5 Ways to Nourish Your Body Through the Holidays
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With Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner. I want you to be proactive about your tactics for navigating the holiday season so you can continue to have a healthy relationship with your body AND with food. I know this time of year can be so hard for many women and that’s why I want to share a few tips that will help you reign it in over the holiday season while STILL enjoy your favorite holiday treats.
What I discussed:
Remind yourself how you felt last year after the holidays and make decisions based on that feeling. Do you want to feel that way again?
Budget your macros. Eat the treats but make sure they still fit into your macros.
Don’t let the holidays be a free for all. Give yourself permission to eat the treats so you don’t feel like you ever need to overindulge.
Use hand portions when needed.
Relax and eat without guilt.
Link mentioned in this episode:
12 Ways to Avoid Overeating this Holiday Season
Episode 217: How to Use Hand Portions to Reach Your Macro Goals
If you want more from me, be sure to check out:
Instagram: @embraceyourreal | @movementwithjulie
Transcript:
Hey. Hey, beautiful human. Can I steal 5 minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real With Me, Julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned. If you're ready to embrace a real. Let's get it. Let's go. Hello and welcome back to another bonus episode on the Embrace Your podcast. With Thanksgiving and Christmas right around the corner, which is absolute craziness, I really do want you to be proactive with the tactics for really navigating the holiday season so that you can continue to have a healthy relationship with both your body and food. And I know that this time of year can be very hard for so many women. And so that's why I would just want to share a few tips with you on how to like really rein it in over the holiday season while still enjoying your favorite holiday treats. But before you dove in, how to share the super spreader video comes from Emma Ashe Jane. She gave a five star review and said Breath of fresh air and keeping it real. I recently started listening to Julie's podcast. She's a breath of fresh air who truly keeps it real. Trying to navigate the constant influx of information being thrown around in the health and fitness community is challenging, but she really breaks things down into manageable pieces. I love this. I this is a huge goal of ours on the podcast is that we can empower you and educate you and excite you about health and fitness, but have it be very simple, which is exactly why, you know, we created the macro accounting made simple. We want to take something that is complex and that can be confusing, but we want to simplify it. We don't want to dull it down. We don't want to take away important information, but we just want to simplify it so that it can be manageable for you and that you can feel like you learn something. And that's exactly what we do inside Mama Julie Weekly workouts right there, dumbbell workouts that are simple. We try to simplify it for you. We don't want you to feel overwhelmed. We don't want you to think that you need to do all these crazy, different, you know, movements that you see on Instagram. It's really like keeping it simple and keeping it fun and keeping it fresh. So I am so grateful that this podcast is helping you. Thank you for taking time out of your day to send in this review. Let's dove into the five ways to nourish your body through the holidays. Number one, you have to remind yourself of how you felt last year after the holidays. For many of you, at the end of the holidays, you really did feel less than your best in your body. Like you felt lethargic, you felt like you got off track, you were lacking energy, and you felt like you really got further from all of the progress that you made throughout the year. Maybe during that time of the holiday season, you struggled with bad body image or intrusive thoughts. And so I really want you to ask yourself and have an honest conversation with yourself, like, do you want to feel like that again? Right? Every time you go into overindulging, just remember of how you felt last year. And this is not me saying like shaming yourself. Absolutely not. That is not what I'm saying here. My heart on this. I just want you to have an honest conversation with yourself similar to how you would have an honest conversation with a friend, right? A friend that truly loves you is going to call out certain things in your life. And so I want you to ask yourself these questions like, how do you want to feel at the end of this year? Do you want to feel energized? Do you want to feel positive about your body and about your relationship with food? Or do you want to feel lethargic and far away from the goals? All of the progress that you made this year really think about the consequences of your actions because indulging in and of itself, it might feel good in the moment, but I'm telling you, it will. It will often times bring you into this toxic cycle. And I don't want you to feel so lethargic and so negative in your body this year, because that's not going to allow you to enjoy the time with friends and family. It's not going to allow you to enjoy the holiday season. And I want you to really navigate the holidays with out feeling the need of depriving yourself, but also finding that balance with moderation. So stay tuned on that. I have some really great episodes in the future in the coming weeks on that to really help you navigate this holiday season without deprivation, but moderation instead. Number two is really budgeting your daily intake, budgeting your macros. If you're counting your macros, right, eating the cookies, eating the candy, eating the pies, don't deprive yourself. But if you eat those things, if you want to continue to enjoy those things throughout the holiday season, really learning how to implement them into your daily allotment of macros, right? You know how you budget for your vacation or you budget for a new car or whatever it is, you can budget your holiday foods into your daily allotment of macros. I always kind of bring up this analogy because it's true. Like when you are saving for something, especially like in your finances, it's not going to be hard, it's just going to be take some intentionality behind it. And I talk about this a lot in the podcast, right? I truly believe that there are so many different tools that you can implement, especially enjoying the holidays, but also reaching your health and fitness goals. And if this I'm talking to the girl that really wants to progress in your goals or at the very least maintain your goals of all of the amazing progress that you've made this year like. Really just be intentional about budgeting your food, right? So if I personally want to eat ice cream or have some cookies in the afternoon, I will have less carbs throughout the day. Not zero carbs. Absolutely not. I will always have carbs at every single meal. I love carbs, but I will be intentional about that. Or for example, it was just my husband's birthday, which Texas Roadhouse on last Saturday. And I was like, I want some rolls. I want to have two or three rolls. And so what did I do? I really was just intentional about budgeting my food. And so the the hours leading up to that time at Texas Roadhouse, I was really intentional with my hydration. I was intentional about making sure that I get enough protein in, because typically when you go out to eat or if you're eating the holiday sweets and treats, they're most likely not going to be protein dominant. They're most likely going to be heavier on fats and carbs. Again, not bad, but just being mindful of what you're eating. And I also love that when I prioritize hydration, when I when when I prioritize my protein intake earlier in the day, I am actually not as hungry throughout the day because protein really does help me with my hunger cues throughout the day. Right. It is the most satiating of the three macronutrients. And so again, just kind of going back to budgeting it in, this is not being completely strict to the point where it overwhelms you or it deters you. I don't want that for you. I want you, though, to be intentional and responsible. And I want you to have enough self-respect that you say, like, okay, I am going to enjoy my time at this party. And I also want to respect myself in the sense of all the hard work that I've been putting in, you know, in my workouts and being intentional with my healthy lifestyle. I don't want that to all be thrown out the window for the next two months and then be back at square one or negative square one come January. So if you're kind of, you know, a little overwhelmed in this area and you're like, I don't even know where to start. I do have a free e-book for you. You can head over to WW dot Julie Ledbetter dot com forward slash free dash e-book. I will link it in the show notes below. But it's a it's a 40 plus page free e-book that's going to teach you how much your body needs. And that's a great kind of baseline to start with. How much does my body need to function at its optimum for me to feel my best? And if you don't know that, then it's going to be hard for you to kind of navigate through the holiday season, making sure that you're properly feeling your body and still eating the sweets and treats. So head over to WW Dot Julie Love Intercom Forward Slash Free Dash e-book again. I will link it in the show notes below, but I really think that that will help you. Number three don't let the holidays be a free for all. This is so important. And really, please, please, please hear my heart on this, right? I think it's super important for you to enjoy your favorite holiday treats when it comes to the the season. But I don't think that it needs to be this free for all. And I know that that sounds fun, but when you're in the heat of it, you're going to feel frustrated with yourself, you're going to feel lethargic, you're not going to feel your best. And when we get into that guilt cycle, man, it is hard to get out of it. Right. And I know so many women. This was me. This was me, you guys, for a decade of my life, I would just toss in the towel come middle of November and I would say, you know, screw it, I'm just going to get back on track. And in the new year, please don't let that be this year. What if you were able to enjoy the holiday treats without it being a free for all? A few things that I like to do is really kind of plan out the days where I'm just not going to worry about my macros. Like I'm not going to stress about it what I just talked about budgeting macros. I think there's a time and place for that, but I also think there's a time and place for me to just enjoy it and not worry about it. Be intentional, be mindful, but not stress about it personally. That's me on Thanksgiving. That's Christmas Eve and that's Christmas. Like those three, like the actual major holidays. I don't I don't stress about it, you know, maybe one or two holiday parties here and there. But that's what, you know, 3 to 5 days out of two months, that's 60 days, right? Three, three days out of 60 days. I'm really not going to worry about that's not that's not that big in the grand scheme of things. And so I think that it's important that you kind of plan out the days where you're like, I'm just not going to worry about it. I'm not going to, you know, completely go all out to the point where I'm going to feel sick and I'm going to, you know, go on like a three day binge fest. No, but be mindful and know that those are going to be the days that you just kind of let go and you enjoy you allow yourself to enjoy without feeling like you need to budget anything and in terms of your macros, but again, not saying the next 60 days, all of November and all of the summer are just going to be a free for all. And I'm just going to I'm going to start fresh in the new year when you. It's to the new year and you allow yourself to do that. You are going to feel so frustrated. You're going to feel defeated. And I don't want that for you. Right. So personally, by me allowing myself to really eat these treats in moderation daily, I have found also that the holidays in and of itself, like the holiday parties, they're just not as exciting. And in the sense of, oh my gosh, like I've been waiting all year, all year to have this pie. Yeah. You might have something that you don't normally eat throughout the year, but I allow myself to eat sweets every single day. And so the thought of a sweet does not bring me into, like, this intoxicating thing where I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, I just can't stop eating this. No. And that's what I love about utilizing the tool of macro counting, you know, 340, 350 days out of the year, because it teaches me moderation. It teaches me that I'm able to enjoy these things on an everyday basis and still see results. And so when I come to a party or when I come to a situation where I have, you know, these holiday sweets and treats, they're no longer like this once in a lifetime opportunity, you know what I mean? And so I want you to feel like you don't have this all or nothing mindset. And so, again, download that free ebook if you haven't already. I really feel like that will teach you a lot in this number. Forehand portions, right? Holiday parties can really make it tricky to count your macros correctly, but I don't want you to stress about it. There's a tactic that can really help you to get close and that's by using your hands, right? So one portion of protein is typically the size of your palm. So hold your hand out in front of you and look at the size of your palm. That's roughly around one portion of protein. So, for example, if you were going to eat, you know, a chicken breast or ground turkey or a piece of steak, you would select a size that is approximately the size of your fist. So one serving size of protein, the size of your fist would be around 25 to 30 grams of protein if the protein source is coming from meat. On the flip side, if you want to figure out carb sources, imagine your hand being filled with carbs. So whether that's rice or quinoa or sweet potato, this would typically, you know, cupping your hands and having a carb source fill that cup in your hands that would typically give you, you know, anywhere from 15 to 30 grams of carbs. Again, depending on your carb source. I have a whole entire episode that talks specifically about how to use hand portions to reach your goals. And I go through every single macronutrient, I give you examples, I tell you how to use your hands to guide you through that process. So be sure to tune in to that. I will link it in the show notes. It's episode to 17 How to use hand portions to reach your macro goals. But I really think that that will help you. And if you are ever on the go, it obviously you're not going to take your food out. Please do not take your food scale on vacation. Please do not take your food scale to a restaurant or to a holiday party. There are so many ways of kind of eyeballing it, using your hands to give you kind of a rough estimate of a portion size. Again. Episode 217 How to Use Hand Portions to Reach Your Mac or Goals, but hand portions in and of itself. They can really, really help you during this time, especially as we navigate the holiday season. And number five, relax, let go of the guilt. There is actually been research done to prove that food guilt in of itself can actually lead to weight gain. Researchers at the University of New Zealand found that people who felt guilty after eating a piece of chocolate cake did not report more positive attitudes or stronger intentions to eat healthy than those associating chocolate cake with celebration. Instead, they just felt more out of control. Let me repeat that again. Feeling guilty made them feel out of control. Another research done has suggested that food guilt can actually increase your perceived body weight and negatively affect and impact your body image. Essentially, feeling guilty can make you feel fatter and feeling fatter can make you want to eat more. And then it actually leads you to gain weight and the cycle just continues. And lastly, the Institute of Psychology of Eating even reports that guilt may slow down and can be linked to slowing down metabolic rate, which causes us to gain more weight from an equivalent amount of calories. So if you ate the same amount of calories in one day versus another, the only difference is that when you felt guilty, you could actually slow down your metabolic rate causing different changes in your body. So if you are on vacation or if you're navigating the holiday season or if you are going to these parties, I want you to really be intentional about trying to stay in a relaxed state, trying to be in control of your emotions, trying to be aware of the situation, aware of the cues that are coming up when you're starting to feel guiltier, when you're starting to feel this urge. There are so many different things and so many different tips and tricks that you can do that will help you to stay in a relaxed state, breathing alone. Right. 5 seconds. That alone can really change your neurological state, which can really help you in terms of staying more relaxed. And so I want you to let go of the guilt. I want you to enjoy this time with your friends and family, but I also want you to be responsible. I was just telling a girl in a moment with Julie Group, I feel like I am in the self respect era. I feel like I am really trying to recognize and identify different ways that I can ensure that I'm respecting myself. I'm respecting the hard work that I'm putting in day in and day out in my health and fitness goals, in my relational goals, in my spiritual goals. I'm really trying to just respect myself and increase my self-respect, right? When you respect a person, whether that's a friend, a mentor, someone in your life, you think highly of them, you respect them, you put boundaries on certain things. You are aware of what you say to them. You're aware of the actions that you do around them because you respect them. I want that respect for you with your self, and I don't think that we oftentimes think of that. And I've done, you know, previous episodes talking about the importance of the relationship that you have with yourself. But please go into this holiday season really prioritizing self-respect to the point where you can look at yourself in the mirror and say, you know, I respect myself to both have fun, enjoy time with friends and family, but be responsible. And I respect myself enough to know that, you know, if I completely overindulge and disregard everything that I have really learned and tried to practice over this last year, I know that I'm going to wake up in the morning and I'm not going to feel my best. And I respect myself so much that I'm going to go into this holiday season being mindful, enjoying it, but knowing that healthy boundaries are important. And so I hope that this gave you some good food for thought. I hope that this gave you kind of some good, real talk and just things to think about as we navigate the holiday season. Like I mentioned before, I'm going to be sharing some more tips and tricks to help you navigate the holiday season. So stay tuned for that. That will be on the podcast. I hope that they help you, but let me recap those five things. Number one, remind yourself of how you felt last year over the holidays and make decisions based on that feeling. Do you really want to feel like that again? Or if last year you had a killer year and you were really respecting yourself, then I want you to mimic that. Ask yourself, okay, what did I do last year that really allowed me to stay successful and mimic that? Number two budget? Your macros eat the treats, but make sure that you are responsible. You are intentional about fitting them into your daily allotment. Number three don't let the holidays be a free for all. Give yourself permission to eat the treats. Absolutely. So that you don't feel the need to overindulge. Because it's the times that you tell yourself, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You will eventually get to that breaking point where you say, okay, screw it, and then it becomes a free for all, and then you completely overindulge and it defeats the purpose, right? Number four, use hand portions when needed. Again, I will link episode to 17 in the show notes, but that will really help you give you a good understanding of how to use your hand when it comes to portion control. And number five, relax, relax, relax. Allow yourself to get to this state where you are mindful and you are eating things without guilt because that will truly allow you to not only live in the moment and enjoy your time, but it really can help your body physically. As I mentioned some studies above, again, I will link those in the show notes below. The two things that I mentioned. Number one, my free e-book, which is a 40 plus page free e-book that will really teach you how to properly nourish your body and kind of share a little bit of my back story in terms of nutrition as well as teaching you step by step how to calculate your specific nutritional intake and what that should be based on where you're at and what your goals are as well as Episode 217. I will link that so that you can listen all about hand portion control. I also do have a blog post that I think you might find helpful. It's called 12 Ways to Avoid Overeating this holiday season. I will link that in the show notes below. I do have blogs on my website. I don't often talk about them, but I do have them and they're very, very helpful. So you can go to julieledbetter.com. I will specifically link this blog post in particular, but if you go to just my website, you'll see it on the blog section and then you should see it under the nutrition section there. But 12 ways to avoid overeating this holiday season. I really think that that will help you and give you some good insight. That is all that I have for today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. I know it is a little bit longer of a bonus episode, but I hope that it helped you. I hope that it gave you some good things to think about as we enter in and navigate Thanksgiving and Christmas together. I love you so. Dang much, and I'll talk to you next week. All right, sister. That's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, Julie. A lot better. Yes. It's with an name in the middle for that daily poser about real talk. Healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember, that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace the real because you're worth it.