The holidays are finally here! Woohoo! We love the holiday season – it’s all about giving to others and spending time with the ones you love. But all of the stress that comes along with the season can seriously drain your ENERGY!

We try our best to avoid stress altogether, but it’s not easy to do. So, we have a few tricks to help mitigate any stress we do encounter. This helps us keep our energy levels high so we’re able to do all of the things we need to do! Here they are:

• Despite being busy, we always eat breakfast. This is key—it’ll give you the fuel to start your day! In a hurry, we go for an apple and a hard boiled egg or a nonfat Greek Yogurt and berries or an apple.
• We find the most stressful thing about the holidays is trying to do too much in too little time! To use your time efficiently, be diligent about using a planner around the holidays. We *try* to set aside a little more time for each task than necessary so if something takes longer than expected we don’t panic!
• We hit the gym—this makes us feel good about being healthy and relieves stress. Plus, it gets blood flowing and keeps our energy high all day!
• When we get stressed, we try to remember to BREATHE! So simple but we always forget to make sure we’re doing it!
  The body’s natural response is take shallow, rapid breaths. This can just add to the panic! So when things get busy, we breathe deeply and slowly. Breathing this way will help you stay relaxed in stressful situations.
• We keep eating healthy! We prepare easy-to-grab, healthy snacks on the weekends when we have extra time. This way if we’re running late during the week we have something healthy to eat on the go.
  We’ll cut up some bell peppers and throw them in a zip-loc bag and we put 2 tablespoons of hummus in a small container for dipping
  We keep low-fat string cheese and a piece of fruit ready to grab.
  We’ll make zip-loc bags of 30 pistachios (100 calories) so we can grab them with a piece of fruit
• Finally, we remember that the holidays are about enjoying time with loved ones.
• And as cheesy (or dairy-free cheesy) as it sounds, if things get busy and you don’t have time for a few of the things on our to-do list, we remind ourselves that it’s okay. We tell ourselves to forget about the superficial parts of the holiday. We remind ourselves how lucky we are to have loved ones in our lives. And that includes all of you! Happy holidays to you and yours!

Do you have any special tips to stay calm and energized during the holidays?