December is an exciting month with holidays and special events to celebrate! Strengthening the Forces invites you to browse through this Special Edition webpage featuring information to help keep you healthy and safe this holiday season. We hope you enjoy the feature articles, recipes, and tips as we encourage you to relax and keep safe this holiday season!
This Holiday Season, Make These Your Top Four Objectives:
Celebrate Safely
With family gatherings, dinners with friends, and office functions, the special celebrations throughout the holidays will keep you busy! Whether you are meeting with friends or relatives at a restaurant or someone’s home, make healthy choices. This December, try the latest popular trend and drink a mocktail beverage as a healthy alternative at your next social gathering. As always, be sure you have organized transportation that brings you to and from your special events safely, now and throughout the year.
Take Time To Relax
With all the many wonderful but often hectic activities that get scheduled throughout the month of December, it is especially important to take some time to relax! Try adopting an organized and relaxed approach to the holidays. Use your calendar to schedule your special events - don’t forget to include some "down time" in your holiday planning. For example, stay in bed for an extra hour, watch a movie, or read that stack of magazines you have been collecting. Whatever your plans are for the holidays, plan for it to be as relaxed and stress-free as possible.
Eat Well
It often seems like December is a month spent eating. Whether it is your mother's amazing pound cake or your uncle's 'best ever' sausage rolls, it seems that delicious food is all around us! This holiday season, try to strike a balance. Do some pre-holiday planning to fully enjoy the festivities and treats of the season while staying on track with healthy lifestyle living. Do not deprive yourself...indulge moderately in the foods that you really love and plan for healthier meals on non-festive days. Make healthy food choices when you can, and be sure to fit in some daily physical activity!
Exercise
For many of us, December can be a busy month filled with parties, shopping, and staying up late visiting with friends and relatives. During all of this celebrating it is easy to forget to make time for some regular physical activity. Staying active during the holiday season will let you take advantage of all the unique physical activities that winter offers. It also helps to burn off those extra calories you take in eating things like your mother's Christmas fruit cake. Even if your gym is closed for the holidays, do something as simple as a long walk - your body will love you for it. Take a friend or loved one with you - their body will love it as well.