If you’re looking for a time of year that’s hardest on your body, you’d be hard-pressed to beat the one that kicked off with pants-unbuckling Thanksgiving and ends with a cold pack on your head New Year’s Day. Think about the damage alone done by the one-two punch of Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

Thanksgiving: overeating. Estimates place the typical holiday meal at 3,000-plus calories, or closing in on twice the recommended daily calorie intake for the average person. And that’s just for the main meal; in the case of Thanksgiving you can nearly double that amount if you throw in the follow-up leftover meals that will be consumed by day’s end.

Black Friday: stress. First, there’s the business of consuming nearly 6,000 calories on Thanksgiving, then heading out at midnight to elbow your way to the $2 waffle irons table. Add to that your wacko fellow shoppers — a female shopper at a California Walmart used pepper spray to keep her competitors at bay — and you’ve pretty much taken 10 years off your life with those two days alone. And the bulk of the holiday season remains.

You want a truly happy holidays, or at least a holiday season that won’t do you in? Then you need to do something that helps you deal with both overeating and stress. Lucky for you that some thing is one thing:

Going for a walk.

Walking is the nation’s most popular form of exercise. According to the National Sporting Goods Association, 95.8 million Americans walked for exercise in 2010 (exercising with equipment was a distant second, with 55.3 million participants). There’s good reason for this: most people can walk, it doesn’t require special equipment, you can do it spontaneously, out your front door, so it can be done quickly.

There’s more reasons to walk. According to the Mayo Clinic, walking can:

• Lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol)
• Raise high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol)
• Lower your blood pressure
• Reduce your risk of or manage type 2 diabetes
• Manage your weight
• Improve your mood
• Keep you strong and fit

Walking isn’t a magic bullet. It won’t completely diffuse the stress of the holidays; but it will take the edges off and make the season more manageable. And it won’t exactly act as a cross to that batch of Christmas fudge your vampire coworkers bring in, but it will help in keeping the damage to a minimum. And, truly, a half hour at lunch, after work or at some point during the day can make a huge difference.

That said, are you ready to commit to a daily walk? And if not daily, then what is a realistic goal? Take our survey and we’ll report back in a week or so with the results. And take a minute to tell us your favorite place to walk. It could serve as inspiration to others.

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[highlight]Survey says: Are you ready to commit to walking daily through the holidays? If not, then how many times, realistically, do you think you can vow to hit the trail? Take our survey and let us know. Click here to take survey [/highlight]

The post Footing the bill for a truly happy holidays appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Sorry, that’s what I do when I get stressed — I babble, talk nonsense, confuse my blog with the blockbuster movie I envision making. Deep breath, count to 10 — better make it five, because really, who has time to count to 10 this time of year? So yes, over the next two days an expanded version of the story, which appears today in both papers.

Today, in a misery-loves-company gesture, I’ll share some survey findings on how your fellow Americans are dealing with holiday stress. These stats come from Liberty Mutual unless otherwise specified.

• 35 percent of Americans have spent beyond their financial means when buying gifts. 35 percent? An especially curious finding in light of the fact 42 percent of Americans in a SleepBetter.Org survey said they’re worried about how their going to pay their holiday bills.
• 61 percent of Americans agree that regifting is socially acceptable. If you’re tempted to regift, here’s a quick guide on how to do it successfully. If you’re in the fence, here’s an ethical take on the subject.
• 48 percent of Americans will buy fewer gifts this year. A dubious figure based on the amount of time it took me to park at Crabtree Valley Mall on Monday morning.
• 71 percent of Americans say it’s a good idea to establish a spending limit with those you plan to exchange gifts with. (The stat we’d like to see is how many people actually stick to that limit.)
• 73 percent of us stress over giving the “right” gift, according to FranklinCovey.
• 50 percent of Americans believe you should take into account how much the other person will be able to afford on a gift for you when deciding how much to spend on a gift for them. That’s either very thoughtful or very tit-for-tat.
• Stressed over who to tip for the holidays in a world where even the corner take-out joint solicits a gratuity? Here’s who we plan to tip in the spirit of the season: teacher, 55 percent; babysitter, housekeeper, hair stylist, mail carrier, all 41 percent.

• 

  $20 seems to be the consensus on an appropriate amount to spend on a holiday gift exchange.

• Most suspect stat we ran across: 86 percent of Americans plan to send greeting cards through the mail.
• Most compounding stat: During the holidays, already a time when people tend to overeat, 40 percent of adults in the American Psychological Association’s 2010 Stress in America survey said they overeat as a way to cope with holiday stress.
• First runner-up most compounding stat: 17 percent of kids surveyed said if their parents are stressed, that stresses them.
• 57 percent of Americans plan to give a gift to their co-workers, 42 percent will give a gift to their boss.

Photo at top: Ralphie appeared to have no stress over giving his teacher a rather lavish Christmas gift.

The post Stress by the numbers appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

I was reminded of this earlier in the week on a ride at Umstead with Alan. The discussion turned to how we’d both been stressed by money, money that we knew was coming in but money that had yet to arrive. Ah, the joys of being self-employed. Alan had gotten to the point one evening where he started digging through his bike bag for spare change for dinner. “I was sick of eating at home. I wanted a burrito, [dang it]!”

“How much have you been riding lately?” I asked.

Not nearly enough, he acknowledged. Then, with a gleam, he added, “I did come out here Sunday, though, and rode hard for an hour. I think that ride saved me this week.”

When the going gets tough, the tough get on their bikes and ride, hard.

Few things relieve the pressure valve like moving. For some, that may mean fleeing the cube for a mind-clearing 20-minute walk around the campus. For others, it’s an inspiring, perspiring 50-minute Nia class after work. For people like Alan and I, it’s an intense, heart-pumping ride though the forest, darting between trees, over rocks, beneath branches.

This morning after I’d gotten back from the computer store having bought a software upgrade that refused to work, and after being told, “Yeah, there’s a problem with that upgrade; They’re working on a fix. In the meantime, here’s a patchwork solution that will save your data. Well, most of it … ”, and after being advised that the patchwork fix could tie up my computer for up to three hours, I had only one course of action.

And it didn’t involve fire roads.

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