The winter holidays may be a time of celebration, joy and kindness, but it’s also a time of overeating. If you’re worried about your health, your weight or you just want to tone it down this holiday season, we have a few tips on how to eat healthy during these winter holidays. Let’s get serious about getting healthy!

Go Vegetarian

The winter holidays may not seem to be a good time to turn vegetarian, but they actually are perfect. It will make you more aware of what you’ve been eating so far and it will help you discover lots of great food that you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Good food habits should stand the test of the holiday season! Instead of pork or turkey roast, turn to a wonderful glazed seitan steak or lentils casserole. Find a vegetarian restaurant you love and steal its menu. Even better, go online and check out the menus of the best vegetarian restaurants in the world.

Listen to Your Body

If you are not willing to give up meat just yet, your best bet for eating healthy this holiday season is to simply listen to your body when it says I have had enough! This may sound like a silly advice, but it’s harder to do that one might think. Whenever you feel your tummy has had enough to eat, drink a glass of water and have a break. We know that the buffet looks yummy, but you should not force feed yourself. Nobody expects to lose weight in December, but at least you won’t gain anything and won’t be compelled to start a new diet in January.

Eat Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

You wake up on Christmas day and you jump right in the Christmas meal. That’s a huge mistake! You should get some everyday breakfast and only eat the wonderful Christmas dishes when everybody’s seated down at lunch or dinner. Don’t shock your stomach by eating too much and by having lots of snacks, it’s not healthy.

Teach Your Kids to Eat Healthy

You know how they say that you should teach by example? Well, if you don’t want your teenager child to weigh 200 pounds and get diabetes at the tender age of 20, then you should teach kids how to eat healthy. This will also help you get healthy. Remember that kids always reproduce what they see in the household and if they see their parents shunning broccoli, there is no way they will love it. Without a good culinary role model, your child will never get into healthy eating. And if they do, they can move mountains.

Start as early as possible and eat as healthy as you can while pregnant. It’s never too late to learn how to get healthy.

You can Eat Healthy on a Budget

The most common misconception about eating healthy is that it’s expensive. Unless you want to be having white truffles for breakfast, lunch and dinner, healthy eating isn’t expensive. It just takes a little bit more input from your part. You need to think about it advance about the meals that you’re going to cook and eat. You can even eat healthy on a budget and the key to that is to eat local and in season (vegetables that are in season are always dirt cheap). Give up fast food, friend foods and sugar and you’ll be reaping the benefits of a healthy body! Don’t wait around until you develop a serious condition, eat healthy now!

How do you eat healthy and maintain your weight during the winter holidays?