Since it’s just a few more days until Christmas, making wiggle room for healthy choices might just not be fitting on your list…
- Maybe your meal prep counter has turned into a cookie-decorating station
- Maybe your 3-mile run turned into a 3-errand-run
- Your online workout video time got swapped out for online shopping
- Your bubbly sparkling water is somehow now a different sort of bubbly
- Your “pre-parties” dress (from the first weekend of December) is now as tight as your post-black Friday budget
With that reality check in mind, I’m going to give you my best advice for this – the week of Christmas – when it comes to your health:
“The more you wiggle, the more wiggle room you have.”
(Every Sunday night our Family Night includes a dance-party led by our youngest :).
I asked on my Facebook page what people thought I meant by that and loved the fabulous responses! I’m sharing some of them here:
Such great insights about being flexible, moving whenever you can, and creating some margin for splurges by prioritizing movement!
During the holidays I see a lot of posts that make exercise seem like punishment: 10 burpees for every bite of pie you eat, or staying for 2 classes at the gym if you add gravy to your creamy mashed potatoes…Though those are certainly ways to wiggle, my hope is that you find the balance the nourishes your body best as a whole: your body needs movement as much as it needs fuel, and needs boundaries to the same degree that it “needs” chocolate. Strategically savor slowly and wiggle whenever you can. 🙂
Here are some family-fun winter “wiggle” ideas that work around the holidays (and of course gym-time does too!):
- Crazy 2s card game with push-up penalties (100+ pushups for a big family over Thanksgiving — and it was my sister in law’s family game – not even my idea!)
- Football toss or frisbee, or snowball fight
- Garage-hockey
- Pull-up contest
- Ice skating
- Walks, hikes or family 5-K
- Pick-up basketball game
- Rainy day fun: jump-centers, laser tag, indoor trampolines/ropes course, climbing wall
- Jump rope, “floss” or hula hoop contests (who can go the longest?)
- And my very favorite…”the dance break:” energetically copy the youngest child’s dance moves to the song of their choice (I’m only allowed to show a screen shot of this video, but suffice it to say I love to end each week with a Sunday night laugh as my husband copies my daughter’s dance moves like a champ!)
