You Don't Have to Go All-Out All the Time (How to Adapt Your Fitness for the Holiday Season)
Ah, the holiday season is almost upon us. Can you feel it in the air?
Of course you can, because you're up to your eyeballs in the work you've been bringing home for three days, accomplished from your phone while you put Paw Patrol on (again) and throw your kid some Goldfish to have 23 minutes to yourself. You need to get ahead so you have the chance to breathe once or twice on your impending days off. You're sitting there, knowing ~self-care~ is important, and also that it feels about sixty trillion light years away, considering all the demands you've got on your plate. Your kids, your job, your partner, your babysitter, your hairstylist... they're all depending on you to hit the deadlines and make the appointments and feed everyone (including yourself). Have you gotten ahead yet? ;)
Oh yeah, and you skipped the gym (again, again).
Despite what the #noexcuses crowd will tell you, there are a lot of reasons to not get in an hour-long brofest of a gym session. That doesn't make you flaky or bad at anything. It means you're juggling a lot, you're a high-achieving womxn who cares deeply about her commitments, and you're looking for a way to make them all work for you.
Zooming out to recognize that is powerful—a key component in creating a life filled with ease, joy, and maybe 15 extra minutes to get to that meditation you've bookmarked.
Life (not just the weather) has seasons. Ups and downs. Sometimes it’s fun and effortless to crush it in the gym, and other times, no matter how hard you try or how many #motivation emails or posts you read, there is no way you’re doing anything that involves getting up from your desk (or off your couch, as the case may be, because exhaustion and burnout are real).
These times can come seemingly at random—I know I, for one, have had the best intentions to check everything off my to-do list one week, and then it just… doesn’t happen—but I’d imagine, if you looked, you could find some rhythm there. A couple of years ago, I started tracking my energy and how it waxes and wanes. I found a predictable pattern that all made sense: I tend to front-load my weeks, so of COURSE by Thursday or Friday, after 3 or 4 jam-packed days, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck.
(This is also true of annual cycles: my activity and excitement ramps up with warm weather, and in the fall, all I really want to do is get cozy, despite all the festivities.)
Now, at this moment, I’m not telling you to add in an energy tracker on top of all the stuff you’re already doing (I hear at least a few of you going, “yeah right, Steph, I thought you just acknowledged how busy I am, and then you throw another thing my way? Cool cool.”). I’m simply alerting you to a super important fact about fitness and about life:
You don’t have to go all-out all the time (and you can’t).
You are worthy of love, respect, belonging, acceptance, holiday cookies, no matter how many hours you’ve logged at the gym so far this month.
The next few weeks are going to be filled with both stress and joy. You're going to hear a lot about celebrating, but not too much, about summer bodies being made in the winter, about how badly you want your assumed resolution body.
I’m certain, if you’re here, that you care about your health and fitness, so the pull to keep your fitness routine on full-blast despite the volume being turned up everywhere else is strong.
I’m certain when that inevitably doesn’t work (because, hello, you’re a human, not a robot), you feel like you failed (again, again, again), you map out all the ways you’re going to, “get it right,” when the new year rolls around, and you shove all the rest of the associated feelings in a drawer to deal with later.
What if, amidst the overwhelm of 74 competing demands, instead of simultaneously neglecting and hating your body and therefore totally shutting down to re-emerge from your blanket fort in January, you picked ONE thing to focus on, that would feel good to you right now, in the body you have, that you can *remember* to do every day throughout the next few weeks? For example: drink a tall glass of water with your coffee, have a bedtime, go for a lunchtime walk.
Nothing is too small. There is no right answer.
Pick ONE—because picking 3 will put you in the same overwhelm spiral we're in in the first place—and see how it goes.
I'd bet you'll learn you can, in fact, trust yourself to follow through, even through the holidays.
What would that look like? How would it feel? How would that change your holiday season?
I’d love to chat this out with you. Reply and let me know what move you’re making (or what small step you’re taking—hello to my friend and Nutritional Therapy Practitioner extraordinaire Aimee Suen!).
xoxo,
Steph
