Looking to biohack your nutrition this holiday season? The beauty of biohacking is that you can make it work for you with the right guidance.

Try these 5 tips to biohack your holiday season:

1. What are you trying to "hack".

Before you dive into biohacking through the holidays, determine exactly where your focus is: weight? managing anxiety or depression? reducing cognitive decline? optimizing performance for an upcoming race?

Choosing one main "what" or "why" can help with adherence during common times of indulgence like the winter holiday period. This will also help you narrow down what changes are the most important and where you have a little wiggle room.

You can have more than one "why". However, keep one as your priority and others can be "nice to haves". This helps to reduce potential disappointment later.

2. Test, don't guess.

Why would you skip roasted potatoes if you are an optimal carb metabolizer? Maybe you should be going for the dark meat and an extra slab of butter on your veggies if you do well with fats.

When you test, it leaves little room to simply guessing what works for you. That's why the Integrative Biohacking Program incorporates a variety of tests to discover what your DNA, hormones and metabolic markers say about your specific needs.

This also means that you know where you can and should be more lenient with your diet, sleep schedule, supplement routine and stress levels.

3. Avoid the refined sugar.

Replace meals and desserts that use refined sugar with real food sweeteners like maple syrup, honey, dates or fruit. While these will all still affect your blood sugar and may need to be avoided depending on health conditions, these natural sugars have some other nutritional benefits like additional vitamins and minerals.

Refined sugar is inflammatory, so should generally be avoided for anyone looking to improve or "biohack" their health, regardless of what you are focused on hacking!

4. Incorporate 12 hours fasting, daily.

A simple trick to support digestion is to set a 12 hour eating window and a 12 hour fasting window. For example: eat from 8am to 8pm, don't eat from 8pm to 8am. Pretty easy since you should be asleep for most of it!

While a longer fasting window may work for some, it's not ideal or feasible for many during the holiday season where we may be scheduled in for family dinners, work gatherings and brunches with friends.

Ideally, start your 12 hour window two to three hours before bed. When that's not possible, shoot for at least an hour to allow your body to do some digestion before your head hits the pillow. This will optimize sleep, and leave you feeling less bloated, gassy and groggy the next day.

5. Drink Water

When the alcohol is flowing or you've had your third peppermint mocha-infused coffee, it can be hard to remember to keep up with your H2O. Water is important to stay hydrated, reduce fatigue, keep your bowels moving, support overall detoxification, keep your skin looking supple... the list goes on.

Keep a reusable water bottle with you if you know you'll be jumping between family's homes. Be sure to have a glass of water between each alcoholic drink. Start your day with 500ml of warm water with lemon.

These are all simple ways to increase your water intake through the day, that are easy to remember!

Want to learn more about the Integrative Biohacking Program? Click here to get started!