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Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a long time fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. In combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for hiking podcast. What is up you guys? Welcome back to another episode of the fit for hiking podcast. This is your host, Brady. Um, we are just coming off of the week of Thanksgiving. If you're listening, kind of like, you know, in chronological order in live time. Um, we just had Thanksgiving week, so today we're going to be getting into Holiday Hangover Cure. Five tangible steps for resetting after the holidays, after just Thanksgiving or Christmas, or both of them together, like you name it. If you've had a holiday experience recently, it doesn't even have to be Thanksgiving or Christmas could be something totally different and you're just feeling off. You're feeling bloated. You're feeling like you're mentally not in a good spot. Here are five easy steps to reset you to get you back on a good path. Okay, because sometimes we just need to kind of reroute our brain and get our habits in line with where we want to be if we're feeling off or just not our best. Um, so here's a quick guide to that. Step one. You got to start with rehydration after a big holiday meal or multiple days of like traveling for the holidays or a couple different events. You're probably going to be feeling a little bit extra bloated, carrying some extra water weight, and that's going to contribute to like maybe some negative body image feelings or just feeling blah, not grading your clothes. Um, that's typically going to be due to heavier meals, things like casseroles, stuffing, desserts, high sodium items like mashed potatoes and gravy, things like that that are going to lead to water retention. Um, alcohol also isn't doing us any favors. Salty holiday foods and snacks. Typically, when we're eating around the holidays, we're maybe not thinking about blood sugar balance, and we're just kind of snacking on things that are very high carb. Um, so there's a lot that goes into this. And one thing I want you to think about is that water weight is not the same as fat gain, as I mentioned on our Thanksgiving a podcast. Last week you would have to eat 3500 calories over your maintenance to gain £1 of fat of actual body fat. So if you see that the scale is higher, you know, maybe you're like 2 to £3 higher than what you were last time you waited pre holiday. Just know that your brain is going to try to play tricks on you. But that is water weight. Unless you actually ate 3500 calories over your maintenance over the course of those days. Of course that is possible. We do tend to overeat sometimes. Hopefully you went into the holidays with a strategy of how to have a balanced approach and not overdo it. If you want better tips for the next holiday, go back and listen to our last episode to do that. But most likely you're carrying extra water weight. Okay, so don't let it freak you out. Let's just focus on hydration. Okay, so I want you to focus on 2 to 3l of water over the next 24 to 48 hours. Add electrolytes once a day, especially if you have traveled or were drinking alcohol. And focus on gentle movement after your meals. This is going to help with digestion and just kind of get things back to baseline. Okay. So really, really focus on rehydrating. The more you hydrate, the more you can flush out the excess water weight and bloating. Okay. And here's a quick mindset. Note you're not undoing damage. You're supporting your metabolism and digestion after a big, normal holiday meal. Okay. It doesn't have to be like, oh my gosh, I totally ruined everything. This is all damage control. These are just steps to help get you into a healthier place without having to take extremes or feel guilty. Okay. Step number two reset your sleep from travel or social schedules. This might not have been a big thing for you, but sometimes with the holidays comes travel or, you know, excess socializing things that are outside of your normal routine. Um, so if you feel off schedule, maybe your kids are off schedule. So then they kept you up and you just weren't getting good sleep. Poor sleep is going to translate to more cravings, and that tends to lead to even worse energy. So it's like this vicious cycle because the worse sleep you get, the higher your hunger hormone ghrelin will be, and the lower your satiety hormone will be, so it just makes things a bit harder to maintain control over your diet. And then when you're eating a poor diet, that usually leads to poor blood sugar balance, which then also leads to energy crashes. Okay. So it's just this perpetuating cycle. So getting a sleep back to a good spot actually is so, so important. And trying to get, you know, a good eight straight hours if possible. I know it's hard. I have little kids, I get it. But as much as you can really emphasize getting back into a good sleep rhythm. So maybe the first night you're home, you go to bed 30 to 60 minutes early. Do that for a couple nights in a row and you're going to feel so much better. Um, first morning sunlight or a short walk first thing in the morning outside can help reset circadian rhythm, minimizing phone time right before bed, reducing caffeine for a day or two to kind of just help stabilize stress hormones and stabilize hunger. And your mindset note here is that sleep is the fastest post-holiday reset tool, even more so than your workouts. A lot of people try to outwork the meals that they eat, but so much of like weight, maintenance and health and feeling good is about controlling your appetite. And sleep is very, very much linked to our food habits and our appetite. Step number three get back to simple high protein meals. So usually holidays are going to be carb and fat and dessert heavy. And especially the high carb high dessert sugary things can really swing blood sugar and then leave you craving more. So this is going to like kind of spice things up. You're going to be on a sugar high and then it crashes and then you're just kind of like still hungry having cravings. Not feeling good energetically. And when we're just relying on leftovers, especially just those carbon dessert focused things, that kind of keeps the cycle going. So before you even go into the holidays, ideally having some like anchor meals to bring you back either before or after or all around that holiday event that's going to just maybe be outside of your normal eating. This is going to be crucial. So for the 2 to 3 days before the holiday, and then 2 to 3 days after when you're resetting, have some anchor meals that are a protein, fiber and color combo. So what I mean by that is you're getting a really good high protein source every single meal. You're getting a little bit of fiber with every meal, and you're also eating the rainbow of micronutrients. So fruits and veggies that are different colors, you're going to get different micronutrient micronutrient ratios with those different colors. Okay. So example would be for breakfast. You're having maybe an egg scramble that's half egg white half egg yolks. You're adding maybe a little bit of parmesan cheese a little bit of spinach. And then you're having some fruit with a little bit of Greek yogurt as well. Okay. That's a great high fiber, high protein. You're getting some fruits, veggies, all of that in one meal. And you're setting up the day with like such a good hit of protein to sustain you energy wise lunch. You could have a big protein bowl of, you know, like a protein source, whether that's chicken or ground turkey, ground beef. Um, I also love like smoked salmon, tuna, things like that. Um, a turkey chili or a sheet pan of chicken and veggies. Those are just some simple ones that you can throw together. Dinner could be a salmon salad. Okay, so those are some ideas of some ways to get a lot of good veggie intake, a lot of good, which then translates to fiber and a lot of good protein. Um, mindset. No, you're not restricting holiday foods. You're just working to stabilize your appetite, so cravings fade naturally. Okay, that doesn't mean you can't work in some leftovers, but make sure you're you're balancing those high carb, high sugar foods with high protein meals. And just look at their the portion sizes too, like portions are everything. So having a little bit of extra dessert over the following days because you have some really yummy leftovers is not going to throw anything off as long as you're having small mindful portions versus having like two pieces of pie every single day for the following week after Thanksgiving, right? Step number four move in ways that feel good, not punishing. We don't want to, uh, add movement in or exercise from a place of guilt and, like, working in group fitness, this rhetoric around, like, burning off your meals, burning off your holiday treats. Like, I hate that because it really kept me in a bad mental place for a long time. And I know that that this happens for so many other, especially women out there who have struggled with like disordered patterns around exercise and food. So please, please don't fall victim to that. That is not at all what I'm saying, but just go back to your normal routines before and after the holiday. Don't let it become this big thing that derails you. It's one day, it's maybe a couple of meals. Okay, so even if you're traveling, you skip a few extra workouts, no big deal. Just jump back into your normal patterns. You don't need to burn off your holiday food. That's just going to backfire and make you hungrier, right? And then you're gonna want to eat those leftovers even more. So maybe just commit to like 20 minutes of movement every day for 2 to 3 days. And you can go based off of how you're feeling. If you're feeling like hitting the gym, you get your stride going. You're there for 20 minutes and you're like, I think I can just keep going. Great. Maybe you'll get there and you do 20 minutes and you're like, that's all I got today. Or you do a 20 minute walk or a hike, okay? It doesn't have to be anything extreme, but it gets your patterns going again for movement. If you've taken a little break due to travel, if you didn't take a break, great. You're just keeping up with your normal movement routines. The goal is momentum, not calorie burning. Okay, so for your mindset note that's the most important thing with this one. We're not trying to burn off anything. We're not even looking at the calories burned. Okay. I hate that metric for workouts. It's not helpful at all. Okay. The more you obsess over that, the more you're going to spin your wheels. Just focus on momentum fueling your body, moving your body, honoring your body, and feeling good and energetic. Step five Mental reset. And this could be from family time travel chaos. Stress holidays do tend to bring up a lot of like feelings, emotions, or if you're traveling with kids, it's just a lot. And at the end you just feel drained, right? So if your emotional load is higher due to family dynamics, posting, social expectations, travel, really look at that for what it is. That's mental clutter. So it's going to be harder to focus on the things that are so beneficial for your health and that will actually help you move through that. So take a little bit of time for reflection. Asking yourself, how do I want to feel going into this week after the holiday? How am I feeling? Like, where am I feeling emotional? Am I trending towards emotional or stress eating? Am I avoiding the things that make me feel good? If so, why? What is coming up that's kind of blocking me from doing the things that I know will help me feel good, right? If you are stopping yourself from going to the gym, if you know that you have the food that is going to fuel your body, but you choose something else that won't, or you know that you should have a cup of tea and instead you have alcohol, right? Why? What's going on in that moment that's allowing you to justify those decisions? Is that coming from a place of overwhelm, stress, chaos, shame? Like there's so many different emotions. So it's important to be in tune with that. And also, how can I support my mental and physical health this week, both sides of the coin. Um, set a micro plan again for these 72 hours post holiday. Going through these steps. Literally just implementing the things that we've talked about today will make you feel so much better if you're in your head, if you're not in a good spot mentally moving through these physical steps, taking action often gets you out of that funk or that mental cycle. Okay, water, protein steps, good bedtime routines, all of that stuff is going to translate to better mental space, better physical health. Also, letting go of perfection. If you look back on your Thanksgiving and you're like, well, that didn't go as well as I was hoping, I went into it with all these, you know, good expectations for myself. And then I kind of just felt they fell by the wayside. Just know that it's a season. It's a couple of days or weeks, depending on what they look like for you. It doesn't have to dictate the direction of the rest of your year, or the following year, or your overall health throughout the entirety of this year, right? Also, reminder from last episode there are 180 total meal opportunities if you're eating three meals a day in the months of November and December combined. So think about how many total holiday meals you're going to have between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Maybe ten, maybe five, maybe 15. Even if you're on the higher end of like 15 social holiday meals during these two months, that's 15 out of 180 meals. It's not that many. Okay. So don't let it become a bigger deal than it is when you let it snowball in your brain when you do the like. Well, I already broke one glass, so I'm going to break all of the glasses in my kitchen mentality. That's when progress gets away from us. That's when we do lose our good momentum and our mindset really gets the best of us. So mindset note here this step helps you shift from reactive to intentional without overwhelm. All right you guys. So that is your five step reset guide throughout the holidays. Whether you're just trying to recover from one or both, you can have this kind of in your toolbox heading into Christmas as well, and I hope you find it helpful. Hey, quick little note here. If you listen to these episodes and you are great at hearing this information, you love hearing about it, but it's not really translating to action on your end. You're not following through. You're not being consistent. And the implementation is really hard. Just know that you're not alone. This is the hardest part for everybody, okay? Even coaches, even me like I struggle if I don't have accountability. So taking the step to apply for coaching, getting some external accountability, even just for a season to get these things dialed in so that it's not just information overloading your brain, but it actually translates into tangible progress results you taking the steps and creating the habits, right? All of the information in the world doesn't do anything if it doesn't translate to action, right? So I try to simplify a lot of these things and make them as easy as possible. But even still, having accountability is sometimes what we need to get us from point A to point B. Okay, so if that's you, if you're like, I know that I am not doing this stuff on my own, even though I have the best intentions, even though I hear the things and I want to do them. Then check out our coaching application in the show notes. You can kick off the new year with us and start the year strong, and it's going to be amazing to see where you'll be. You know, in 3 to 6 months into the year 2026. Um, so check that out. If you guys have questions about the program, you can always shoot us a message at the fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page. Um, we'd love to connect with you there. I love hearing from you guys about what you're liking on the show, what you'd like to hear more of. Um, if you're if you are enjoying the show, sharing it with people, putting it on your socials, um, you know, leaving us a rating and review all those things really help us out. So we appreciate that so, so much. All right. Thank you guys for tuning in. And I will chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this. Be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at ponytail on Etrailer.com. Happy and healthy trails.