How to Get Back to Feeling HEALTHY After a Weekend of Behaving BADLY

Back on Track Guide

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Last night on the way back from quiet restful weekend in Miami, we were surrounded with barely awake, hangover, sunbunt folks who tried to hide from the bright cabin light and restlessly tried to find the most comfortable position in uncomfortable airplane seat to pass out (probably for the 1st time in 3 days). The victims of a long party weekend! Throbbing headache, foggy mind, uneasy stomach, nausea, fatigue – my compassion goes your way, people!

Hopefully you feel light, energized and excited to start the week after a restful long weekend! If yes, then have a great week and pass this article to one of you co-workers or friends who is feeling tired, hangover, and miserable. This article is for those who had a super fun but rough weekend partying, eating not-so-healthy food, and pushing liver’s boundaries with alcohol and probably smth else. It is for you, my friends returning from Vegas and the opening weekend in the Hamptons 😉

We all know that it is best to eat whole fresh foods, to minimize alcohol, to exercise regularly, to take time to relax effectively, and to go to bed at regular hours. Going out late, drinking alcohol, eating late dinners, and listening to loud music with bright lights is on the ‘try to avoid’ list, if you want to be at the best state of well-being. (Sorry, but this is the way it is!)

If you try to follow a healthy lifestyle most of the time but not ready to break up with old party friends or completely give up your party habits, you need to learn to re-balance yourself after those occasional parties.

A Difficult Choice

As a beginning wellness warrior, you face a difficult choice: your health and balance vs your relationship with old friends. Long weekends when most people get together to celebrate, relax and ‘have fun’ can be particularly challenging. You don’t want to seem ‘boring’ and ‘weird’. You want to feel a part of the group, relax, and have fun, too. Most of your friends may still be not sold on all the aspects of a healthy lifestyle, consider early dinners an entertainment for grandpas and love to dance into the wee hours.  If you had to make this difficult choice this weekend and as a result feel a little of tilt, this post will give you helpful guidelines to quickly get back on track.

The good thing is that if you know how to re-balance yourself, you will recover a lot quicker.

Those of you who think that being healthy is too boring and overrated and fear missing the next big DJ a lot more than damaging your liver, you might pick up a few useful tips from this article, too. If you fall into this category, you probably feel a bit (or a lot) hangover after 3 days of partying nonstop. You will learn how to minimize the time spent hating your life and get back to feeling more energy. Trust me, you don’t need to turn into a health nut right away but being kinder to your body a few days a week will make your off party days so much happier.

Clean Body = Sensitive Body

It feels amazing to live in a clean, healthy body that has a lot of energy and mind clarity. Once experienced, this state is not something one would want to give up easily!

Sadly, clean body reacts a lot stronger to pollutants like alcohol or drugs. It becomes more sensitive. As a result, I often hear from my clients that after not drinking any alcohol for a month, they feel sick after 1 glass of wine. I experienced it myself and it is not pleasant. It makes perfect sense, however. How would a kid feel if you give him alcohol? Probably pretty sick, too. Once your body is clean, it doesn’t tolerate toxic substances and has a healthy reaction of wanting to eliminate the toxins as fast a possible.

Peer pressure, and lack of desire to be the ‘weird’ one, and to completely break away from an old group of friends usually lead to giving up some of the daily health rules for a night or two. Not ideal but not the end of the world!

If you feel crappy, tired, less inspired than usual the next day, there are a few things that you can do to restore balance. We’ll focus of physical and mental/emotional aspects equally. You are a whole being and you need to balance out all aspects.

Physical ER

Being out really late, in a loud place, surrounded by a lot of people, drinking, smoking, doing any kind of drugs creates a major imbalance in a lot of systems. Hormones get effected, your blood chemistry, stomach lining, water levels, digestion, liver, kidney, pancreas (alcohol is a highly concentrated sugar), nervous system – your entire body and mind become slightly or majorly out of whack.

There are many common sense practices that help to restore physical body back to balance. To find out what will work the best for your body, ask what it needs to recover. If you are attentive enough, you will know intuitively what to do. Most likely, your body needs a combination of hydrating drinks, sleep, gentle stretching, and nourishing food. Stretching and easy to digest food are crucial to restore energy and to break up stiff points of tension. Here is what worked for me and a few of my friends in the past really well:

  • Drink a glass or 2 of warm water with lemon first think in the morning
  • Drink coconut water before breakfast or lunch. Alcohol, smoking, greasy/heavy food, and dancing until the morning creates a lot of heat in the body. Cool coconut helps to calm it down while rehydrating your thirsty body. Potassium and electrolytes help!
  • Eat mono-meals throughout the day. To restore energy and let your liver recuperate, use fewer ingredients and let simplicity rule. This will ensure that your meals are easy to digest (less likelihood of bad food combinations) and won’t overtax your digestive system. Kicheri is a great choice if you are up for cooking. If you are eating out or ordering in, try vegetable soups, a light curry, stir fries, congee, or plain quinoa.
  • Do a yoga nidra. Deep restorative rest for the entire system helps to get back to normal level of energy a lot faster than just melting in front of the TV.
  • Go for a walk outside. Breaking up the routine and going to sleep at the same time that you usually get up is a big stress for the body whether you realize it or not. To regulate natural cycles and get back to the routine, sunlight and fresh air are great helpers. Take a short walk during your lunch time or after work.

Mental and Emotional ER

You need to know and believe that the REAL YOU is still happy, perfect, and full of light. It is your body and your mind that feels tired and depressed. Once you realize that you are unchangeable, constant, and always happy, it is a lot easier to deal with the body and mind that are experiencing the consequences of a weekend long abuse.

The goal of the below guidelines is to create a positive state of mind and get out of a low depressing mood.

  • Let go of the guilt. What’s done is done, no point to fuss over it. Focus on what you can do to make yourself feel better in the present instead of thinking what you should’ve done differently yesterday. Now is the only thing that matters. Learning to let go will save you a lot of negative emotions.
  • Say 5-10 Positive Affirmations. Whatever we focus on grows. Instead of complaining how crappy you feel, imagine that you feel good. If you can’t imagine, remember the last time you felt good and focus on that good feeling. Your thoughts make up your reality. Either reality determines how you feel or you choose your feelings and they in turn effect your  reality.
  • List things you are grateful for and that are still going great even though you feel crappy. Keep doing it throughout the day, especially when an overwhelming desire to complain and to feel sorry for yourself appears.
  • Visualize energy coming in and fatigue and toxins going out with every breath. Close your eyes and play with your imagination.
  • Smile, listen to good music, call happy friends, do whatever you need to do to get out from a negative state and create positive happy thoughts. Remember that the outside is just a reflection of what’s inside.

How do you get back on track after breaking some of your “health’ rules? What helps you to restore the balance? Please share!

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