Santa Grandpa eating Christmas Cookies

Hacks for Healthy Eating During the Holidays

 

“I used to get stomach aches ALL the time. I haven’t gotten one in a long time now. I have zero cravings for the carbs and sugars that I used to. My hot flashes have subsided, and in general I just FEEL GOOD. I haven’t felt GOOD in a long, long time.” - Christina R.

 

Do you you feel like you want to grind through Christmas cookies during the holiday like you’re a Kris Kringle Wood Chipper? They're just so flippin' good!

The struggle is real. 

You live a busy, full life, and when it comes time for the holidays you really want to C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E! But at the same time, you don’t want to feel sick or low energy from eating too many sweets, right?

We submit that you can enjoy a few Christmas Cookies during the holidays AND feel healthy AND not be tempted to eat more than is good for you. It’s those nasty sugar cravings that get in the way!

We’ll tell you a few reasons why sugar cravings are a thing in the first place, and then we’ll share a few hacks for balancing the sweets and treats with other healthy habits to get you feeling right as rain! (or… snow in this case?)

 

Why Does My Body Crave Sugar? 

You probably want to know why your body is always craving sugar. Goodness, why can’t it just be easy to eat healthy? We have a few bites of info on this!

 

Need more protein and good fats

Protein and fats slow the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream. If you don’t get enough of them, your body and brain may start to feel low energy, craving that quick KICK.

Focus on getting many different types of protein through leafy greens, beans, nuts, seeds, and healthy meats. Also, get yourself some good fats by eating nuts, seeds, coconut oil, avocado oil, and wild-caught fish from quality sources.

 

Habits

Do you have a candy jar at work that you sneak a piece from most days? And then on the days when you don’t, you feel like you should?

Well, for one, the bowl is sitting right there just taunting you (not fair). But, for two, your brain forms habits.

Whether it is helpful or harmful, your brain wants to make things easier for you. If you eat the candy most days, then your brain wants to make that behavior more and more automatic. So, it will give you a cue each time you walk by the jar. How nice of your brain, huh? (Right…)

 

Lacking sleep

When you don’t get enough sleep, your cortisol levels go up, which increases your stress and alertness. Your body thinks that it needs more energy when your cortisol is up, so it craves more carbs and sugar to take on whatever wild animal might be running at you soon.

Only problem is, there is no wild animal, just the computer screen at your desk demanding that you finish those spreadsheets.

“Just one more Snickers Bar and I’m sure to be able to focus” you think. Ahh, tricky, tricky brain, chocolate isn’t the answer…it must be donuts.

Yeah, it’s gotta' be donuts.

 

Lacking nutrients

Truly one of the most prime reasons that we crave sweets is a lack of nutrition. One of the major issues is that we eat food far less nutritious than it was a hundred years ago.

For one, we eat a lot of processed foods. But even if you’re eating whole food, it is often shipped hundreds of miles, requiring that it be picked before it has fully developed. This leads to an underdevelopment of phytonutrients, vitamins, enzymes, antioxidants etc.

On top of that, it then sits on a truck, in a warehouse, and then on the grocery store shelf. It loses nutrients during this time as well (an average of 30% of nutrients lost in just 3 days!)

Ruvi fixes many of these problems, as it is made from freeze dried fruits and veggies. Freeze drying sounds a bit “sciencey”, but it's actually pretty easy to understand. We simply pick fully ripe fruits & veggies, freeze them, & use gentle heat & pressure to remove the water content. This preserves the nutrients & taste long-term.

 

Holiday Healthy Eating Hacks

We have a hard time not eating sweets too. Heck, those Christmas Cookies are calling our name right now! But this doesn’t mean we need to stop with the treats completely. We just need to have some simple methods to balance things out.

We’ll tell you how to work with the holiday hungries using some big-time hacks that will take your health game all the way up to GORILLA level (you know, because they eat so many veggies). 

 

Get Busy & Make Plans

There’s nothing that says eat all the things like being bored on a holiday. Surrounded by food, you're bound to indulge a bit more than normal, unless you have some other fun things to do! So, our first hack for you is to get busy!

Make plans to be active and have a good time with family and friends during the holiday. Go for a walk, ride bikes, play board games, play 20 questions, cook more food (oh wait, that defeats the purpose. Oops.) Anyway, get creative! Make plans to do something active together.

When you’re caught up in experiences, you’ll be less prone to indulge in the good ol’ gut bombs more than is healthy for you.

 

Hit those weights, run that treadmill, get PUMPED

It may sound counterintuitive to exercise on a holiday, but getting your exercise in can help fuel your motivation to eat balanced. Put simply, this is because exercise just makes you feel dang good, so you naturally want to do better things for your body, like eating veggies!

More specifically, exercise gets endorphins flowing, burns calories, and boosts metabolism, and it’s great for your mental health.

To put it in a sentence, exercise transforms you into a lean, mean, veggie-pounding machine!

If you’d like tips on how to get motivated to start exercising today, click here.

 

Stack Up Those Veggies! 

With all of that exercising you’ll be doing, you’re going to need a LOT of veggies (don’t make grandma tell you again how veggies make you big and strong, you know it’s true!) Eating veggies fills your body with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, lowering your craving for sugar and fast energy. 

 

More nutrients = less cravings for sweets

It’s hard to eat healthy. But you know what isn’t hard? Drinking a smoothie. That’s exactly what Ruvi is, only it’s the healthiest and easiest smoothie of all time. Just pour, shake, and you have 4 servings of fruits and veggies in less than 30 seconds. All you need is a shaker bottle and some water.

When you pump your body full of nutrients, it will feel more satisfied and less inclined to convince you that it definitely needs that fourth piece of pie (hey, we’ve been there!).

 

Make Your Holiday Meal a Homemade One

Store-bought stuff is easy, that’s for sure. It’s harder making food from scratch. But gosh is it better for you! It can also be fun too. Get your kids involved in cooking with you, and you may be surprised at how it feels less like work and more like fun!

 

Slow Down & Chew that Food! 

Who said you need to eat sweets fast? Why not slow down and enjoy them? We get so caught up in the busy comings and goings of daily life that we forget to slow down sometimes.

It can be hard to remember we need to take time to chew our food if we want to digest it properly and feel satisfied. Chewing is your body’s first stage in digestion. The more you chew, the better you will absorb the nutrients from the food you swallow. Chewing also activates saliva and enzymes that aid your stomach in breaking down and absorbing food.

What does this mean more specifically? Healthline states that a good rule of thumb is chewing each bite you take around 32 times.

So, instead of grinding through a Christmas Cookie like you’re a Kris Kringle Wood Chipper, savor the flavor of your delectable holiday morsels.

If you do that, we promise to perhaps stop at our 2nd piece of pie this Christmas (maybe…)

Overall, just enjoy yourself and help others to enjoy themselves too. Don’t stress about all the little things, just bask in the experience of the holidays and the simple enjoyments with family and friends. We hope your holidays are filled with color!

By the way, have you checked out Ruvi yet? Thousands in the Ruvi Nation are waking up excited, they have energy to play with their kids, they’re motivated to exercise, & they just feel plain good. See what makes Ruvi so powerful.

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