Erica Hoke shares three ways to protect your health during the holidays: setting boundaries with scripts and partner conversations, managing sugar intake for gut health, and reducing stress through financial planning. She references her Infertility Success Community Chat and upcoming book.
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Welcome to Wednesday. I'm Erica Hoke. I'm an infertility mentor and an empowerment coach. And today we're going to be talking about, um, 3 ways not to let the holidays derail your health, especially when it comes to infertility. If you happen to be watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that like and subscribe because we know that's how you get notified. Also, Facebook is terrible for notifications. So if you're watching today on Facebook, and want to see when I go live Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at noon, go ahead and head over to YouTube and hit that like and subscribe. Thanks so much for that. So today we're all looking forward to the holidays, right? Like, it's a little bit of a crazy year. I feel like the holidays are a little— everything since 2020 has just been extra. Can we just say that, right? Like, so everything has been one big mismatch, miss mash of Halloween and Thanksgiving's coming and the holidays are coming, Christmas is coming, and the new year too. And, uh, it's kind of amped up everybody's stress level a little bit. And that combined with all the other health-related things this year, we want to make sure that going into the holidays that we are preemptive, that we focus ahead of time on things that we can control and kind of Cut it off at the pass and don't let it— don't let us get run over by the holidays. I like how that— I like how that, that feels like we don't want to get run down by the holidays, like not literally and not physically. So, um, I think, you know what I was saying. So one of the things that we focus on in my group, um, the Infertility Success, uh, community chat is we, we talk a lot about boundaries. So we know as women going through infertility that it's a major issue that we have to deal with on a daily basis, multiple times a day sometimes, but especially during the holidays, it seems like, I don't know, people feel more comfortable inserting themselves into your personal life. And so, uh, in the guide section in that group that I dropped the link below, I talked with a professional boundaries coach, Lauren DaSilva is amazing. We did an hour-long session with her about Q&A, about scripting, how to handle those awkward situations, having a conversation with your partner, um, about it ahead of time. It meaning the event that you're going to, whether it's Thanksgiving or a Christmas, Christmas event, a work party, any of those kind of things. Having a conversation ahead of time with your partner so that you're both mentally prepared for those awkward and insertive and intrusive questions, and so that you also have a plan of escape. Okay, so that is in there, and that's one of the ways that I can support you. Also, let's talk about sugar in the holidays. Okay, so we all know that there's a lot of temptations around the holidays between Halloween, leftover Halloween candy, the pies and cookies and cakes at Thanksgiving. There's lots of sugar around during December for Christmas and other holidays. And so we know that sugar is, um, a gut killer, a gut health killer. And because it's a gut health killer, it's terrible for your infertility. Your gut health is super, super important, um, to your overall health, but especially to your infertility. Health, your fertility health, because of, um, some of the hormones being produced in the gut and how that all operates. So we talked, um, a week or two ago, if you want to look for that video, about gut health, iron absorption, and things like that that are important for infertility. But we want to come up with a plan not to overindulge in, um, things that we shouldn't that are going to derail our infertility health, right? So sugar, alcohol, those sort of things. So I have a sugar challenge in that group as well that you can kind of, you know, do at your own pace and weed out some of the sugar things or just come up with a plan. Okay. So the other thing that we can do not to let the holidays derail our health is reducing our stress. And one of the ways that we can do that is we can come up with a budget and a plan for finances during the holidays. A lot of people like really shy away— maybe I'm one of those people— from talking about finances and sitting down and making it a priority. But it really is so important for you to be able to have that conversation with your spouse, be on the same page, don't overspend, and then get to January and have all this additional stress. So let's have good communication around finances and money and nip that stress right in the bud, right? So if you want more information like this, again, you can come, um, join the group that I admin, Infertility Success Community Chat. Hey, by the way, that's the title of my new book coming out in just a few weeks, Infertility Success: Stories of Help and Hope for Your Journey. So health and blessings to you guys. I will see you Friday.
