to become overloaded. Exercise is often cut out in order to save time. However, this is a terrible decision! The holidays can certainly drain our time and our energy as well. Regular exercise actually helps you create more energy and increases your stamina to power through the holidays.

One of the biggest excuses for not exercising – especially during the holidays – is that it takes too much time. Well, the truth is that you can get an amazing, heart-healthy, fat-burning full body workout in just 15 minutes, using high intensity interval training (HIIT). How’s that sound? Just 15 minutes! These workouts will not only keep your energy and endurance up for the holidays but they will help you burn fat, tone muscle and even prevent and reverse diabetes and heart disease.

Healthy Holiday Stress

Healthy Stress? What!? Yes stress can be healthy. We often think of stress only from the negative side. It is true that when stress is not handled properly, it can become the root cause of nearly all disease from colds and flu to heart disease and even cancer. In fact, all of these diseases increase during this time of year due to the stressful effects of the busy holiday season. Here are some healthy holiday habits to help you de-stress and build great health.

• Prioritize your schedule. The fact is that you will not likely      have time to participate in every event and party during the holidays.      Decide now what is most important and make sure that your schedule mirrors      those priorities. For example, if your faith and family are among your top      priorities, then make a point to schedule activities with your family and      church. Skipping these events and filling your schedule with work and      business Christmas parties will certainly invite disease-causing stress.
• Focus on relationships. It is easy to place too much focus on      pleasing people with gift giving this time of year. While it is great to      give, our giving should honor and strengthen our relationships rather than      just bring temporary pleasures. Building and strengthening relationships      with your family and friends causes your body to release health promoting      hormones rather than disease inducing stress hormones.
• Cast your cares on Him. Our most important relationship is      our relationship with our savior, Jesus. Let’s not lose sight that the      reason for Christmas is to celebrate Jesus’ birth. God the Father sent      Jesus to restore our broken relationship with Him. He loves us dearly and      desires to not only save us eternally but also to care for our day to day      lives. He tells us to cast all our cares and anxieties on Him because He      cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). Jesus has the answer to the      stressful situation and circumstances you are experiencing right now. Take      it to Him and He will give you peace.

Healthy Holiday Healing

The most important aspect to creating a healing, wellness lifestyle any time of year is the health of your nerve system. Your nerve system controls all the functions, health and healing of every single cell in your entire body. It is your nerve system that keeps your heart beating and your lungs breathing without you even being aware of it. It is your nerve system that controls your healing from a paper cut to cancer. In fact, your body is amazingly designed to heal naturally as long as there is no interference in your nerve system.

However, your nerve system is also highly sensitive to stress. Stress damages your nerve system and hinders your natural healing. It is the focus of chiropractic health care to identify that nerve system interference and help you remove it. Regular chiropractic care is vital to creating a healthy holiday season. If you have not already, then start the healthy holiday habit of regular visits to your chiropractor to remove the effects of stress from your nerve system and boost your healing!
It truly is the most wonderful time of year. Begin implementing these healthy holiday habits and make this year’s holiday season happy and healthy.

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Dr. Brent Hunter is on a mission to help you Achieve Wellness in order to achieve God’s potential for your life and ministry! He specializes in helping people move past managing illness to achieve real healing and true wellness.

He is a Chiropractic physician with a focus on delivering the principles of a wellness lifestyle to people of all ages. In his practice, this is accomplished through providing specific chiropractic care and whole-person wellness empowerment education. His focus in both treatment and education is on optimal nutrition, detoxification, exercise, empowering mindset, and brain and nerve health.

Additionally, he is a husband and father of a Deaf son. Dr. Hunter is passionate about the Word of God, building strong families, Chiropractic Health Care, Optimal Nutrition and Exercise, Deaf Culture and American Sign Language.

Join us on Purposeful Pathway Radio via http://www.blogtalkradio.com/purposeful-pathway-radio/2013/12/18/dr-brent-hunter-shares-how-to-achieve-wellness as Dr. Brent Hunter, the “Wellness Achiever,” shares how to achieve total wellness!