Staying healthy during the holidays is often quite a challenge. Between joyful things like cherished family traditions, music, and festive lights, you’d think staying healthy would be easy. Instead, the holidays are often one of the hardest times of the year because of the emotions they evoke, including ones revolving around food.
For many people, the holidays mostly seem to be about giving gifts wrapped in shiny paper and decorations. Unfortunately, the important symbolism behind gift-giving is often forgotten or overlooked. Some people buy gifts for others because they feel it’s expected or it’s what they’ve done throughout the years. Overspending, crowded shopping experiences, heavy traffic, and wasted resources are a few of the negative experiences contributing to ill-health during the holidays. No, I’m not a Grinch. I love holidays and the crowds! And while gifts are great, I believe the best gifts are based on love and quality time spent with family and friends.
I like the idea of taking the time to write what we want for ourselves, our families and our world — and how to best see these things come to fruition. My list includes peace and health for all, my own good health and time to enjoy my family and friends.
By acknowledging and appreciating the wonderful things we already have in our lives, whether physical, mental or spiritual, our gratitude expands. In old parlance, this is called “counting your blessings.” When counting your blessings, remember that it’s not about what others have; it’s about being grateful for what you have.
Each new holiday triggers emotions of past holidays. Keeping our emotions in perspective contributes to good health during the holidays. For those who have lost loved ones, this includes being thankful for the time they were in our lives. For those feeling lonely because they do not have a special someone, keep looking with the knowingness that a special someone is just around the corner looking for you. For those blessed to have special people in your life now, be sure to let them know how much you care. As cliché as it sounds, every day is a gift so let’s use it to help make the world a better place.
Now for the food part of staying healthy: This aspect may be likened to walking across a minefield. There will be attractive-looking, enticing food-like substances everywhere you look. Filled with artificial sweeteners, refined sugars, flavor enhancers, and artificial colors, they’re designed to fool you into eating them. Even the veggies and meats are loaded with these things. They also typically have hormones, glyphosate (Round-Up), MSG (in the disguise of over 50 different names) and obesogens (endocrine disruptors) designed to make you eat more and buy more to fatten both the pocketbooks of big corporations and you! It’s a sneaky way to make you think that bad food is good…
If you normally eat healthy during the year, you’ll probably be more reactive to toxic food. When you eat food that’s different from what you normally eat, you may feel ill while others seem to be immune to it. Your body is cleaner, healthier and smarter so it reacts to unhealthy chemicals.
The holidays aren’t the time to educate family and friends that don’t share your knowledge of healthy food. Whatever you do, don’t tell them that the feast they prepared is mostly inedible. If you do, you probably won’t be invited back next year. Instead of being regarded as the guru that lives on your own mountaintop, instead, you will be regarded as a nut that is most suitable for use in a holiday fruitcake. So what should you do?
Eat small portions and make reference to your plan of trying to slim down in the New Year if you’re asked why you’re not eating more heartily. They may identify with that and cut you some slack. Next, if you’re going to be eating foods that are out of your healthy comfort zone, arm yourself by taking a couple Magnesium Lactate first. This will help your body deal with the MSG in commercially prepared foods and desserts. When you leave, take a few more capsules.
It’s also a good idea to take along your Celtic sea salt. This will be used as an antidote to the corn syrup that will be in most of the foods, even meats, at holiday gatherings. Since corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup have no appreciable amount of minerals, they will steal the minerals they want from your body. This causes and/or contributes to muscle soreness. When you take your Celtic salt out to use, you can tell your tablemates that it was a gift and it tastes really good. Since this unprocessed salt really does taste great, they may want to try it — but don’t tell them it’s good for them! This is a tricky game but it’s worthwhile so that you don’t lose friends because of your knowledge on this subject.
When you’re choosing what to eat, try to avoid foods made with soy, flax, and beans or any other highly estrogenic foods as they will bring out the fangs and claws you may’ve seen at other holiday gatherings. While this may have an entertaining element, it could turn on you at any time.
Last but not least, make an appointment with your chiropractor to get adjusted. Whether good or bad stress, all kinds of stress contributes to subluxations which will interfere with your enjoyment of the holidays. This is a time to be healthy and happy — a time to count your blessings, not your aches and pains.
All of us at Karl Wellness Center wish you the most joyous of holidays filled with many precious moments and lots of love!
