119. How to Stay Strong When the Holidays Mess With Your Routine
How to Stay Strong When the Holidays Mess With Your Routine
Feeling like your fitness progress is slipping during the holidays? Learn how to maintain strength through travel, family gatherings, and schedule chaos without starting over from scratch.
Let's be real: the holidays are a beautiful disaster for your workout routine. Between travel, family gatherings, unpredictable schedules, and yes, all those heavier meals, it's easy to feel like everything you've worked for is falling apart. That tight feeling in your jeans, the skipped gym sessions, the way your body feels different after just a few days, it all adds up to one panic-inducing thought: I'm losing my progress.
But here's the thing that Tara wants you to know: those shifts you're feeling aren't the massive setback your brain is making them out to be. Your strength isn't vanishing. Your hard work isn't disappearing. And no, you don't have to start from square one in January.
Your Body During Holiday Chaos: What's Actually Happening
When your routine gets thrown off during the holidays, your body responds in some pretty predictable ways. The problem is, most of us interpret these responses as failure when they're actually just... responses.
Think about it. You're traveling, eating different foods, maybe having a few extra drinks, sleeping in unfamiliar places, and dealing with the stress of family dynamics. Your body is going to retain some water. You might feel a bit bloated. Things might feel tighter or different. But feeling different isn't the same as losing strength or undoing months of work.
The physical changes you notice during a chaotic week or two are largely temporary. Water retention from sodium, carbohydrates, and stress hormones can make you feel puffy. Disrupted sleep patterns affect how your body recovers. Changes in lighting, different mirrors, and unfamiliar clothing can all mess with your perception of your body. None of this means your muscle is gone or your fitness has evaporated.
Slowing Down Doesn't Mean Stopping
Here's where things get interesting: slowing down your training during the holidays might actually support your strength rather than hurt it. If you've been pushing hard all year, your body might benefit from a slight reduction in intensity. This isn't about being lazy, it's about being strategic.
When your schedule falls apart and you can't hit your usual training sessions, the goal shifts from progression to maintenance. And maintenance is way easier than you think. You don't need to match your regular workout volume to keep your strength. In fact, research shows you can maintain your gains with significantly less training than it took to build them in the first place.
Small Anchors That Protect Your Momentum
So what does this actually look like in practice? How do you stay consistent when everything feels messy? The answer lies in what Tara calls "small anchors", simple, doable actions that keep you connected to yourself and your strength without requiring a full gym session or perfect conditions.
Movement snacks are your best friend during the holidays. These are short bursts of activity that take just a few minutes but keep your body engaged. Think bodyweight squats while coffee brews, push-ups before your shower, or a quick set of lunges between family activities. These mini-lifts might feel insignificant in the moment, but they're actually protecting your neural pathways and keeping your muscles activated.
The beauty of movement snacks is that they don't require equipment, planning, or a significant time commitment. They're simply about showing up for yourself in whatever capacity you can, whenever you can. That consistency, even if it's just five minutes, is what maintains momentum.
Protein becomes non-negotiable during this season. When everything else is unpredictable, prioritizing protein at meals gives your body what it needs to maintain muscle tissue. This doesn't mean you can't enjoy holiday foods or that you need to track every macro obsessively. It just means being intentional about getting adequate protein alongside all the other foods you're eating.
Hydration is the unsung hero of holiday maintenance. With travel, different foods, potentially more alcohol, and general disruption, many of us end up significantly dehydrated without realizing it. This dehydration amplifies every other uncomfortable feeling, bloating, fatigue, brain fog, and that overall "off" sensation. Drinking more water than you think you need can genuinely change how you feel during chaotic weeks.
The Body Image Minefield
Let's talk about the elephant in the room: body image during the holidays can be brutal. Between unflattering lighting in relatives' bathrooms, trying on dressier clothes you haven't worn in months, catching unexpected angles of yourself in photos, and potentially dealing with comments from family members about your body, the triggers are everywhere.
These moments can activate old beliefs quickly. One unflattering photo or one misguided comment from Aunt Susan about how you look can send you spiraling into negative self-talk and the urge to immediately "fix" your body through restriction or over-exercising.
The key is learning to pause and reframe in these moments. When you catch yourself in that spiral, ask yourself: Is this actually about my body, or is it about the lighting? The angle? The outfit? The stress of being around family? Often, what feels like a body problem is actually an environmental or emotional problem wearing a body-shaped disguise.
Creating some mental distance from those intense feelings helps you stay grounded instead of making impulsive decisions based on temporary discomfort. Your body hasn't fundamentally changed in the three days since you left home, even if it feels different.
Holiday Food and Your Actual Strength
There's a pervasive myth that holiday eating automatically derails your strength progress. But the reality is more nuanced and actually kind of encouraging.
Those heavier, more indulgent meals that characterize holiday gatherings? They're often providing your body with extra fuel and nutrients that can support recovery and even strength gains. More carbohydrates mean more glycogen storage, which makes your muscles look fuller and gives you more energy. More overall food means more building blocks for maintaining and potentially building tissue.
The guilt and stress we attach to holiday eating often causes more problems than the actual food itself. When you approach holiday meals with flexibility and permission rather than restriction and fear, you're more likely to make choices that genuinely feel good and support your overall wellbeing.
This doesn't mean you have to eat everything in sight or abandon all awareness of how foods make you feel. It just means releasing the idea that one week of different eating is going to undo everything you've built.
You Don't Need Your Full Routine to Stay Strong
The most liberating realization during the holidays is this: you don't need to replicate your full training routine to maintain your strength. You don't need four gym sessions a week, perfect meal timing, or eight hours of sleep every night.
What you need is connection to yourself through small, consistent actions. What you need is to approach this season with self-compassion rather than rigid rules. What you need is to trust that your strength is more durable than one chaotic month.
Momentum matters more than perfect structure. A few push-ups and squats scattered throughout your day create more momentum than beating yourself up for missing workouts. Eating enough protein and staying hydrated creates more momentum than restricting and then binging. Moving your body in ways that feel good creates more momentum than forcing yourself through punishing workouts out of guilt.
Your Holiday Game Plan
As you move through the rest of this season, give yourself permission to be imperfect. Choose one or two small anchors, maybe it's movement snacks and protein, or maybe it's just staying hydrated and getting outside daily, and commit to those without making them all-or-nothing.
When body image triggers show up, practice pausing before spiraling. Ask yourself what's really going on. Reach out to someone who gets it. Remind yourself that temporary discomfort doesn't require immediate action.
And most importantly, remember that maintaining is winning during chaotic seasons. You're not losing ground by not progressing. You're creating sustainability by not burning out.
Ready to navigate the holidays with more confidence and less stress? Check out more resources and tools at broads.app and connect with the Broads community on Instagram at @broads.podcast and @broads.app.
What's your biggest challenge during the holidays when it comes to staying strong? Share your thoughts with the Broads community on social media, we're all in this together.
