Megan Nechanicky

 

With Christmas just one week way, it’s hard to avoid the added holiday calories and easy to push off exercising until 2012. This past week alone I had 3 office parties and countless boxes of beautiful and delicious Christmas cookies arrive at my house.   So here are a few last minute holiday health tips:

Get Outdoors-The weather is perfect for outside activities—throw on a great fleece, hat and gloves and take a hike, run, ski or skate. Even if you have only 30 minutes, you will feel so much better and your body will thank you.

Freeze the Sweets- Great holiday treats can always be saved until next year. Have one or two and put the rest in a Ziploc and freeze until you really want something sweet. Removing cookies from plain sight will make you less likely to eat them and save you the extra calories.

Start Your New Year Today- Who said you need to make a life change the 1^st of every year? If you want to start living a healthier life, don’t wait, do it now! Make simple changes these last two weeks of December such as eating more colorful in-season fruits and vegetables, drinking more water or eating meals on smaller plates. These small changes can add up to big results in 2012.

Can you imagine a day when you go to a restaurant and they automatically give you a side of fruit or salad instead of french fries? Last week I joined First Lady Michelle Obama at the Partnership for a Healthier America’s Building a Healthier Future Summit. The theme throughout the two days was creating solutions to make living healthy lives easier for Americans. The default choice should ALWAYS be the healthier choice. I think about the default choice as the one that automatically fills in the box when you’re completing something online or it’s automatically given to you without requesting a substitution. What if a bottle of water was automatically given to you with a meal instead of a soda? What if your kids were automatically given fat free or low-fat milk instead of juice or soda? What if every employer gave their employees 30 minutes per day for exercise?

What healthy choice would you like to see become the default choice?