Holiday Habits to Keep You on Track

The holiday season is here. Hellooo pumpkin spice lattes, honey glazed ham, and cookie plates! :)

Sharing a meal is one of the most joyful and timeless ways we connect with people we love. Normally, we’d say just relax and enjoy seasonal indulgences. Life’s too short not to. But let’s be real, the holidays stretch from early November through January. That’s nearly two months of celebrations, social dinners, and “just one more bite” moments. Plenty of time to drift away from your health goals, especially if weight loss or hormone balance is on your radar.

Our practical holiday habits below will help you savor every festive flavor - from hearty feasts to sweet treats - without feeling like you’ve backslid or need a “reset” come January. Let’s dive into how you can celebrate fully and stay on track - Mind, body, and metabolism.

Dine During Daylight Hours

As we approach the winter solstice, our days are growing shorter. After daylight savings, most of us are left with only nine to ten hours of daylight, and in some northern states it even dips below nine. By simply aligning your meals with the rising and setting sun, you naturally shorten your eating window this time of year. In other words, you’ll be intermittent fasting by accident.

Fasting for 14 to 16 hours each day gives your body a much-needed break from constant digestion, allowing it to focus on essential repair and maintenance processes. During these fasting hours, your cells activate autophagy, a built-in “clean-up crew” that clears away damaged proteins and organelles, making room for healthier, more efficient tissue. Meanwhile, the liver and kidneys can shift their attention to detoxification, metabolizing toxins and byproducts instead of dealing with a steady stream of incoming food.

With no calories coming in, your body switches gears into fat metabolism, tapping into stored fat for fuel - a natural and sustainable way to stay lean while supporting steady energy levels. Over time, this enhances metabolic flexibility, the ability to move smoothly between burning sugar and fat for energy. The result is fewer energy dips, fewer cravings, and a much more balanced mood throughout the day.

Fasting also supports hormonal balance by aligning with your circadian rhythm, regulating key hormones like insulin, cortisol, and growth hormone that influence everything from energy and sleep to tissue repair. And because insulin sensitivity peaks between late morning and mid-afternoon, eating most of your carbohydrates during daylight hours helps your body use them more efficiently. This means you can enjoy your favorite foods - yes, even holiday treats - without obsessing over timing or restriction.

The best part? None of this requires skipping meals, counting calories, or forcing yourself through grueling fasts. Simply eating with the sun - breakfast after sunrise, dinner with sunset - allows your body to rest, repair, and recharge, all while helping you feel more energized, focused, and balanced through the holiday season and beyond.

Stick to a Low Carb Breakfast

Cortisol gets a bad rap, often dubbed the "stress hormone", but without it we'd be lost. About 30–60 minutes after waking, your body gets a natural “get up and go” surge of cortisol - your built-in alarm clock. This morning cortisol bump tells your liver to release stored glucose, giving your brain and muscles a quick boost of energy to start the day. Back in our hunter-gatherer days, that little trick meant “time to move!” not “time to scroll.”

When your cortisol rhythm is in sync - high in the morning and low at night - it helps keep blood sugar, mood, and energy levels stable all day long. But when it’s out of whack - too low in the morning or too high at night - mornings feel sluggish, it's hard to fall asleep at night, cravings kick in, and afternoon energy crashes hit hard.

Eating a low-carb, high-protein breakfast rich in healthy fats - like steak, eggs, butter, coconut oil, or fresh avocado and olives - helps reinforce this natural rhythm. It also stabilizes blood sugar and keeps your hunger hormone ghrelin low while maintaining responsiveness to leptin, your fullness hormone. The result? You feel satisfied, focused, and in control. Even when tempted by a post sleigh ride hot cocoa or a work break room riddled with free cookies.

Use the Food Order Hack at Lunch & Dinner

This simple order-of-operations trick is your secret weapon when you have no control over what’s being served. Still aim to stick to your low-carb breakfast, but when it comes to lunch or dinner, don’t stress over how many carbs are present - just pay attention to the order you eat them in:

Fill your plate with mostly fiber and protein and eat those first. This combo slows gastric (stomach) emptying and triggers satiety hormones, keeping you satisfied. The fiber and fat have already formed a buffer that slows glucose absorption. Translation: A smaller blood sugar spike, steadier energy, and a blunted sweet tooth. Plus, by the time you reach the man n' cheese or pecan pie, you’re already pleasantly full - Meaning you’ll naturally eat less without counting calories or missing out on homemade favorites. It’s one of the easiest holiday hacks for enjoying everything on the table and  avoiding a "food coma".

"What do I do if the meal is already mixed together? Like in the case of a sandwich, soup, or casserole?"

To avoid losing your mind, just do your best to employ the food order hack when you encounter a "mixed macro" meal. Stressing out about it from Thanksgiving through new Years might just be more harmful to your cells in the long run than eating the indulgent meal or sweet treat itself. It's all a balancing act - Processing high amounts of carbohydrates regularly (especially highly refined carbohydrates like flour and sugar) and chronic mental stress (from worrying about your food choices or something else entirely, like your personal life or work) are both very stressful for our cells. And the overarching goal in life, is to reduce our chronic stress levels.

Check out this brief video by "The Glucose Goddess", French biochemist Jessie Inchauspe, for inspiration on what do do when you're in a "mixed macros" situation. If you're in the mood for some easy sweater weather reading by the fireplace, Jessie's book Glucose Revolution is full of useful blood sugar regulating tricks that you can employ all year round.

Go Low-Fat Lean During Holiday Feasts

We’ve all heard it: “Fat makes you fat.” But that old nutrition myth doesn’t hold up to modern science- or human biology. Fat isn’t the enemy. In fact, it’s essential for hormone balance, brain health, and metabolism! What really drives fat gain is the combination of fats and refined carbs together. The classic “holiday combo.”

Whether at a restaurant or a friend’s dinner party, when you’re not sure what oils and fats are being used, it’s smart to go a little leaner with your meal. Think turkey breast over sausage, or low-fat dairy instead of heavy cream. Here’s why this strategy works in your favor:

First, there’s weight management. It’s not carbs or fat alone that cause weight gain - it’s when they show up together in the same meal that your body flips into storage mode. Foods like donuts, buttered croissants, and potato chips combine fats and carbs in just the right ratio to light up your brain’s reward centers and make it really easy to overeat. That energy surplus has to go somewhere, and your body does what it’s designed to do - Store it for later, as body fat. So when fresh baked sourdough, pie, and cookies are on the menu, going low-fat lean helps keep your total energy intake in check without feeling restricted.

Second, there’s inflammation reduction. Not all fats are created equal, and during the holidays, it’s wise to stick to one kind of fat at a time. One pairing in particular can be especially damaging: Saturated fats mixed with polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) - The kind of fat found in industrially processed seed oils like Canola, Corn, Soybean, and Sunflower oil as well as in conventionally raised grain-fed meats.

Grain-fed animals, especially pigs and poultry, accumulate much higher levels of PUFAs in their body fat because of their omnivorous physiology. They store dietary fat almost directly as it’s consumed. That means the fat from these animals behaves more like a seed oil: unstable and prone to oxidation. Cows, on the other hand, are ruminants. Thanks to their unique digestive system, a multi-chambered stomach designed for fermenting fibrous plant material, they’re able to biohydrogenate much of the unsaturated fat they consume, converting it into more stable saturated and monounsaturated fats. As a result, even grain-fed beef is typically lower in PUFAs and less prone to oxidation than pork or poultry raised on the same feed.

When oxidized, unstable fats release free radicals - tiny biochemical grenades that spark a cascade of inflammation. And when those free radicals bump into neighboring molecules, like the cholesterol found in saturated fats from butter, tallow, or egg yolks, they can oxidize those molecules too, amplifying oxidative stress throughout the body.

Cholesterol itself isn’t the problem. It’s essential for hormone production, brain health, cellular repair, and more. The real villain here is oxidized cholesterol, which promotes inflammation and cardiovascular disease. That’s why, when eating out or celebrating at a friend’s house (where seed oils are likely in the mix), it’s smart to go leaner. Choose low-fat dairy and lean cuts of meat to minimize oxidation risk. Then, when you’re back in your own kitchen, bring on the grass-fed butter, tallow, and marbled steak. The right fats, in the right context build a strong resilient metabolism.

Don't Mix Alcohol & Sweets

Cocktails and cookies - The perfect festive combo, right? Think again. Combining refined carbs (sugar, flour) and alcohol is a metabolic double-whammy. When they hit your system together, your liver’s detox pathways get overwhelmed. Alcohol metabolism demands the liver’s full attention, causing a temporary halt in other normal functions — including insulin regulation, a hormone that is critical for proper metabolism.

Without insulin, the sugar from cookies and cocktails sits in metabolic limbo, spiking your blood glucose higher — and keeping it there longer — than it normally would. That extra sugar has time to bind to proteins and lipids in a process called glycation, forming Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs). Over time, AGEs stiffen joints, age your skin, and impair the liver enzymes (like alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase) that break down alcohol efficiently. In short, sugar literally gums up the machinery that helps you detox, amplifying alcohol’s inflammatory impact.

Here’s where it gets really interesting: Your brain prefers ketones, the clean-burning fuel your liver makes from fat. But when alcohol enters the picture, ketone production halts, and your liver is too busy to handle the sugar rush from your holiday indulgences. Metabolically, you’re in a chaotic free fall - No ketones, high blood sugar, and toxic aldehydes floating around.

Some of you may be thinking "but I get a burst of “energy” when I'm buzzed. What's the deal?" That's not real energy. It’s actually your body’s stress response. Dopamine and adrenaline temporarily mask the metabolic chaos to get you through the energy crisis, but once they fade, you crash. The result? A smashing holiday hangover riddled with poor sleep, fatigue, inflammation, joint pain, “the shakes,” headache, and brain fog.

Here's a smarter play: Choose either a cookie night or a cocktail night, not both at the same time.

If you choose to booze, you'd be wise to do what you can to help your body process the alcohol efficiently:

1. Don’t drink on an empty stomach. Load your plate with plenty of protein, fiber, and healthy fats

2. Hydrate between drinks. Add unsweetened electrolytes like Nectar or Thorne for extra support

3. Ditch sugary mixers like soda and juice - Opt for sparkling water or citrus wedges or pieces of fruit

Your liver (and your energy) will thank you.

Move After Meals

Movement is one of the simplest ways to curb blood sugar spikes - and fend off those holiday love handles. Your muscles act like glucose sponges, soaking up sugar from the bloodstream before it can be stored as body fat. What’s especially cool is that this process doesn’t always rely on insulin.

When you move, muscle contractions open special glucose transport channels (called GLUT-4) that pull sugar directly into the muscle cells - even if insulin levels are low. Think of it as a backdoor your body can use to clear out excess sugar naturally. And there’s one group of muscles that’s especially good at this: your calves. Made up primarily of slow-twitch endurance fibers, the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles are built for continuous, low-level movement - and they’re always hungry for glucose, even when only lightly engaged.

A 10–15-minute walk outdoors after meals is ideal - especially a large holiday feast - but sometimes the weather (or your calendar) doesn’t cooperate. When the weather's disagreeable or stuck in meetings all day, there are a few easy ways to keep your muscles quietly working behind the scenes:

• Tap your toes during long meetings or after dinner conversations at the dinner table

• Raise your heels (calf raises) when you're stuck at your desk or on a long car ride

• Wall-sits hovering over your chair at the dinner table or in your car/airplane seat