In this episode of the Iron Lab Podcast, Coaches Jo and Kim share practical strategies for navigating the holiday season while staying true to health and wellness goals. They dive into the importance of setting intentions, planning ahead, and making conscious decisions about indulgences. Key tips include prioritizing protein at meals, opting for smaller portions, and engaging in family activities like walks to stay active.

The coaches also highlight the significance of balancing movement with rest and recharge days, ensuring both mental and physical well-being during this festive but often overwhelming season. The discussion goes deeper into managing stress, emotional triggers, and family dynamics. Joe and Kim emphasize the power of self-awareness, maintaining personal boundaries, and reframing indulgences to align with individual health goals.

Listeners are encouraged to decide on their “non-negotiables” for the holidays and create a plan to stick to them. With actionable advice and relatable anecdotes, this episode serves as a guide to enjoying the holidays mindfully and maintaining balance without sacrificing joy or progress.

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Contact Joely Churchill and Kim Berube | Iron Lab:

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TRANSCRIPT
Coach Jo 00:09

Welcome to Perfectly Unfinished Conversations, the Iron Lab podcast with Coach Jo…

Coach Kim 00:14

…and Coach Kim…

Coach Jo 00:15

Where you ride shotgun with us as we have raw, real, unfiltered, and unfinished conversations about trying to eat, sleep, train, and live with some integrity in a messy, imperfect life.

Coach Kim 00:27

We're all about creating a strong support system, taking radical personal responsibility, having fun, and being authentic. And one of the most common themes you're going to find in this podcast is the idea that we create positive momentum in our life, by doing what we call b-minus work.

Coach Jo 00:45

We’re making gains and getting ahead and loving life without self-sabotaging our goals by striving for perfection. We get it done by moving ahead…

Coach Kim 00:55

…before we're ready…

Coach Jo 00:56

…when we aren't feeling like it…

Coach Kim 00:58

…and without hesitation.

Coach Jo 1:00

Be sure to subscribe now on Apple or Spotify, so you don't miss a single episode. It’s good enough. Let's go.

Coach Jo 01:07

Hello and welcome back. We are on episode 15 here for the Iron Lab Podcast: Perfectly Unfinished Conversations. You got Jo and Kim...

Coach Kim 01:18

Hi.

Coach Jo 01:19

And we're going to be talking about the holiday Survival Guide. This episode should be coming out to you guys here on December 16. So we thought we should talk about something that was pretty important around that exact time.

Coach Kim 01:31

Yeah, I think where we're going to start is talking about kind of where we live and culturally, what holidays very typically look like for us, for our clientele. We can't speak for everybody, but we can make general, general...

Coach Jo 01:45

Generalization.

Coach Kim 01:47

Generalities? Yeah. Anyhow, we can make generalities about cultural traditions around Christmas. Lacombe, where we live, Alberta, Canada, is kind of in the Bible Belt, and so there is a lot of churches and religious kinds of celebrations, but also we are, I always think, like, Alberta is Canada's Texas. You know what I mean?

Coach Jo 02:11

Like, bigger and faster and bigger work hard.

Coach Kim 02:13

And oil and gas and ranchers and farm and agriculture and yeah, and and lots of business as well, but it's the hustle, specifically that you're talking about, and I think that probably exists in most places nowadays, but really it's kind of the driving energy of Alberta, and it translates into how we behave culturally as people, and especially when it comes to celebrations and holiday seasons. And we were just talking before this episode started, where I said, you know, typically, once the weather starts to change, it's almost like, I wonder if we developed all these holiday crazy, extended holidays as a way to survive the winter.

Coach Jo 02:53

I have thought about that many times, you know, like, what else do we do?

Coach Kim 02:56

Yea, the bleack light starts to change. The leaves fall. It gets cold. It's, you know, like, even today, minus 17 here, it's, you know, it's, it's sunny enough, it's bright enough where we've got a snowfall warning coming, but it's almost like somebody somewhere was like, Okay, this is almost unbearable. We should create six months of holidays to get us through, get us through the winter, because it's like Thanksgiving, and then it's Halloween, and then it's November, Christmas party season, and that extends into December, and then we have Christmas, and then we have Christmas week, and then we have January 1, and boxing or not, Boxing Day and New Year's Day, and then we've got Valentine's Day, and then we've got Easter.

Coach Jo 03:36

Yeah, I know it never ends.

Coach Kim 03:38

It doesn't end. And so culturally, what we see is that, you know, people typically just go from one holiday of excess to the next, yeah, starting in about October. And so Christmas is no different. And so November, it's probably already started, although I feel like it's a little later than normal, because we've had pretty nice weather up until recently.

Coach Jo 04:01

I don't know, I was in Walmart, and it was before Halloween, and they already had the Christmas shit out. And I was like, What is going on here? It's just a lot, like, it's like, early October, it was, think it was Thanksgiving weekend, and I'm like, they've already scooted the Halloween out before Halloween, and they were starting to put Christmas in.

Coach Kim 04:16

I didn't notice that, but I did notice at one of the drug stores in town that that November 1, boom, all the Halloween stuff was gone and the Christmas stuff was already up in the aisles. You know.

Coach Jo 04:25

There's early shoppers.

Coach Kim 04:26

Totally and so that also translates into the the rush and the stress and the pressure and the excess of it all through this entire season. And so one of the things that I think is useful to kind of talk about, when we're talking about surviving the holidays, there's a lot of things happening simultaneously that we kind of hype up to. We...

HOLIDAY SURVIVAL GUIDE

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