While the holidays are a fun time of the year, they are also a very stressful time of the year! 45 percent of Americans say they prefer to skip the entire season because of financial pressure. Most Americans feel that the stress really starts to build around December 13, gets worse until December 18, and peaks on Christmas Day.

This holiday stress can be very damaging to your health, and it is sad but true that many take their lives during this season. The physiological impact of this stress manifests as elevated cortisol, which raises blood sugar, promotes weight gain and breaks down muscle.

Here are some tried and true ways to combat holiday stress syndrome:

1. Do your workouts indoors! This is NOT the time to skip workouts – even a short workout can have an immediate and lasting effect on reducing your mental and physiological stress response. Rapid, high-intensity exercise — just three 20-second sprints with one-four minutes of active recovery — has been proven to help keep fit and instantly improve mood, while lowering blood pressure, mental stress, and appetite!

2. Go to sleep! Easier said than done, but focusing on when you eat, go to bed, and wake up can keep your body in a good rhythm. An easy way to do this is to get up and go to bed at the same time every day, regardless of the day of the week – DO NOT change your schedule on the weekend. Next, try to keep your food and drink intake (except water) within a 12-hour period, so that you don’t eat or drink anything (except water) for 12 hours. For example, if you wake up at 6am and have a cup of coffee at 7am (the clock started at 7am). This means that you want to take your last food or drink by 7 p.m. at the latest. So, if you know you’re going to parties, try to take your first no water at 8 a.m. so you have until 8 p.m. to finish all the food and drinks. Keeping your sleep/wake cycle consistent with your eating and non-eating schedule will help your body recover better.

3. So if you go to parties – start early and leave early or just start drinking water and nothing else when you get to the end of your 12 hour window.

4. Set an alcohol budget – and switch to water after you hit it. If you do this along with planning your wake/sleep cycle and food intake cycle, you can avoid a lot of problems while having a great time!

5. Don’t overbook yourself or your family – plan downtime and keep it simple. Less is often more in life, the holidays are no exception!

This post How to Deal with Stress During the Holidays! was original published at “http://workoutanytime.blogspot.com/2021/11/how-to-deal-with-stress-during-holidays.html”