The holidays are a perfect time to focus on staying active and creating lasting memories. Whether it’s taking a family walk, playing outdoor games, or visiting local attractions, incorporating movement into holiday traditions can help offset indulgent meals while bringing loved ones closer together. Simple activities like throwing a football, dancing, or exploring neighborhood light displays can make celebrations more engaging and fun for everyone.
Embracing imperfection and prioritizing connection over perfection allows for truly memorable moments during the holidays. By starting small, such as adding short walks or light exercise to daily routines, families can begin building healthier habits that last beyond the season. These activities not only promote well-being but also provide opportunities for laughter and bonding, making the holidays both joyful and active.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:03 - Introduction to Holiday Exercise
01:07 - Making Holidays Memorable
03:10 - Family-Friendly Activities
05:08 - Building Healthy Habits
10:34 - Health Goals for the New Year
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:03] When we're talking about, you know, the weight we gained in the holidays and stuff like that. There's a couple of different things that we can do to really push back against that. One of the things is to actually get some exercise in. Interviewer Don't normally exercise. It's not normally your thing. Get out and move. You can start the New Year's thing right now. Just be like, I'm just going to move a little bit more because I'm eating a bunch of stuff, right? So like, you know, go take a walk, you know, count your steps around the house, like, you know, do some pictures of clean a little bit extra, you know, go outside, you know, throw the football around through the baseball around your kids, go there off. You know, especially when people come over for Thanksgiving. You know, I can take a walk or, you know, do something. That'd be great. One of the things we've done for a couple of years and the kids love it, and if you really want to tire a bunch of kids out, this is a phenomenal Thanksgiving and Christmas thing. It's worth the investment. Get some of those dancing games. Either go get the mat. We use the Kinect back from the day and they get a jump around, you know, dance or stuff like that.
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:07] And, you know, the parents come in and it's hilarious. It's a great time, you know? And those are those things. As we start looking at the holidays, the memories of the crazy, the bloopers stuff, the, you know, things we weren't expecting. Those are always the things that we talk about later. We laugh about even when they're terrible at the time. Like if the turkey burst into flames, Like, that's bad for today, right? But next Thanksgiving, it's going to be a heck of a story. Right? And so that's what you want. And people get so frazzled from an emotional standpoint, but it has to be perfect. And like, no, if it's perfect, it's not memorable. Like, don't do that. Don't make it perfect. Make it memorable. That's the whole point of doing this, you know? So back to yourself. Give yourself a little grace, but also try to move. You know, like I was talking to my kids. We're going to get a little bit longer exercise both Thursday and Friday. I told them that like, hey, we have the time, so we should workout longer. And so we're going to work out a little bit longer.
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:02:06] You'll probably add an extra set to everything. Might do some extra abs, you know, whatever it is. I will definitely play more basketball and stuff like that as both my kids will, you know, my hey, let's go shoot some baskets or let's go through the football. You know, we can always do that. Batting cages are really fun, which is kind of funny because, like, I guess it's because if you play baseball all the time, like, you don't wanna play baseball, you know, on, you know, the 3 or 4 days where you're off. So it's great if you don't play baseball. It's a great time to go hit the batting cages, you know, because it's just one of those fun things that you guys do and it's physical, that type of thing. Laser tags, great gallery run through all the things. So my kids are like 8 to 12, so I have all of the things that like you physically take kids to go to. There's trampoline parks, which are actually pretty fun. It might be a little dangerous for adults, but, you know, still fun. You know, the turkey being dry is a great story. You know, dad blowing his knee out and having surgery. Not the best story, but it's the story you're going to tell.
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:03:10] So try to be a little bit safe in the jump parks. But there's all sorts of things, like in Fresca, we've got this whole lighting system where it comes on and it's set to music the whole deal. You can pull your cell phone out and take a walk with everybody and look at the lights. You know, we've got all we've got beautiful botanical gardens in Dallas that you can walk through, you know, and take the whole family down there and do it before or after dinner. You know, just find a reason to do something physical. You know, we can always sit and watch movies and stuff. But if it's, you know, if you can figure out a way to integrate some physical motion, this is going be a whole lot better for you on the holidays because we know we're going to be eating Ashura and that's a given. So just let that one go. But if we can choose to move more, that'd be great because you're going to offset a little bit of it. And here's the thing. If you start making that a habit of a thing that you do with your family, maybe it doesn't have to be on Thanksgiving. Maybe you can be more often, you know, Google Parks near me.
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:04:11] I bet you're going to be surprised how many parks are around you. You know, go take a walk. If you have a dog. Take the dog with you. You know, take a Frisbee. Go buy a Frisbee. Or like ten bucks. Go buy a Frisbee. Go buy a, you know, a little football, you know, go out with you. Go out with some people and you don't have to if it's not a family thing. Go with your church. Find a church. Find a group of people that you can go do some stuff with and go do it. Or if you don't have a family come in or you don't have to cook, like I don't have to cook. So I'm just showing up and eating. This is like my this is Thanksgiving's my favorite holiday because I just have to show up and eat with my family and it's phenomenal. We do Christmas in our house. We have to, like, do all the decorating. If you do all the cleaning, if you do all the cooking. I love Christmas, but Thanksgiving and anything, I just hang out and eat with my family, which is my favorite thing to do. So, you know, if you can start incorporating, hey, we're going to go out and physically move and we're going to do this thing or play this game or whatever, now is something that you can do. More often. But, you know, that's kind of the start of where everything starts.
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:05:08] And it's always funny because people come in and we deal with this every year and, you know, we've gotten really good at like managing it. But, you know, people are like, I want to do all the things for New Year's resolution. Like, I want to I want to go from where I was of sitting on my butt eating chocolates to your diet and your exercise routine. And I'm like, no, it's not no, it's not going to happen. But we can start making small progressive changes. And then if you're like, we're going to take a walk, great. Could you do that every day? Hey, look at that. You know, like, well, I have to fit it in time wise to the number one thing you got to do to get healthy is rearrange your schedule to realign your priorities. Right? So if your priority is to be healthy, you've got to start putting time into being healthy. So you have to reset your priorities. So great. So find that 20, 30 minute walk and then turn that 20, 30 minute walk into, you know, another another type of exercise, preferably weight bearing, you know. And so it's a it's a way we can start doing things. If you can find 20 or 30 minutes to take a walk on Thanksgiving, you can find 20 or 30 minutes all the time you like. Yeah, but I have Thanksgiving off. Yeah. Figure out how to fit that in. Because if you come home, I don't want you to home at 530. Cool. Go and change your clothes. Take a walk, you know, Or eat and take a walk. Do. D.
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:06:28] O something like start moving. If we can start figuring that out now. And, like, it's a lot easier as we go along. But, you know. You know, go, here's the deal. If you go to a job and say, I'm trying out gems like during Thanksgiving, probably getting a chance of like five five if you guys are in Frisco and you want to come try out by five. Drop something in the comments and I'll get you. I'll get you a free two weeks for your whole family. Like, you know, hey, I've got family coming in town. Cool. Go do vibe five is your thing. Like, you're like, hey, you know, I mean, we're going to go do this farm, read yoga, your wage, the whole deal, because, you know, everybody in your family talks about needing exercise or they do exercise. And so you're gonna be like, Hey, I found this thing to do. Plus, it's an hour. And I guarantee you that if your family's coming in, when you're trying to figure out something to do with them killing an hour, an hour and a half would be great. Because here's what you can do. You kill an hour exercising and then you can go see a movie for two hours and feel good about it. Because I've already done my exercise for today. Right? I was physical. Cool. Great.
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:07:33] Now you've just killed 3 or 4 hours. I guarantee you that a lot of you moms out there being like, What the hell am I going to do with all these people? There you go. That's a great one. So similar to that. Or if you're staying at home and you're doing all your running around the house, you're definitely active and you're cooking and you're clean and everything else, you want to get your family out of the way. So you do that having stuff like, you know, if you've never done it with your kids as a dad and you're like, why don't you go to the batting cages? It's like, all right, I'm not against that idea. Like, that sounds like a fun thing to do. We can do one time. And if you liked it one time, you can go more or go play basketball. There's you know, the way I pick up a day, you know, do that. But if you guys come to VI five, that'd be really, really fun. Plus, you know, it's one of the things I can get you in for free, so drop me in the comments. Call the office if you're in fresco. Pleasure. Want a second chance? One second and we'll get you in. It's a fun time, you know, Bring everybody the times all day long. So knock that out. That'll be a great way to do it. You know?
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:08:35] So try that one. But try to find something you can do physically. You know, Twister is not the best game for everybody because sometimes people have bad heads. But Twister is also an option. So those are some of the some of the fun things you can do, especially with the kids, because twisters are fun game for the kids and the adults because the adults get to watch the kids be silly. So that's another one that's physical and active when you can get things out and get things moving. So if you don't have to go to the gym for two hours and work out for it to count as physical motion. So try that out. Like go, go do some of those things, you know, And during Thanksgiving you have to bundle up a little bit. But a lot of houses are already set up Christmas site wise. And so you can go ahead and take the walk and look at Christmas lights, you know, or just Google Christmas lights near me because there's always some setup from the city. Like I said, Frisco does it really big every year. And Mary Main Street, you know, and I'm sure Addison does some stuff. So there's all sorts of neighborhoods all throughout Dallas that do it. So just Google, you know, Christmas lights near me. You go walk through those.
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:09:37] So, you know, that's really one of the best things that you guys can do as far as, you know, figuring out how to get physically active during this time. So drop some of the comments if you guys have done something really cool that you're like, we did this one year and it was really, really fun. Like we did the Harry Potter thing one year and that was awesome. So if you guys have like they do this big huge walkthrough deal of Harry Potter, it was awesome. It was really, really cool. So, you know, really ball is also really fun. You guys have never played whirly ball a little bit dangerous, but you're in golf cart, you're in like bumper cars, bumper cars, and you're throwing things at a target with like a little like lacrosse net hand and thing. It's awesome. But if you guys have done cool stuff, you know, drop it in the comments that everybody else can see it, maybe get some ideas what they can do with their family. So. All right. Thanks for your time. We're going to do the last two weeks of the year. I think that starts on December 16th. And I check the dates. Yeah.
Dr Matt Chalmers [00:10:34] So Monday, December 16th, all the way through the end of the year on the 31st, I'm going to do some stuff on how to pick your team for health and wellness, because as you guys can start figuring out like, you know, how do I pick the right trainer? Like what's the right trainer for me? I'll give you some ideas on how to find that person who's the best person in nutrition and diet and, you know, do what I need to ask my doctor for and things like that. So we'll go through and kind of walk through some of those things. Like here's the things that would make sure that you're checking on and there's you're doing if you want to increase your health in the next in the new year. Obviously not everything. Know if you wanted to start from scratch and build all the way out, that'd be great. But there should be a little teaching that tips and tricks in there for pretty much everybody. So tell everybody that'd be a great thing because they never can kind of figure out, you know, what to do as far as, you know, just not hiring me and failing. So we're starting Monday 16th, 745. So. All right. Well, thanks for your time. Emily. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to start playing football. I think we're gonna play football this year with the kids because both kids like it. So we're definitely days of football this year, so. All right. Good talking to you guys. I will see you later. Thanks for your time.
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