3 Steps to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain

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.

Read more about these five common drivers

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!

Judgment of Those with Obesity Doesn’t Solve Weight Problem

This morning I had breakfast with a friend at a local diner, and she couldn't help but notice a group of people who were overweight and eating huge piles of pancakes and waffles dripping in butter, syrup and whipped cream. She wondered what was wrong with them and criticized them for their choices.

It is so easy to judge people who are obese for not taking responsibility for their weight problem, but until you’ve walked in their shoes you have no idea what the real problem is. It might appear obvious if you see them eating huge portions of food or eating things that aren’t healthy, but these behaviors are a symptom of a greater problem that is not well understood or obvious.

The problem starts with dieting, and most likely everyone who is obese has dieted at least once if not repeatedly. Restrictive diets all have two things in common: they are short term and they limit what you can eat. Once the diet ends, whether as planned or because it was too hard to stick with, there is an insatiable desire to eat what wasn’t allowed and to overeat. This reaction is both physical, because the body has been in starvation mode and works to restore its fuel supply, and it is psychological. When you’ve been deprived, you have an emotional need to make up for that deprivation.

These aren’t conscious, even if you know you just can’t stop eating foods you know you shouldn’t have. They are subconscious drivers of behavior that lead to food obsessions, cravings and bingeing. In 35% of the cases, they become eating disorders.

In addition, most people are stressed out, working long hours, juggling many responsibilities and putting themselves last. This isn’t an excuse, but a reality.

Instead of judging people for their poor eating choices and lack of activity or unhealthy lifestyle, the answer starts with empathy for their situation.

The next step is to help them take a look at these choices and come to understand what is driving them from an objective perspective. It is nearly impossible to take a closer look when they are self-critical and self-loathing. In fact, that is what leads to denial, because it is often too painful to deal with those feelings. Instead, by being curious of their behaviors without judgment, then they can see what is sabotaging their choices and can start to address their subconscious thoughts and emotions. In doing so, they can regain control, be in touch with how they feel, and discover an easier way to create and maintain healthier decisions for the long term.

Giving Yourself Satisfaction

Have you ever noticed that when you aren’t satisfied by the food you are eating, you eat even more in an attempt to get satisfaction?

Maybe you are settling for food you think you should have, instead of what you really want. Or maybe you think you want a food because it is supposed to be good or once was, so you eat it expecting a certain experience. I see this happen a lot with my clients who overeat out of a desire to feel good only to end up feeling disappointed, full and wishing they hadn’t eaten so much. They don’t even recognize this pattern because it is subconscious and they aren’t paying enough attention to how they feel physically or emotionally.

Satisfaction is a genuine need that a part of you (often your inner child) craves and will do anything to get. Instead of resisting this desire to enjoy certain foods, give yourself permission to have the food and fully appreciate it without any guilt. If you are afraid of overdoing it, which is a valid concern at first, be strategic as to how much of your favorite food you can access at one time. If what you really want is Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, see if you can get just one Ben & Jerry’s ice cream bar in your favorite flavor. If you love a certain type of cookie or candy, find a way to get or create packages of just a couple at a time.

Read a longer version of this post

Breaking the Deprivation Cycle

You know you shouldn’t have that piece of cake, the Girl Scout cookies or the candy that is calling your name, but you just can’t help yourself. You just have to have some. The next thing you know, you’ve eaten more than you wanted and now you are feeling a bit full and guilty. Once again you just couldn’t seem to stay in control around food. Has this happened to you recently – like over the holidays?

Feeling out of control around food can happen to the best of us, and right now it is happening to a great many people who have tried so hard to stick to their New Year’s resolutions and are giving in to their forbidden foods. Succumbing to what isn’t on a diet is inevitable. The more you try to force yourself to resist something you want and believe you shouldn’t have, the more you rebel against that restriction. Have you ever noticed that when you are deprived of something, you want it all the more?

It is when you are depriving yourself that you are emotionally compelled to make up for being deprived. This is true whether you think you should be deprived of ever having the food again, will surely be deprived because of an upcoming diet, have just been deprived having stopped a diet, or were deprived in your past. Many people are overeating foods they were once unable to have, even as far back as fifty years ago. An older man in one of my audiences wanted to know what he could do about overeating desserts every night. It turns out he grew up in the depression when sugar was rationed and he seldom got desserts. He is still compelled to make up for having been deprived of the desserts he wanted as a kid.

This week pay attention to the foods you are trying to restrict and notice how this affects your behavior. Then try giving yourself permission to have that food in moderation and see if you really want all that much of it.

Read a longer version of this post

Overcome Emotional Eating - Open Tele-Program

I’m offering a one hour open call on How to Overcome Emotional Eating.
Join me Wednesday, May 21st at 8pm ET.

Do you think you may be eating comfort foods to feel better or turning to food when you aren’t hungry? Are you ready to overcome emotional eating and feel better about the way you eat?

I’m going to talk about:
- What is emotional eating
- How to identify emotional eating in yourself
- What drives you to overeat
- What you might really want
- How to stop emotional eating
- What tools work to manage it
I am also going to leave enough time to answer your questions.

Click here to register
Get the help you need to feel back in control around food?

If you missed this event, get the recording afterwards here

Are You Exercise Resistant?

I get a lot of phone calls for help with exercise, and what most people want is a way to be more motivated to stick with their routine. That seems simple enough, but there is a lot more to being motivated than creating motivational tactics and getting someone to hold you accountable. Maybe the problem isn’t really motivation at all. Maybe it is exercise resistance.

The first step is to acknowledge and validate any feelings or beliefs you carry about exercise. Then knowing how these create resistance, you can make different choices or create new beliefs that respect your emotional needs and your physical health. In many ways exercise resistance is similar to emotional eating, in that unconscious feelings and thoughts are driving your behaviors and leaving you to feel out of control.

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Haunted by Food You Didn’t Get to Eat

You’ve probably heard of emotional eating, which happens when you turn to food as a coping mechanism for emotional support. Although at the time, you may think you just need or crave something to eat. That is the catch 22 of emotional eating. You aren’t eating to relieve the emotions you are consciously aware of. You are eating to suppress the feelings you are unconsciously pushing away. You may know you aren’t happy before you dig into your favorite comfort foods, but you may not really know the depths of your unhappiness or the associated unmet needs.

For some people part of their unhappiness and unmet needs can be traced back to an experience with food, where they were denied something they needed or wanted. This experience can be fairly recent or date back to your childhood – even if it was fifty or sixty years ago. In fact the further back it goes for you the more powerful the emotions around it can be, because it has been festering and kept suppressed for such a long time. That deprivation becomes something you are unconsciously trying to make up for, and coupled with this unmet need is the one thing that is keeping you from ever feeling satiated and resolved – the shadow of the enforcer that is silently judging you again and again when you succumb to doing what you were told you shouldn’t do. Is this happening with you?

Are you compelled to eat comfort or forbidden foods, unable to stop eating even when you are full, doubling up on portions, or losing control around certain foods or situations involving food. If so, take an interest in why that might be, without judging yourself for it. The judgment won’t allow you to dig a little deeper to uncover what is unconsciously driving your behavior. It may just be a past deprivation, one that you grew up with or a more recent experience from dieting.

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What Does Shame Have To Do With It?

It is always heart breaking when someone you know feels they are so bad, unworthy and undeserving that they add insult to injury by withholding from themselves. I've had clients say they don't feel entitled or deserving enough to give themselves the food, sleep, water or exercise they need or want. The way they prove themselves right is by sabotaging their success, so they can demonstrate they really are bad and not good enough to warrant help or self care.

In a recent study done by Harvard University of 4500 junior high and high school girls, they found that the ones who were least liked gained more weight during adolescence than those who were popular. Despite efforts to improve the girls eating and exercise habits they still gained weight, in part because they were turning to food for comfort. This study further validates that how you feel about yourself drives your lifestyle choices and behaviors.

I spent most of my life battling shame, and I used food to comfort and punish myself. I know how awful it is to be unpopular and overweight as an adolescent. What these girls need is a way to observe their behaviors around food without feeling judged and to come to understand the difference between physical and emotional hunger. As they come to understand which times they are eating out of emotion, then they can start to address what those emotions are and what is driving them. By taking back control over food, they can also start to feel better about themselves and begin to address the cause of their shame.