The holidays are a time for family, togetherness, gratitude, and very often, overindulgence. There is no way to “undo” your holiday overindulgence, but you can bounce back on track so one big party or meal doesn’t slippery slope into another and other. Here are my rules for overindulgence recovery:

1.Don’t try to compensate by skipping meals the next day

Many people think that they can balance out what they consumed the day before by simply eating less, or none at all, the next day. This simply isn’t how our bodies work and taking this approach will do far more harm than good. In addition to making you cranky, deliberately skipping out on meals will leave you ravenous and often leads to binging and poor food choices. Instead of trying to balance out your calorie load, focus on eating healthful foods and grazing on them throughout the day instead of eating a few larger meals. You will feel better, both because you aren’t starving and because you are nourishing your body, and you will be setting yourself up for getting back on track and staying there.

2. You can’t run your way out of that second helping of pie

You might often hear people say that they are going to hit the gym extra hard the day after their jumbo holiday meal. Again, this is not the right approach. First of all, it’s not feasible to truly burn off all of those calories and then some. Second of all, this is a really good way to overdo it or even hurt yourself, thereby taking you off track for a longer period of time. Instead of trying to burn off everything you ate over the course of an entire day in a 2-hour gym session, just do your regular workout. If you want to kick it up a little bit for a little extra sweat and burn, that’s fine, but running yourself to the ground is not the answer.

3. Drink lots of water

Let’s be honest, many of us overindulge in more than just food over the holidays. Over consuming alcohol plus eating so many salty treats at parties and the dinner table can leave you dehydrated and feeling terrible. Drinking plenty of water during the party or holiday dinner will do two good things for you: 1. it will help keep you hydrated, and 2. it will help prevent you from overeating as much because drinking water slows you down and makes you feel full. Drinking plenty of water the next day continues that rehydration process to get you back to feeling good again.

4. Be gentle with yourself

This is a big refrain you hear from me all the time. Be gentle with yourself. It is way too easy to beat yourself up for going off your diet or eating until you felt sick but berating yourself for it does you absolutely no good. In fact, it could foster a mind set of “well, I’ve already completely ruined my diet and I have no self-control so why should I even bother trying?” Instead, appreciate how delicious the food was and congratulate yourself for realizing that you don’t want to continue on that course. Then you can get back on track.

Those are my tips for recovering from any holiday overindulgences you may be feeling the effects of this weekend. There are more holidays ahead of us, so I will just leave you with this: remember that there is nothing wrong with indulging occasionally – the key is that you do so mindfully so that you are truly enjoying it and you don’t overindulge.