Why Healthy Habits Really Suck at the Holidays

Source: Jill Wellington/Pixabay

Last week, I spent most of the session with my clients discussing their “failures” (their word not mine) in sticking with their healthy habits: “I ate way too much at the party,” “I’m worried I will drink too much again,” and “I’ve been binge eating all week.”

When I was chatting with my friends, similar topics came up: “I got fast food for dinner for the first time in weeks,” “I haven’t been to the gym all week,” to which I could relate. “I know!” I said, “I ate a whole gingerbread house last weekend!” Why are healthy habits so hard to stick to at the holidays?

Broadly speaking, there are two systems that regulate our ability to engage in healthy habits: the “caveman” brain (hypothalamus, mesolimbic system) and the “administrator” brain (prefrontal cortex, frontal lobe). The caveman brain works on principles that are well adapted to a caveman existence, where food was scarce, and starving to death was a continuous threat to human life: Eat as much as you can whenever you can. It also works on the pleasure principle, avoid pain principle, take-the-path-of-least-resistance principle, and the do-what-works-now principle, which all tend to prompt “unhealthy” habits (e.g., drinking, eating, skipping the gym).

The administrator brain is the part of our brain that can regulate our behavior, and with it, we can control our behavior and make choices (e.g., willpower or self-control). The caveman brain, which is aimed at survival, works automatically, all the time. There is no way to turn on or turn off your survival brain (as it should be!).

However, in order to activate the administrator brain, we need to turn it on with conscious, deliberate effort. It does not work automatically. Furthermore, the administrator brain is like a battery: When we use it to control our behavior, we drain the battery.

We use our administrator brain or, said another way, our “self-control battery” to function all day long: to get through our commute, to get our jobs done, to deal with other people. And at the end of the day, often the battery has been drained and we have no self-control left. This is why we tend to binge eat more at night than in the mornings: because we have used up our self-control battery by the end of the day.

During the holidays, there is a much greater demand on our self-control battery. We have to use more of it to do all the things required at the holidays: decorating, holiday parties, buying presents, etc. Just think of all the effort it takes to go to the mall to buy holiday presents: We have to drive there, find a parking spot, make decisions about what to buy, how much to spend, who needs what, who will like what, and trying to be nice to all the other holiday shoppers who are equally stressed. All this uses up our self-control battery.

And then, because it’s the holidays, everywhere we turn, unhealthy options await us: food and drinks at holiday parties, holiday treats in the office, changes in schedules to accommodate holiday activities and social gatherings (e.g., holiday concerts, office parties) which can interfere if we have a normal exercise routine.

Is it therefore any wonder that we start sliding back to old unhealthy habits? Our self-control battery is being used up by all this holiday stress, and once the self-control battery is drained, our caveman brain is right there, waiting to encourage us to take the unhealthy option (which is more readily available at the holidays)!

So, if you’re having a hard time sticking to your healthy habits at the holidays, congrats, you’re a well-functioning human! Please be kind to yourself. I try to remind myself when I make an unhealthy choice (like eating the entire gingerbread house) that this is millions of years of evolution in action. And, shockingly, I am not immune to the forces of evolution.

The more we can be kind to ourselves, the more likely we are to get back on track when the holiday stresses are over, and we can use our self-control battery for healthy habits again. So be kind to yourself this holiday season, expect to make some “unhealthy”, caveman brain choices. It’s just millions of years of evolution in action!