Happy holidays... bring on the guilt and stress!

Welcome officially to the madness known as the holiday season. I don't mean madness in a bad way. I am one of those who really loves this time of year. I enjoy getting to have the extra time with family and friends. The holidays are meant to have fun and enjoy the good cheers from those around us. Which leads me to today's action item.

This is also the time of year where self guilt can become a big issue for some of us. We feel we have to make decisions based on our regimented lifestyle. We feel if we deviate from this, all will be lost. Because of this we sometimes let ourselves miss out on wonderful opportunities to spend time living life. Then we are stuck living with a different version of self guilt.

Well first of all, throw the self guilt out the window and leave it behind. Guilt is an emotion that serves zero positive purposes. In reality guilt raises personal stress levels, which in turn raises our cortisol levels with in our body. When this happens, the ability to change our body composition comes to a grinding halt and will actually reverse body composition changes if your cortisol levels continue to increase. Stress is one of the main causes of raised cortisol levels and we have enough stress in our lives brought on by outside influences. We don't need to add to them by accepting self guilt in to our lives.

You will also hear the term everything in moderation. Sometimes this will also create a guilt factor as well. Maybe you have a handful of invitations to holiday gatherings to go to. Do you want to have to pick and choose which ones to attend based on moderation or your regimented lifestyle. You are just creating more stress by doing this as well.

I personally believe that we should live life and go have fun. There is no reason you can't go and enjoy yourself this holiday season. Yes we don't want to get completely out of control and let everything you worked for all year go to waste. I think what we really want to do is to maintain. How do we maintain? Don't over indulge every time. Still go and have fun, but set some limits and guidelines for yourself at each event. You can set these guidelines for yourself by considering the various factors that surround your daily life. Such as the day of the week, your work schedule, how late into the evening, which group of people will you be hanging out with and most important your workout schedule LOL.

This is typically the one time of year that we tend to get pretty busy with work, family, friends and social events. Have fun with them and realize this is all part of the enjoyment of life. It's OK to have some fun and I hope you have lots of it.