What you carry into the holiday season matters more than what you eat at any single meal. Let's talk about what you want to carry.
Eight weeks from today is New Year's Day.
Eight weeks that contain Thanksgiving. Christmas. Hanukkah. Winter Solstice. New Year's Eve. The office parties and the family gatherings and the cookie exchanges and the neighbor's eggnog and the work lunches and the airport meals and the late nights and the early mornings and all of the emotional weight that the holiday season carries for every woman who has ever tried to take care of herself while also taking care of everyone else.
I want to talk about those eight weeks today.
Not to warn you about them.
Not to give you a holiday survival plan that makes the most beautiful season of the year feel like a gauntlet.
But to ask you something I wish someone had asked me before I began to truly understand my own health:
What do you want these eight weeks to feel like?
Not what do you want to eat. Not how many days do you want to stay on the protocol. Not what number do you want to see on the scale in January.
How do you want to feel?
Present. Connected. Joyful. Energetic enough to actually be there — not just physically in the room, but genuinely present in the moments that matter.
That question — held honestly — changes what the next eight weeks look like from the inside.
💛 The Holiday Season Is Not the Enemy
I want to name this clearly before we go any further.
The holiday season is one of the most beautiful stretches of the year — for the gatherings, the traditions, the food, the warmth, the meaning that this particular light-in-the-darkness season has carried across thousands of years of human experience.
It is not a metabolic obstacle course to navigate.
It is not eight weeks of temptation to white-knuckle through.
It is life. Full, textured, imperfect, deeply meaningful life.
And any approach to health that cannot coexist with that is not sustainable — and, I would argue, not worth having.
What I want for you over these eight weeks is not perfect adherence to a protocol.
It is the experience of being genuinely well enough to be genuinely present.
Energy that shows up for the moments.
Sleep that restores rather than just passing time.
A relationship with food that allows you to enjoy the feast and return to your rhythm without the guilt spiral that used to follow.
A body that feels like yours — not a problem you are managing, but a home you are living in.
That is what metabolic health actually gives you.
And it is worth protecting — not through restriction, but through the anchors that have carried us all year.
⚓ The Four Anchors Through the Holiday Season
We have talked about these all year. They bear repeating now — because the holiday season is precisely when they are most challenged and most important.
Morning light — every single day.
Even in November. Even in December. Even when the darkness feels total and the motivation to go outside at 7am in Ohio in the cold is approximately zero.
Ten minutes. Outside. Facing the direction of the sky.
This is the single most protective circadian habit through the darkest months — and the one most likely to be abandoned when it is most needed. Keep it. Return to it when it slips. It takes ten minutes and it costs nothing and the downstream effects on cortisol, insulin, sleep, and mood are measurable and significant.
Protein first at your first meal — whenever that is.
The holiday season is full of carbohydrate-forward eating opportunities. Keeping protein as the anchor of the first meal of the day — eggs, fish, chicken, quality protein in whatever form works for your body — sets the metabolic tone that helps the rest of the day stay more stable regardless of what the evening brings.
The overnight fasting window — protected.
Close the kitchen at a consistent time every evening and keep it closed for at least 12 hours. Whatever the gathering produced, whatever the late evening looked like — the overnight window is the metabolic reset that is always one night away. It is the most consistently protective single habit through the holiday season because it does not require perfection during the day. It only requires closing the kitchen and letting the body do its overnight work.
The post-meal walk — whenever possible.
After Thanksgiving dinner. After the Christmas party. After any gathering where the meal was substantial and the carbohydrates were present. Ten to twenty minutes of movement after a meal is the most direct blood sugar management tool available — and it is also often the most natural part of a holiday evening, the walk around the neighborhood to see the lights, the loop around the block with family.
Let biology and tradition converge.
🌿 Setting Your Holiday Season Intention
I want to offer you a practice this week that is different from the usual action steps.
Before the season accelerates — before Thanksgiving arrives next week and the calendar fills in all the ways it always does — take five minutes and write down the answers to these three questions:
What do I most want to feel during the holiday season this year?
What has historically gotten in the way of that feeling?
What is the one anchor I most want to protect — no matter what?
Not a food plan. Not a goal weight. Not a list of things to avoid.
Three honest answers.
And then carry them with you into the next eight weeks as the compass they are.
Because the compass — as we said in September, as we have said all year — is always more reliable than the rules.
💬 Let's Talk About It
What do you most want these next eight weeks to feel like?
What has the holiday season historically cost you — in energy, in health, in the sense of yourself?
Reply and tell me. I'd love to hear what you are carrying into this season — and what you want to be different this year.
🌿 Want Support?
If you want to move through the holiday season with your health, your energy, and your joy all intact —
That is exactly the work I do with women who are done sacrificing one for the other.
💬 Join our free Natural GLP-1 Support Facebook Group — come share your holiday season intention with the community.
📥 Or reach out directly — let's talk about what the next eight weeks look like with the right support.
Rooting for you — always,
Rachel xo
Rachel xo
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