#371: 5 Tips for Getting Back on Track After the Holidays

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies. Well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy
you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Oh my goodness, friends. Welcome to the very first episode of 2024. I’m so happy you’re here. I know. I’m a big dork. I love New Year’s I love the fresh start. I’m super excited to hop in with all of you. And I hope you’re having a great start to the year. You know, if you’re listening to this when it comes out, like hopefully we’re still right on top. Here strong. Ah, I do want to remind you quickly before I get into the five tips for getting back on track, after the holidays, which we’re gonna hop into, I just want to remind you that I if you listen back or if you’re interested in listening back, I’m not going to go through all the options here. But the December 15 episode that aired I laid out all of the program options that are up and coming in this year now and are have already started. We’re already kicking off the Jason greatness, group workouts, we’re already into our sugar detox and all that this will probably come up a little bit in this episode. But I have really word pricing for that that’s our monthly workout group. It’s only available till January 15. So I just want to remind you that and then for the eight week Fat Loss Challenge, the simple sustainable fat loss program that kicks off January 15. So I only run this three times a year. If you’re on the fence, you’re gonna have to wait several months before the option rolls around again. So you can head to my website healthy Catholic moms.com. Under the work with me tab right from the homepage, you can check out those options just because they do have a time limit on them. So I’m not going to talk about them all the time. But we you know, you’ve got just a little bit January 15, actually is kind of the cutoff for both. That’s the early bird pricing cut off for the chase and greenness group. And that’s when the challenge actually starts. So I’m hoping to close the challenge by January 8, the eight week program. Alright, so holidays have happened. They were hopefully Holly and jolly and I’m sure, a little crazy and a little exhausting, and all of that. Because if you’re listening to this, you’re probably a mom who is making most of the holiday fun happen. Not discounting dad’s role in that too, I’m sure and hope that all of your spouses were wonderful in that but you know, it’s it’s not in my house. It’s not my husband waking up early to make cinnamon rolls. Wrap the guests or anything. It’s like totally that meme. That’s like, oh, like what did we get them? There’s, you know, lots of things floating around about that. Like the dads are just a surprise on Christmas and it’s all good. Like I love how it all goes down. It’s you know, probably takes a little bit though it’s a little decompression time after. So, health and fitness wise, where do we go from here I’ve done some episodes in the past that might interest you to about how to get on back on track after going off the rails and things like that. But, you know, for most of us, hopefully that wasn’t you and that wasn’t like totally off the rails but it’s it’s just a season of indulgence. It’s been a little bit of a nonstop that’s kind of the nature of the beast from for some of us from Halloween to New Year’s or from Thanksgiving to Christmas or whatever. It’s just a time that’s a little bit more indulgent. And I’ve talked about this before that I think that’s totally fine. There is a season for everything and you You know, there was a season to be indulgent, that’s great. And now there’s a season to rein it in. So that doesn’t become our norm. So that indulgence isn’t just our new regular like, that’s exactly how I feel about treats like for them to be cold a treat, it has to be once in a while, it has to be special. If treats or everyday, it’s not a treat anymore. And that’s what I tell my kids do. It’s just how it is. So sitting in a squeaky chair, so I apologize. I’m squeaking at you today. All right, so five tips for getting back on track. Now, once again, I think we’re all just really feeling the need for is number one to meal plan for the week. I did not say month, I did not say make everything from scratch, just get a plan together for what the heck you’re going to eat for the next like five to seven days. This could look like jotting it down in a Notes app on your phone, jotting it on a piece of scrap paper, or on a meal board if you have one or your planner or whatever. Just think about what you’re going to eat. The next couple days. Now I’m like emphasizing the Think about it. Because we just came off that week that is notoriously like I don’t know what’s going on between Christmas and New Year’s, where, you know, we’re just eating leftovers, we might be still getting together with family and friends. So we don’t know what we’re going to eat might be filling the gaps to take out when people are, you know, off war or whatever off work. So just get back to the planning like hey, Wednesday, I’m going to make this kind of soup. Thursday, I’m going to grab rotisserie chicken and some, you know, whatever frozen veggie fried rice and I’m gonna throw something together with that Friday, I’m gonna do shrimp or whatever it looks like for you just have a plan get back to. Usually again, the big thing about the holidays and why a lot of us get a little derailed is it’s just super loosey goosey. And like, in the moment and up in the air. So getting back to a little bit of a routine entails having a plan for that routine. Okay, so again, I know you’re probably still getting your feet under you and getting organized. And you might have like hopped right back into work, or kids going back to school or whatever it looks like everybody’s different. Trying to get homeschool going again, you know what, wherever you’re at, don’t make the big barrier to entry B that you feel like you need to make everything from scratch and just have a plan. Even if you’re picking up all of the pieces ala carte bear with rotisserie chicken, and easy bail out foods, that kind of stuff, just get a healthy plan going. Alright, tip number two is to take a daily 10 minute walk now, I didn’t even say anything about strength training on this list. And you know, I’m all about in love suit shrink training recommended all the things. But this tends to be a time where we are just super busy. We are also usually a little bit more sedentary, which is interesting, you might not feel like that. But a lot of the quote unquote busy tasks aren’t really active. They’re busy but not active, like sitting and wrapping a ton of gifts and things like that. Yes, running around shopping. And maybe if you’re running around baking, like you might be getting a lot of movement in. But in general, our movement tends to go down. In these weeks, it tends to be a lot more sitting. So just getting movement in. And the reason I said 10 minutes is because it’s doable. For most of us. I know days are shorter and light is a problem. But if you can just walk around your driveway, I’m the queen of driveway walks, when my kids are napping and I can’t go anywhere and my husband’s at work, I will walk around my driveway for 10 minutes. And now it’d be really tough to do for like an hour. But I can do that for 10 minutes. It’s just walk up and down my driveway, walk around your yard if you can, whatever, do it with your kids do it solo. I also put this on here overstrain training because of the mental benefits of getting outside. Ideally, if you have a walking pet or treadmill that can work in a pinch, too. But I recommend getting outside, touching back in with nature, even if it’s freezing. 10 minutes is doable. Ideally, getting your face in the sun and getting moving again. Alright, tip number three is to cut back on the drinking. The drinking has ramped up. Now we’re all in different places. Some of you listening to us may be like I don’t even drink that much. Or I’m pregnant or whatever. But holidays definitely tend to be the time of just more frequent indulgence and alcohol and whatnot. And you know, at the time of recording this, I am pregnant but I will not be by the time it’s at least Christmas and New Year’s. So the other holidays are up in the air. But I don’t think I’m gonna really be hitting the bottle too hard post, you know, post pregnancy right in the early days of nursing. But some years where I’ve not been pregnant at this time and post fresh very fresh and postpartum at this time. I have felt the need in January to be like oh okay, I need to like it’s becoming You know, not usually my husband. I mean, everybody’s different. But my husband and I usually are like a Saturday, Sunday or maybe Friday Saturday’s usually like, two weekend nights. And sometimes a drink during the week we were doing our Theology on Tap that’s kind of subsided for a bit, but we would watch right now is the poco poco podcast on YouTube shout out to those amazing Franciscan friars. And we would have a drink like midweek together on a Wednesday night or Tuesday night or something, whatever our schedule allowed that week, we’d pre plan it. So we’d have like one drink during the week, and then one or two nights on the weekend. Now, like I said, in previous years, this has slid into holiday time being like, well, it’s Christmas Eve, well, it’s Christmas day. Well, it’s your off because it’s that weird week, and no one knows what day or time it is. And like, Oh, now it’s New Year’s Eve. And now it’s New Year’s Day, like it just has turned into like four days of the week, or five days of the week, that happens to us a lot. And that’s when we dial back in and be like, you know, again, do what you want to do. And I’m not a medical professional, I’m not trying to give medical advice. It is just knowing that alcohol is not doing anything positive for you. So in the health way, you know, it’s beneficial to cut back to just not as frequently. So if that’s been you start just backing that up a bit, scale it back a bit. Alright, tip number four last to number four is to boost your immunity with greens, supplements, etc. So I was going to put on here just my one of my standbys. And if you’ve been here forever, you know it, get in your three to five servings of vegetables daily, and ideally, from leafy greens. But I specifically want to tailor this to focusing on boosting your immunity, because this does tend to be such a time of sickness, a lot to do with the fact of everything else we’ve just talked about, you’re off your routine, you’re usually not eating as healthy as you normally do, you might be drinking more. So this tends to be a time of high inflammation for us. Think about that. If you’re having wine four days a week, and you don’t usually, you’re also having some sugary desserts, or fattening foods or things you’re not used to and you’re being a little more sedentary. This is just the recipe for your immune system to really plummet. And then if you know you do encounter something to have a tougher time fighting illness. So we want to focus on getting back. And I like to frame in this positive way. We’re not saying cut this out, don’t do this, I did just say cut back on drinking. But how I want you to think of all of it is like, No, we need to get back to prepping ourselves to be the best versions of ourselves we can be. So we want to prep ourselves to be the healthiest we can be. That means to be at our peak that if we do encounter germs, like we’re quick to fight it off, we’re not as apt to get super down and out. So that might look like taking supplements to I do take vitamin C throughout these, like cold and flu kind of months. Take Vitamin T as well, maybe I’ll do an episode on what I take because I don’t take those through the summertime, but just focusing on and then I strive to get the three to five servings of leafy greens and daily and if I don’t, I supplement with a greens powder. So I mentioned some things on that too. So we just want to get the inflammation down and get back to or enhance our immunity. Okay, last one again, not exactly you might think directly health and fitness. But we’re always talking about overall health here and how one aspect of health affects another aspect or spiritual effects or mental effects or physical etc. And the last tip is to declutter your physical clutter, and then put slash do a brain dump, which I say because I like the phrase brain dump sounds vulgar, but I can’t think of a better way to say it. So this also tends to be a time where we have a lot going around in our head like oh, I need to do this. Oh, I have to you know, life comes back hard and fast after the holidays and whatever paws everyone’s been taking it their jobs. Yes, we’ll touch back to this January 2, you know, well, now it’s like all guns blazing. And it can be really overwhelming. Plus, you have like wrapping paper around stuff from Christmas that you know, like from wrapping last minute gifts they shoved in a closet. And you’ve got if you’ve got little kids, you’ve got new toys that have come in, but you still had old ones because you didn’t quite declutter before. And you’ve just got weird piles of stuff. Maybe Thank you know, it’s like it’s a lot. And then you’re thinking mentally of all these things you have to do and whatnot. So take some time, put it on your calendar, take a deep breath. First of all, like let your shoulders come down away from your ears. And I would actually start with a brain dump piece of I just get out a piece of paper and I literally write everything I’m thinking of like, hey, I need to order some birthday gifts for February. Hey, I need to think so and so for sending that thing in the mail that I never acknowledge, hey this that whatever Getting it all out. So it’s out of your head and somewhere to go. And then making a little plan for, or strategy for or whatever works for taking a day, however you need to do it to get rid of physical clutter, because physical clutter causes us so much stress, that anything else we talked about here is gonna be really difficult to implement, when we already feel like we’re drowning, if you think you’re gonna start getting back on, maybe over the holidays, you weren’t exercising a lot. Now you’re like, Alright, I’m going to start doing five a week with the chasing greenest group, or I’m going to do you know, I’m going to do this challenge coming up soon, the a week program, so I’m going to start doing that. But then when you go to work out, you’re like moving piles of laundry, or you never find the time to work out. Because you don’t ever know what you’re doing. You know, that sort of more systems, I guess, if you don’t know, that’s how I used to feel. And I have a lot of episodes about systems. You don’t need motivation, you need systems and, and cleaning routines and those kinds of things. Because I used to feel like that, like when the baby went down for a nap. I remember my first kid, like, Okay, what do I do now? Like, should I clean? Should I nap? Should I work out like, all panicky. And if you have a system, you know when and what to do really because you’re like, well, Thursdays, I clean Tuesdays I do this or whatever that looks like. So I cannot recommend enough. Just getting rid of the mental and physical clutter so that you are setting yourself up for success. The best weekend this year. Next week. Nope, not next week. That was like next episode. We’re gonna talk about how to get more out of your workouts, see results faster. All that good stuff. So hop in for that. Actually, let me double check that. I think I might have told you a lie. As I said that. No, no, it is true story. All right, three tips. I need to do that brain dump guys. It’s been a little foggy up there. All right. So I will see you and talk to you then. In the meantime, I hope these tips were super helpful and that you start feeling like you can breathe a little bit getting back into routine. All right. I’ll talk to you next time. Have a great rest of your day.

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