HOW YOUR HEALTH HEEDS THE HOLIDAYS
Intro
Tomorrow is a big day. Possibly the most important election of our lifetime worldwide is happening and has undoubtedly carried with it more social angst than anyone could have imagined. Thursday was a big day (Halloween, in case you forgot). We all know trick-or-treating is for children, but that doesn’t stop us from throwing down like we’re about to go into hibernation. It’s now the big season of Thanksgiving. Attics of the Christmas fiends are being emptied. Plans and family traditions are being set into motion across the country. Beer, sugar, and [sitting to watch] football are sneaking a firm grip on people’s arteries. Soon after, Black Friday will inaugurate a season which is unmatched when it comes to the overconsumption of everything your body was not designed to ingest, a level of inactivity that draws dangerously close to resembling a scene from Wall-E, and through all of this the Earth’s axis tilts further and further from the sun. This means it gets colder. It becomes really easy to cozy up on the couch with a venti double shot coffee-flavored Kool-aid with milk-flavored syrup and caramel drizzle (which is just sugar, by the way). Everyone wears more clothes. Minds stray from thinking about what bodies look like underneath. Worries about what bodies feel like or what they’re capable of get drowned out by the sound of Santa’s sleigh bells. It’s all a distraction. None of this is to demean the importance of the holidays to anyone who holds them dear, but sacrificing potentially years or the quality of our short lives for a fleeting way of life that glorifies sugar and comfort is a trade that no one should make. The silver lining is that I’m about to make a formidable argument that you don’t have to. That no one has to.
Flu Season: An American Myth
Whether you’re a 7th grade volleyball player who just began your offseason or you’re a grandfather who’s needed to lose that pesky ten pounds for the last thirty years, this can be a rough time of year for your health. There are few who reach the new year unscathed by strep throat or COVID or unwanted weight gain. However, there’s a heavy misconception that we’re all thrown into the pit that is “Flu Season” year after year, simply hoping that we don’t have to stand out in the cold for too long so we don’t get sick. The fact of the matter is that the Influenza Virus can only die by temperatures that exceed 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Additionally, researchers have discovered an interesting relationship between the increased amount of time that people spend indoors and the uptick in the flu transmission during colder months. After all, we know that the greatest spread of the virus happens through particles of coughing, sneezing or other bodily fluids from one person to another. But I’m here to discuss the real reason why flu season is a fluke. The flu is not the problem. Many viruses and other germs that cause sickness are constantly mutating and being spread all over the world, and not just in the winter. It’s a fact of life and by-and-large one we can’t control. What we do have control over is our own defense against these human pathogens. Our immune system. It’s a gift endowed to us by our Creator that is an active and adaptive system of defense against the ever-changing microscopic world. Like all systems, our immune system can only operate at the level of its foundation. A vital piece of equipment for your immune system is vitamin D. On average, about 40% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. The most bioavailable form of this is sunlight. It’s been estimated that during the winter months, the average person loses about 80% of the very little sunlight they were getting in the summer months. Not to get political, but it’s even been proposed that the COVID outbreak could have been significantly blunted had people not been mandated to stay at home, simply from the amount of sunlight that their regular lives allowed them to get. Ultimately, the effectiveness of your immune system is directly dependent on your decisions and behaviors that make up your health. Yes, there are a few other factors at play like your environment and your genetics, but your health is the one you have an insanely large amount of control over. “Flu Season” can be a tradition for you or it can be an American myth. So if this cultural phenomenon is completely avoidable, why do people put themselves through it? I can tell you for a fact that it’s definitely not because the new year is right around the corner and everyone can magically make huge lifestyle changes due to their far-fetched resolutions. But it’s not that the reason behind all of these social norms and behaviors is necessarily a bad thing. The opposite is actually true. What’s the cliché, “the reason for the season”? Many people appreciate the holidays because of the time they spend with family, the spreading of joy, giving to those in need, for some - Hanukkah, for some - Jesus, and for most - Santa. Whatever your reason for celebrating, don’t start blaming it quite yet. It’s possible to hold your family’s traditions along with the Christmas spirit and winter joy in your heart without severely risking your heart’s ability to keep beating.
“It’s possible to hold your family’s traditions along with the Christmas spirit and winter joy in your heart without severely risking your heart’s ability to keep beating.”
What if I told you that there were only two concepts, that if you could find it possible to wrap your head around, would not only change your entire outlook on your health, fitness and performance during the winter months, but that you could actually view this season as an opportunity to get a leg up on the rest of the world? Because that’s not a rhetorical question.
The Transcendent Resolution
I’ve already mentioned several times now things like reason, purpose and foundation. All of these terms reference the underlying motivation behind why we do what we do. But too often in our society, we allow novelty and comfort cloud the “why” and in turn, our judgment. When people originally started celebrating Halloween, no one piped up and said “Why don’t we eat our weight in processed sugar, artificial flavors and a waxy candy that resembles corn kernels?” When people first started celebrating Thanksgiving, I doubt a Native American or an explorer toasted to eating so much that they passed out, only to wake up the next morning to sit, drink too much alcohol, and peruse Amazon Black Friday deals on the couch all day. Finally, whatever you subscribe to, most winter holidays are rooted in religious celebrations. The last time I checked, gluttony and sloth aren’t encouraged in any orthodox religion. What I’m getting at here is that the intentions behind these celebrations were for things much deeper than too much food, wine and laziness. It’s not my job to spell out exactly what the intention was for those days and seasons, but it is my job to help you realize that almost everything done without intention will drift toward gluttony and sloth. Enough dogma. Let’s get practical. What does it look like to be intentional during the holiday season?
Decide when you’re going to allow yourself to consume in excess and poor quality. This might seem like a wild thing to say, and definitely to put into practive, but consider the alternative. Imagine a list of days from last year, Halloween to New Year’s, with a comprehensive record of everything you consumed. If you looked that over right now, first of all you’d be disgusted, and additionally you wouldn’t want that for yourself this holiday season. That’s because those decisions weren’t decisions at all. It was completely unintentional and circumstantial. You’ll be much better off making a conscious choice to full send the holiday diet on a few select days rather than just going where the wind blows you. Anyways, this is essentially the same concept that bodybuilders, powerlifters and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson have been practicing for decades now - the cheat day. Pic of the rock eating a cheat meal
Commit to a specific, but attainable number of training days. Whether you’re running a particular training program, or you already go to the gym on a regular basis, or you’re inconsistent but willing to start a good habit, look over your schedule for the next couple of months. Determine over the next couple of months when you’ll be traveling, at events and parties, staying up late, eating like crap, and come up with a reasonable but disciplined selection of days that you’re going to train. I don’t recommend sprinting, lifting heavy, or doing high-skill movements on days where your recovery is dampened such as a day after a party with overconsumption of bad quality food or alcohol. You can, and probably should, move and sweat on those days, but don’t risk an injury with something you know you should only do when you’re fresh. I also recommend sticking to lower intensity workouts following lots of travel. Travel does not allow for regular, quality sleep as well as time in a car or plane tightens the muscles and stiffens the joints. Lastly, as corny as it sounds, something is always better than nothing. You must be smart when training under fatigue or with poor fueling, but going on a twenty minute walk the day after eating, drinking and staying up late is way better than doing nothing. Not to mention, you’ll get the opportunity to soak up some sunlight.
Take advantage of time off from work or school. Work or school holidays are an extremely exciting concept, and it gives you energy just to read those words. That’s a good thing. You should look forward to your breaks and your free time. However, people tend to overdo those times off and overindulge in activities that are only going to negate the potential rest you could get from having time off. It’s not uncommon for hard-working ambitious athletes or professionals to find themselves overworked and chronically fatigued this time of year. There are plenty of Q4 deadlines for business men and women, there are sports seasons ending and offseasons beginning and vice versa. You don’t recover from chronic fatigue, physical or mental, by spending the next two months stuffing your face with Red 40 and playing the new Call of Duty through the night. You do it by sleeping in when you get the chance. You do it by eating real food on days when there’s not a party or event you’re attending. You do it by getting outside during the day and going to bed when you get sleepy. This time off is a blessing, don’t flush it down the toilet.
Regardless of what your life is like, looking ahead when it comes to things like your training, your diet and your sleep will not only make the holidays more enjoyable, but it will enable you to begin the next season with a leg up on the rest of the world.
If You Can Dodge a Wrench, You Can Dodge a Ball
You may have heard of the abstract concept of the crucible before. In literal terms, a crucible is a metal or a ceramic container that’s used to hold other metals or very hard materials to be heated up to extremely high temperatures to allow for the melting of the materials it contains. Then, the melted material can be cast in a mold and formed into any shape necessary. When the material cools, it’s then formed into a completely new shape with an entirely new set of uses. In metaphorical terms, the waves of life define the crucible. It’s the really hard times. It’s when rent is due and you just got fired. It’s when you’ve stayed up all night studying for a test and you have a game tomorrow. It’s when your family busts out the 3rd round of desserts and candy on Thanksgiving, but you’ve planned training sessions on the next two days. It’s when you just realized you’re going to be traveling for 16 days from now until 2025, but you don’t want to gain the ten pounds you know eating fast food will cause. This concept is quite daunting, but there are a couple of ways to make it out of the crucible without looking like a lumpy mound of Big Macs.
The first way to make it through the next two months is exactly what I’ve laid out for you. See it coming. Be intentional about what you’re going to do and when. You may not bat .1000, but you’ll come out the other side way better off than if you’d stepped up to the plate blindfolded. The second way to beat the holiday season is not just to survive, but overcome it. After the holiday season follows the New Year. Many sad souls make hopeful resolutions to improve their health or performance and without fail, most of them fail. But that’s when all of the candy and desserts and sitting and crazy schedules are over. That’s when the pressures of society are actually aimed upward towards new goals and a fresh start. Why is it, then, that an estimated 80% of New Year’s resolutions don’t work out? We can all speculate, but this is where I’d like to insert my theory about the crucible. Think about the strongest relationships you have, they’re probably that way because you and your best friend/spouse/sibling/parent have been through some really tough times together. Think about your daily non-negotiables, you still read/write/pray/meditate/exercise/listen to music because that habit helped get you through a really difficult season of life, or a few of those seasons. Think about the network or community that you choose to be a part of or that you serve with, you still go to AA meetings/play on your sports team/go to church/meet with your book club/serve at the local homeless shelter because that community has given your life meaning and those people were there for you when something went really wrong in your life. The most meaningful, lasting and impactful life changes happen in the crucibles of life. I hate to say it, but when society as a whole puts the decorations away, goes back to work and school, resumes a normal schedule and ceases a disgusting list of unhealthy behavior, that’s not really a tough time to try and make a change. My theory is that this is why most fail. Those resolutions sound good but it’s too light-hearted, they’re supposed to fail and finally, outside of the difficulty of actually making a lifestyle change, it’s not a hard-enough time for the impact of the crucible to help mold your new behaviors into stone. So, let’s start now. Take the guidelines about intentionality I gave you earlier, and apply them now. Commit to them. Make the really hard choices now, when everyone else is letting the time of year tell them how to live. While everyone else is falling susceptible to the significant increases in weight gain, heart attacks, catching a cold, flu and pneumonia, and decreased physical performance. I have little doubt that if you were to commit to a plan, stick to it, and execute at least part of it through this crucible that is Halloween through New Years, that you can’t carry those healthy behaviors into 2025. Who knows, you might even be able to add a few more on January 1st and be part of the 20% who actually stick to those as well.
Regardless, the importance of the crucible is not simply a binary decision process to only begin new habits when it’s hard to. It’s to understand that this concept is likely an evolutionary adaptation. Humans don’t like change, but will do it for survival. Imagine a prehistoric nomadic people that experienced their first winter. It must have been brutal, but if they survived it, they would have had to make changes to their clothes, their homes, their sleep, their hunting and gathering tactics, and their rationing that they wouldn’t forget. After maybe two or three years of having a consistent winter season, they likely began to anticipate it. They planned for it. They would make clothes year round, they would stock food, they would save firewood. They wouldn’t simply turn a blind eye to the fact that winter is coming until it actually did, and only then just hope for the best. It’s literally in your genetics to do the same. That’s why this will work. See the hard times coming and do something about it. Stop letting society’s traditions and norms steal your health and performance. Accell in the winter. Allow the holiday cheer to spread from your heart to your bones, muscles, tendons and lungs. Don’t just survive the crucible, allow it to mold you into a better and healthier human.
Outro
Intentionality in spite of the hard-on-your-health time that the holidays bring. Sounds pretty simple. Truth be told, it is. But what it’s not is easy. That’s the point. The behavior surrounding the holidays feels easy because it is. It’s easy to over consume processed sugar. That’s why food engineers put it in everything. You eat more, you buy more, they make more money. Don’t fall prey to this. Don’t put yourself in the position to have to start over on January 1st. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to sit out on parties or traditions or fun. I’m just proposing a new way of experiencing the holiday season, a better way.
At this point, I hope I’ve made a sound argument and that you feel at least more curious, if not completely motivated and sold on the idea. However, you might be in the current position of someone who doesn’t have a plan in place. An exercise program to stick to. An offseason training regimen to get you through the next couple months of training. Lucky for you, I don’t only write off-putting things on the internet for strangers to read. In fact, my full time job is coaching athletes (in case you hadn’t read that part of the website yet). I also program for clients, both athletes and non-athletes alike, in West Texas, New York City and India. You don’t have to be near Dallas for me to be able to help you. I launched the website not too long ago, so while there isn’t quite yet a vast variety of programs available, I can program for you specifically. Even if you’re not ready to pull the trigger, I’m more than happy to have a conversation or shoot emails back and forth. This is my job because I love it. I’m pretty good at it too (in case you haven’t scrolled through the testimonials yet). Let me help you. Tomorrow is indeed a big day, but not because a politician will take the presidential office. But because it’s an opportunity for you to tap into your genetics passed down to you to see into the future and make the most of it.