The holidays are a great time for families to get together around the dinner table to share memories and enjoy each other’s company. Only later, while slouching on the couch to decompress do the negative health consequences of our increased holiday food consumption begin nagging us. And during these moments of reflection we start to think about physical activity strategies to help us work off these extra food and drink calories. Well, it doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of waiting for these guilty feelings why not plan ahead and help others along the way?

The first step is to make a plan and then stick to it. That sounds easy but it’s going to take some navigation and guidance to proceed in the proper direction. Fortunately, help is on the way from today’s ubiquitous electronic devices and apps that are both useful and fun to use. Physical educators can be a great source of advice for teaching colleagues, families, and students in helping them to engage in appropriate health promoting activities.

To accomplish this task, it’s wise to create a plan that involves others such as family members or friends who will act as coaches and motivators to help us stay on the right path. These ideas can be posted in a blog, or shared as reminders, fitness calendars and online information web site links. Potential topics of advice could include a combination of health, exercise, nutrition, first aid and injury prevention information. As a physical education teacher, I found it to be an effective strategy to make a calendar or bulletin board to help others track their activities and healthy food choices. During the school break for the holidays, health and P.E. teachers can be a viable asset for carrying over health-promoting information into the holidays. It could be homework or simply advice. Fortunately, today there are some excellent online resources you might like to personally check out and then consider sharing.