Self-care for the silly season

In the lead-up to the holidays it can be easy to get swept up in the momentum of the silly season, and neglect our own needs for self-care.  But it is also a powerful time of year to form new habits.  If you can commit to your health and wellbeing in early December, instead of waiting until 1 January to make new resolutions, you will have a much better chance of following through with them throughout the next year.  This may be harder initially, since you are working against the busyness of the season, and the temptations of party food and drink, but you can make a strong statement to yourself if you are able to say no to the busyness, and say yes to slowing down, being present with yourself and honoring your needs, when everyone else is running around like a headless chicken.  Saying no to busyness now will make It much easier to say no in 2020, because you’ll have already made it through the most challenging part of the year.

We all tend to be over-committed in November and December, so it’s important to know that you can say no.  You don’t have to go to every holiday party and school function.  Tune into your body regularly and ask yourself:

“What do I need?”

“Do I need more rest?”

“Do I need a break from party food and alcohol?”

“Do I need a quiet night in by myself?”

“Do I need to take a mental health day and go to the beach?” (If you’re in Australia where it’s summer.)

When deciding which of your commitments to cull, ask yourself: “Is this going to energize me or deplete me?”  Focus on events that you will truly enjoy, where you can relax and be present.  If you decide to skip something, don’t feel bad, you are taking good care of yourself, which should be your number one priority.  And don’t feel that you need to make up excuses for your absence.  Try being honest: “I have realized that I have too much going on at the moment, and I need to take better care of myself by not over-committing.”  By being honest about your self-care you are performing a public service: you will be giving others permission to say no and slow down as well.  In this way you will be contributing to the self-care revolution!

If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere where it’s almost summer, hydration is going to be more important than ever.  Self-care is mostly about the basics, like good food, enough sleep and hydration.  You might be getting dehydrated overnight, so make sure you drink extra water when you wake up, and throughout the day.  Aside from the heat, two things that can affect your hydration are caffeine and alcohol.

Caffeine is a diuretic, which means that it draws water out from your cells.  For every cup of tea/coffee/cola you drink, try having an extra glass of water or herbal tea.  If you’re relying on caffeine for energy, that’s a sign that you are pushing yourself too hard and you need more rest and better nutrition.  Try a green juice or mineral water instead – giving your cells deep nutrition, rather than a temporary, superficial buzz.  Caffeine too late in the day can affect the quality of your sleep.  With many people already struggling to sleep in the heat, you don’t need anything making it harder for you to sleep.  Even a bit of chocolate after dinner can be enough to subtly disrupt your sleep.

If you are going to drink alcohol this holiday season, remember that alcohol affects your body more when you are hot, so bear that in mind when you are deciding how much to drink.  Make sure you eat plenty of food before you start drinking.  And always alternate each alcoholic beverage with a water or non-alcoholic drink. Sweeter drinks, such as wine, beer, cider, and cocktails are so easy to drink that you can lose track of how fast you are drinking them.  Sweeter drinks are also more likely to lead to extra sugar cravings.  If you are drinking, try choosing clear spirits such as vodka and gin with soda water and a twist of lime, as this is a much easier drink for your body to process. And remember, most tonic water is very high in sugar (or high fructose corn syrup if you’re in America).

A lot of traditional holiday foods are inherited from England, where it is winter and everyone is covered up under jackets and jumpers, which is unfair to us down under.  We in the Southern Hemisphere are caught in a conundrum where we are expected to be able to party every day for a month, yet still look fit and healthy on the beach.  This is impossible, so don’t beat yourself up trying.  Focus on health and happiness, not superficial perfection.  Depriving yourself and then binging on sweets and alcohol will leave you depressed and self-loathing.

If you are going to a party, try filling up on something healthy at home before you go out.  Focus on foods that are high in protein, good fats and healthy carbs, so that you are less likely to crave sugar at the party.

Finally, the holidays can be a stressful time emotionally, my craniosacral therapy clinic is always busiest in the last week before Christmas – helping clients who are anxious about spending time with their extended families.  Now is a good time to get counselling and body work to help prepare yourself physically and emotionally for any potentially stressful events in the coming weeks.  Spending some time visualizing and processing your emotions now, can make a big difference in your ability to navigate family functions and events that might otherwise cause anxiety.  If you would like more ideas and inspiration about self-care for the holidays or any time of the year, check out my book: Invisible Work: An Ex-Lawyer’s Guide to Self-Care.

Eating mindfully is the easiest way to biohack your nervous system

Eating mindfully is one of the simplest yet most effective things you can do for your own wellbeing. It is also one of the hardest (it did not come naturally to me), but it really is worth putting the effort in and I will explain why.

How hard is it for you to sit and eat a meal without any distractions?  Can you be fully present with yourself and your food without talking, watching, reading or listening to something or someone?  If the idea of being alone with your body and your food and nothing else is daunting, then let me tell you why it is so important to develop this life skill.

Why is it so hard to just eat?

Truly being present with ourselves and our food means that we have to acknowledge how we are feeling physically and emotionally; something we rarely do.  Because we spend so little time tuning into our bodies and our emotions, there is a backlog of physical and emotional sensations that our bodies need to process.  When we take the time to tune in, the backlog feels overwhelming and uncomfortable, so we avoid it or put it off for when we have enough time and space to process our feelings.  But we do this so rarely that the simple act of being present while we eat feels unbearable.

Even if you do manage to sit down with your food with no external distractions, your mind may find a way to distract you from yourself.  Have you ever tuned in at the end of a meal or snack binge and thought, I don’t even remember eating that?  Kind of like when you drive somewhere on autopilot and realize when you arrive that you were barely present the whole time.  The problem with eating on autopilot is that your body doesn’t turn on the right physiological mechanisms to digest your food properly.

Eating without connecting to your food and your body takes a toll on your digestion, nutrition, sleep, emotional stability, hormone balance, fertility and energy levels.  This is because of your autonomic nervous system (ANS).  Your ANS governs bodily functions that happen automatically, like your heart beating, your lungs breathing and your food digesting.  It is split into two major branches, your sympathetic nervous system which governs the stress responses of fight, flight and freeze; and your parasympathetic nervous system which governs resting, digesting, reproducing and repairing your bodily tissues.  For brevity I will call the two branches fight or flight (sympathetic) and rest & digest (parasympathetic).

The problem for most people living in modern, urban environments is that our fight or flight responses are constantly being triggered by things that are not actually likely to kill us, but the primitive aspects of our brains don’t know that.  So we are running on adrenaline whether we need it or not, and this becomes a habit that is slowly destroying is from the inside.  Our bodies were not designed to spend prolonged periods of time in fight or flight mode without the calming effects of rest & digest mode.

When our fight or flight mode is activated we are not fully in rest & digest mode, which means we don’t sleep well and we don’t digest our food well.  The parasympathetic nervous system is also what helps us heal and repair damaged tissues, so acute injuries can turn into chronic pain when we don’t spend enough time in rest & digest (and repair) mode.

I have also found that some unexplained fertility issues can improve by consistently spending more time in rest & digest (and reproduce) mode.  If you are constantly in fight or flight mode your body might decide it is not an optimal time to have a baby because your nervous system is receiving lots of signals that your environment is not safe.  It is important to note therefore that time spent on activities (such as eating mindfully) that activate your rest & digest mode consistently can improve your ability to self-heal and become pregnant.

Eating mindfully will also help your body to process and assimilate the nutrients from your food.  If you can switch your nervous system to rest & digest mode every time you eat, you will gain more nutritional value from your food, which means you can eat less overall.  You will also have less digestive discomfort.  If you are primarily eating whilst in fight or flight mode you will have less blood supply to your digestive organs as your nervous system will have diverted resources to your heart and muscles so that you can flee from danger or defend yourself. Your digestive system will not be operating at full capacity, which can ultimately lead to conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

A great way to tell if you are in rest & digest mode is to tune into your body and notice if you can hear or feel your stomach gurgling (the technical term for this is borborygmi).  These noises do not necessarily correlate with having just eaten or being hungry, they are more of an indicator of the state of your nervous system.  If your intestines are grumbling it is a good sign that you are in rest & digest mode and your body will be able to sleep well, eat well, heal itself and reproduce.

Another sign that you are in rest & digest mode is if you are salivating.  This is why it’s great to take a moment before you eat to gaze at your food, stimulating your senses with the colors and aromas.  Ideally you should wait until your mouth starts producing extra saliva before you start eating. Once you take your first bite, take a moment to really notice the flavors and textures with your tongue.  All of this will kick start your rest & digest mode if it hasn’t fully switched on yet.  The key now is to maintain this level of presence and mindfulness with your food and your body for the whole time you are eating, and keep it going while your body is fully digesting afterwards.  If you can do this every time you eat, you will be giving your body an unbelievable gift of wellness.  So many of our modern ailments can be traced back to eating in a rush.  When you understand the physiology of stress and how it affects our digestion, sleep and self-repairing functions, it makes it a lot easier to prioritize eating slowly and mindfully.

This article is an excerpt from my book: Invisible Work: An Ex-Lawyer's Guide to Self-Care.