Overcoming Holiday Blues and Guilt

The highs of the holiday period can sometimes be accompanied by a large side dish of holiday guilt and generally feeling low. Once the festivities are over and life gets back to a normal pattern it is quite common to start feeling low and / or guilty. Emotions can range from guilt over the food that we've eaten, the lack of exercise that we have done to feeling blue that family and friends head back to their lives elsewhere. As well as anxiety about what work may have piled up back in the office and comparing our festive period to other friends.

Here are some of my fail safe tips to transitioning through the holiday slump and entering 2015 feeling healthy and positive.

1. Get your diet back on track. It's normal to over indulge during the holidays but it doesn't mean that you have to sabotage your healthy lifestyle completely. You wouldn't slash your other three tires on your car if you had one flat. Just appreciate the food that you've eaten and focus on eating more of the right stuff. Getting your diet right not only impacts you physically but has the additional benefit of lifting your mood and getting you out of any low that you may have fallen into as your sugar levels equalize.
2. Ditch the alcohol. You don't need to forever if that's not your thing but take a break for a few days. Aside from the obvious extra calories alcohol contains and lack of will power around healthy food choices consuming alcohol brings, it's another contributing factor to your mental state. Likelihood is if you are feeling anxious or down about anything emotionally alcohol will just magnify these feelings for you. So have a mini detox.
3. Don't try and do it all at once. Lurching from enjoying "treats" all day long to getting straight back onto the healthy eating and exercise bandwagon isn't a recipe for success for everyone. In fact it can be downright tough pulling ourselves off all the sugar our bodies are now craving and finding the motivation to workout. Setting unrealistic expectations only means we are more likely to fail resulting in discouragement. The outcome? We drop our healthy lifestyle. Instead make small incremental changes to get you back to where you were before.
4. Unplug from technology. I cannot stress this one strongly enough. From a work perspective don't check work emails constantly, you can still be diligent by checking at certain time periods and having designated windows of time where you respond to mails or make relevant calls. If you don't the chances are you will walk back into work feeling like you haven't had a break at all.
5. Get prepared. Prepare food that fits in with your healthy lifestyle choices that you can take to work, make sure your calendar is uptodate with work appointments and you know where you are meant to be on what day and at what time. Don't expect to check off everything on your to-do list on the first day back.
6. Comparison is the biggest form of unhappiness. When you hear other people's stories of the holidays or see pictures on Facebook or Instagram remember you are only getting a snapshot in time of that person's life, not the whole picture. It is unrealistic to compare yourself against their lives. 
7. Express gratitude. Look at what you do have in your life and the things that you can accomplish to make a difference. Don't focus on what has past and you feel guilty about - it can't be undone, instead turn your view to more positive points of view. Consider writing thank-you notes to people for gifts that you have received or simply time that friends and family have spent with you for the holidays.
8. Don't beat yourself up. Don't talk down to yourself or be negative if you find that it is taking you a couple of weeks to get back on track and find your mojo again. Self defeating talk doesn't help anyone - you or the people you may be complaining to.
9. Plan something fun for 2015. It doesn't have to be in January but sometimes having something in the diary to look forward to can really help lift the spirits, especially if it is a firm date to reconnect with friends and family that you have spent time with over the holidays. The knowledge that you will be seeing them again soon can be just the tonic that you need.
10. Prioritize self care. If you are doing the above points then you're hopefully interweaving it back into your life but make it a priority. The holidays can be exhausting or a mentally strenuous time for some people facing challenging situations or the loss of loved ones. Self care is the corner stone for us to be able to look after others if we are whole.