I last wrote about holiday eating tricks. The moral of the story: avoid a diet and just eat healthy. No fads, just good ole’ fashioned healthy eating. Eating healthy can be very beneficial during the holidays to maintain your health, figure and to give you more energy. But eating well is only one piece of the puzzle. Exercise must not be forgotten. Eating healthy can help you get really cheap health insurance (in a round about way) and so can exercising. Having a healthier lifestyle can help you receive deep discounts on health insurance.
Exercise has a lot of great benefits. First, it keeps you in shape. Your body needs to constantly be used to keep its strength and energy.
One of the biggest complaints around Christmas time is lack of energy. With all of the holiday parties, tasty treat making and running around town for yuletide activities can leave you feeling drained. It may seem like exercise is the last possible thing you could muster up energy for, but ironically, exercising actually gives you more energy. This is especially helpful during the winter season because of the winter blues. Winter blues, or seasonal affective disorder (SAD), affects many people during the cold winter months because of the lack of sunlight. This lack of light leads to depression and just all around blues. Exercising is a great way to combat these feelings. Many studies have shown that those who regularly exercise have less feelings of depression.
You need to find a fitness routine that works with winter months. If you are a runner, you can still run outside but you need appropriate clothing and shoes. And please, don’t run outside when there is ice. If there is too much ice, you could run indoors at a local rec center or gym.
Winter is a great time to try out some cold weather sports. Skiing and snowboarding are great work outs that target many different muscles in your body. While the price to start may be steep, season passes can be purchased for a discount of daily rates. Snowshoeing also targets many different muscles as well as ice hockey. Ice skating is a popular date and can also be a great workout. Just wear padded pants in case of any big spills. 🙂
Take up yoga. Yoga has been a fitness craze for many years and that is because it works. It is not some easy fix, it requires discipline and diligence but it delivers results. Yoga also has another benefit and a stress reducer. One of the cores of yoga is relaxation and clearing your mind. You might be thinking, “what does yoga and stress have to do with my exercise routine?” Stress is a big contributor to weight gain all year along, but especially during the holiday months. Regular overeating combined with lack of exercise and stress eating can pack on the pounds. If you do yoga, you can hit two birds with one stone. Now that is a win-win.