Top tips for surviving the school holidays with your health (and sanity) in tact!

A funny thing happens once your kids start school – your life seems to start to revolve around 4 terms of the school year.  School holidays come around and often we see lots of our good routines become unhinged.  Our good work throughout the routine of the term begins to peak towards the end of each term, only to be turned upside down during the mayhem of the school holidays.  At the completion of the school holidays, we often have to rally ourselves to begin the journey again – and we all know how hard it is to get started, again!

So, here are our top tips to surviving the school holidays with your health (and sanity) in tact:

 Stay active (together)

Whether this involves the kids or not, it is important to keep moving.  Even if you’re not managing your regular structured sessions, if you can keep your activity levels up – that will go some way to mitigating the loss in fitness.  Plan bike rides where you ride/ run or walk with the kids.  Go bush for some fresh air (and a different biome for you all!).

And don’t forget that your kids need up to 60 mins of high intensity exercise every day, and while they are not at school, the responsibility for them meeting that target is up to you!  So, active outings will not only benefit you, but also be doing your kids a huge favour too!

Up the intensity and try a HIIT workout 

This is our favourite way to train – whether it is holiday time or not.  But the efficiency of this kind of program cannot be ignored.  15-20 mins is enough and even on our busiest days, with no equipment and limited space- a really good HIIT workout can be done with minimal fuss.  If you find yourself away with kids, and can’t get out to exercise – then this one is perfect for you.  You can have your 20 minutes done before they are even out of their pj’s!  we both know that even just fitting this 20 mins in will also help you ‘mentally’ get through the day, knowing you’ve done one positive thing for yourself that day.  Check out out weekly IG workouts under #sshmovers for plenty of ideas and sample workouts.

Pack your own!

When heading out for adventure – always take some of your own food – even if it is just the snacks.  Not only are takeaway options expensive but in most cases they are fairly devoid of nutrients.  A quick meal prep session in the kitchen can ensure that you have plenty of nutritious and filling snacks on hand (most baked goods last well in the freezer until needed too!). While fruit is a great, easy and nutritious option – fruit alone contains no fat or protein, so within no time we hear the calls of “I’m hungry!”  Try to make sure that your snack include some good fats and protein to increase the satiety of each snack/ meal.  Try adding a nut butter to sliced apple, or using a legume or yoghurt-based dip with chopped veggies (e.g. hummus, tahtziki, white bean dip).  Also think bliss balls, homemade muffins, homebaked brownies, boiled eggs, natural yoghurt with coconut topping etc…  For more ideas visit our website under RECIPES and on IG under #sshkitchen.  Also, always take your own water!  Paying for what we can get for free out of our tap, should be criminal (just saying!).

Keep your nutrition up

As with all other aspects of our holidays – sleep ins, afternoon naps, lazy mornings – it can be easy to adopt a ‘holiday’ mentality with our nutrition – the extra glass of wine each night with the accompanying cheese platters; the after dinner gelato, each night: quick, convenient take away options to satisfy our desire to step out of the kitchen.  And, do you know what girls – go for it!!  We all need to relax in our own ways when holidays come around….

But, often these choices are less than nutritious and if we start making these the norm, rather than the exception over the holidays – we are going to finish the break feeling less than vital.  Think about each week that you are on holidays – if you count 3 meals a day, plus snacks – you are likely to be eating up to 35 times in that week.  If you can maintain a nutritious diet for the majority of those meals and splurge outside of this for only a handful of those meals each week (even a couple each day), you will end up feeling a LOT better than if you abandon your health at every meal.  So go ahead and enjoy whatever your heart desires while on holidays, just not every meal.

There you have it girls, this is what helps us get through our holidays and don’t get us wrong – we love a deviation from our regular schedule as much as the next but, for the most part, if you can maintain the basics of good health, your transition into next term will not be any where near as tough.  Trust us on that one!

Good luck and let us know how you go.

Anna & Em xo