How To Balance Eating for Wellness and the Holidays

I know, I know… leftover Halloween treats don't exactly scream healthy. Mostly, they’re screaming, ‘Eat me, I’m delicious!’

I don’t know about you, but for some reason, holiday treats are just more enjoyable to me than any other time of year.

Vision preservation all year long

If you’ve read any of my past articles, you know that I’m passionate about a healthy diet. I believe it’s one of our best defenses against a diagnosis of macular degeneration.

Interestingly, I’m also extremely passionate about mental and emotional health. These 2 ideas can easily conflict, especially when it comes to enjoying food.

Holistic health

As stated earlier, a healthy lifestyle is one of our most important tools for vision preservation. However, healthy lifestyles are multifaceted; they require a holistic approach.

This means we don’t just focus on our physical health. We focus on our emotional and mental wellness as well, in order to maintain optimal overall health.

Celebrating life

I love Halloween, so my ‘holidays’ start on October 1st each year and end after celebrating the new year. There’s a lot of celebrating for 3 months straight.

This is good for my emotional health. But, if I’m not careful, over celebrating with food can be really unhealthy for me (and my eyes).

Finding balance

You see, there’s food for nutrition. And then there’s food for the soul. Both are important aspects of my lifestyle. Oftentimes, we feel comforted by the foods we know and love. Especially during times of celebration and tradition.

Besides that, we can feel anxious or deprived when we refrain from eating things we want to eat. Maintaining a healthy diet while also enjoying those Halloween candy bars (and our favorite pumpkin spiced treats) can be frustrating.

The 80/20 rule

When finding balance, it’s important to do these 2 things: Have a plan and follow it. I’m here to tell you, there absolutely is a way to both celebrate and be healthy.

For me, an 80/20 balance seems to work really well. This means I eat for wellness about 80% of the time, and eat whatever I want about 20% of the time.

When using the 80/20 rule, there are a few ways to think about it. We can either eat 80% of our healthy food with 20% to play with each day. Or, we can think of it in terms of weekly.

Planned celebrations

I tend to try to keep my balance daily. However, the holidays can skew that for me a little because of parties and celebrations.

I’m simply careful to be sure I enjoy my pumpkin spice muffins on a crisp fall morning that falls within that 20-ish percent. Or, if I know I have a gathering on Saturday, I’ll eat for wellness all week and just enjoy myself that day.

It’s not black and white

Living with a degenerative eye disease doesn’t really have a rule book. Each of us knows our own body better than anyone else. There are a lot of opinions out there.

Opinions coupled with data and scientific information can help us to find the right-fit balance needed to live our best lives.

As with anything else we do for our health, it’s more than okay to splurge sometimes. For me, the hardest part of a splurge is not feeling bad about it afterwards. I’m working on giving myself grace as I continue to navigate this thing called life with macular degeneration.

Happy Celebrating!

Andrea Junge