A Healthy Lifestyle Works

Posts Tagged ‘holiday foods’

You hear it all the time; “I am being good this year and not going to have xyz bad foods, so I don’t gain any weight.” This is the time of year when people join Weight Watchers and go on diets, so they can stay in control during the holidays. For some it works, and that holds out hope for everyone else. For the majority it not only does not keep them in control; the guilt, deprivation and old familiar patterns lead to giving up on the idea and then really over indulging since they blew it anyway. By the time New Year’s rolls around, they have put on nearly 10 pounds – twice the average holiday weight gain. Have you ever done this or know people who have? What happens in January when the holidays are over? Does this process get repeated?

For Julianne (not her real name), this is just what happens every year. She promises herself she will be good at Halloween, but isn’t. Then she becomes determined to do better at Thanksgiving and doesn’t. This leads her to take more drastic measures and go on a more rigid diet before Christmas, restricting herself as severely as she can so she won’t gain more weight. Yet for reasons she can’t explain, she still blows her diet and can’t seem to stick with it as she should, and by Christmas Eve she is gorging herself on candy canes and anything sweet she can get her hands on. For the next seven days, she is in full binge mode, knowing that she starts her diet again on January 1st. And then her annual cycles of dieting and bingeing begin again. She is in her late 50s and ashamed that at her age she is still doing this. She wonders why she never learns and can’t get herself to do as she should. She wonders what is wrong with her.

Nothing is wrong with her. She was never taught how to eat normally or how to recognize what really drives her to make the choices she does. She just assumes she is bad, and the harder she tries to be good the more often she feels like she fails. Sound familiar?

So here are the 3 things she has learned in our sessions so far this year as she successfully navigates the holidays and all the food she loves to eat. She let me share this with you if I didn’t use her name, which I fully understand. Her lessons are a bit painful to face, yet they are fairly common.

1. She does not like candy canes. She was so obsessed with eating what she couldn’t have before her next diet began, that she ate food she didn’t even like. She realized she didn’t even taste her food or know what she really enjoyed, because she was driven by a greater need to get what she could while she could. Now she focuses on what really gives her pleasure and satisfaction, and she finds she doesn’t want all that sugar or to overeat. This has been amazing to her.

2. She has been dieting and bingeing every holiday since she can remember, and her mother did the same thing. Her mom still struggles with food and her weight. Dieting doesn’t work. She just believed it did and was the thing to do because her mother did it. She can choose her own beliefs now, and she is learning first hand that eating with consciousness of what feels good to her body is a better way to go through the holidays.

3. She was very hard on herself and that judgment caused her to overeat and choose foods she knew were bad for her, reinforcing how bad she was. It was a vicious cycle of self-hatred, self-restriction, rebellion and guilt that spiraled into food binges she couldn’t stop. She is learning to see herself with compassion, non-judgment and greater understanding. The more she does this, the less often she finds herself drawn into the cycle or wanting to eat food she doesn’t need.

You may see yourself in Julianne’s lessons or you may be getting other insights. No two people have the same internal beliefs, emotional reactions, subconscious drivers or backgrounds. Yet what most of my clients share is a belief in dieting to lose weight and that when you eat foods you shouldn’t have on a diet you are being bad. Yet they can never be good enough to reach or sustain their goal, so they give up and dig in. This holiday, consider doing what feels good to your body and your head, rather than striving to be good. You may just enjoy the food more and end up weighing less.

Halloween marks the beginning of holiday eating for many, and once the candy indulgence begins it can be difficult to regain a sense of control around food throughout the holiday season. It helps to have some strategies in place at Halloween, so you can enjoy the candy without succumbing to binging on it or letting it lead to excessive eating during the holidays coming up.

Candy is a comfort food for many of us, and when lying around in bowls and bags, it becomes a temptress greater than most people can resist. Do you find yourself unable to stop when it comes to Halloween candy?

Instead of gearing up for a binge fest and worrying about how you are going to handle having all that candy around the house, consider what is driving you to overeat and crave it and then put some strategies in place, like some of the ones I suggest below, to help yourself eat much less of it.

Some of the most common reasons people can’t seem to stop at a few pieces of Halloween candy start with feelings of deprivation. Candy for most people is considered junk food or a food they should not have, and for them candy is on the forbidden food list. When they eat it, they believe they are being bad and falling off their diet, so they have to finish it and get it out of the house to be in control. Then they strive to stay away from it until the holidays get underway and they find themselves right back in the same place, struggling to avoid the next round of bingeing on sweets and striving (but failing) to be in control. It is a never ending cycle that continues right through Valentine’s Day. Does this happen to you?

What does this have to do with deprivation? Everything. When you believe that you shouldn’t have something, you want it all the more. And the more you try to control the urges and deprive yourself, the more you obsess and overdo it when given the chance. This is human nature, and it is easy to see in children. We tend to forget that as adults we aren’t any different. Like kids we rebel against harsh rules and restrictions that are depriving.

We want our candy – or what it represents, but we are determined to apply willpower to resist it. This creates an internal battle between our Enforcer voice and our Rebel voice. Very often the Rebel wins out. But because of the loud Enforcer in the background, harshly criticizing you for what you are doing, you begin to feel guilt and shame, which triggers emotional eating and an all out binge. Next thing you know you’ve eaten more pieces than you want to admit and you feel uncomfortably sick.

What if you created an agreement with your Enforcer and Rebel voices by allowing yourself a bit of candy every once in awhile, agreeing that it isn’t forbidden and that if you really want it you can have it in moderation. Now you have calmed down the Rebel voice that will have a tantrum by overeating if it doesn’t get its way. The trickier voice to negotiate with is the Enforcer. This is because the Enforcer is the one that enforces your beliefs.

When your beliefs are black and white and don’t allow for some grey, then the Enforcer will trigger the Rebel. If you allow for moderation and satisfaction along with some guidelines for restraint, then the Rebel and Enforcer will both quiet down. If you also allow for throwing out the candy when the family has enjoyed it and had enough, everyone wins.

To put this in practice, try the following guidelines (or strategies) to help both the Enforcer and Rebel trust that their needs (meaning your needs) will be met. The first guideline is to eat candy along with a meal so that you aren’t eating it alone and driving up your blood sugar levels, which in turn leads to cravings. The second guideline is to pay attention to when you are satisfied or the first signs of feeling a bit full and stop eating. If you know you want some candy with dinner then make room for it instead of eating it when you are full.

Third, pick just 2-3 pieces of candy that you know are your favorites and savor them, so that you achieve satisfaction. And fourth, tell yourself that you can have more at your next lunch or dinner, so you know that you won’t be deprived and can still enjoy this once-a-year candy fest. After a few days, you will all have enjoyed having a bit of candy and you’ll be left with candy that isn’t your most favorite or you will be tired of it. Now throw what is left out. You won’t miss it, because you’ve let yourself enjoy it. And if that Rebel acts up, tell it that there is always more at the grocery store if it really wants to have it again before next Halloween.

Or you may have other ideas of what kind of strategy will work best for you. One that a few of my clients are choosing to do this year is to buy candy to put out that they don’t like, so going into the evening they aren’t finding themselves dipping into the candy bowl and setting themselves up to continue bingeing when more candy comes into the house.

This week consider what strategies you can put in place so you can enjoy yourself this Halloween without anxiety or guilt.

This is the time of year when every where you turn there are sweets, parties and holiday networking events. It is hard to stay in control and avoid indulging, particularly when you are stressed or trying to fit so much into your schedule you can hardly find time for a decent meal. Yet you probably don’t want to find yourself in January unable to zip up your pants and wishing you had found a way to control yourself.

The good news is being in control is much easier than you may have thought. Here are 3 steps to avoid weight gain during the holidays so you don’t find yourself a size larger in the new year.

1. Notice What Your Body is Telling You
You can’t change your behavior if you aren’t really paying attention to what you are doing at the time you are doing it, and few people are conscious when they put food in their mouths. Eating is something we do without being aware of whether we are even hungry, if something other than physical hunger is driving us, or even when we have already gotten full and are beginning to feel sick.

Most likely you are eating without even knowing why you are doing it, and the only way to be in control is to start noticing the difference between physical and non-physical hunger. It starts by noticing every single you time you start to get full, and to notice with interest – not judgment. Once you start doing that, you may find you don’t like the way it feels. You can also notice each time to reach for food if you are actually hungry and in need of that food. You may also find in many cases that you aren’t eating for physical hunger. So what are you eating for?

2. Get Curious About Why You Are Really Eating That Food
If you aren’t eating because you need the food, something else is driving you to eat. That doesn’t make you wrong or bad. It just means that your behavior is being driven subconsciously, which makes being in control very difficult when you aren’t aware of what is driving your actions.

The most common drivers during the holidays are Mindless Excess, Ravenous Response, Restricted Rebellion, Emotional Repression and Subconscious Beliefs. These are five of the eight common reasons people overeat that I address in my book Inspired to Feel Good.

3. Choose to Eat What Feels Best
The most important thing you can do for yourself during the holidays is to avoid dieting, which is a trigger for rebellious overeating when you inevitably blow it.

Instead, eat because you are hungry and then choose foods that leave you feeling good physically without feeling deprived emotionally. If you pay attention to how your body feels, you will know when you need food, when you’ve had too much and when food doesn’t really agree with you. You may even discover foods you thought you enjoyed don’t actually taste all that good.

Give yourself permission to have foods you love without getting full, and ideally pair the sweets and “>holiday treats with a balanced meal or snack. That way you will avoid getting sugar rushes and feeling sick. You will also keep your blood sugars and metabolism better balanced, and you will be able to feel the difference. Focus on eating what leaves you feeling good physically and emotionally, and you will be surprised to see you may naturally gravitate to healthier choices and combinations.

Have a great holiday feeling free to enjoy yourself without the guilt or the weight gain!