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Do Holidays And Overeating Go Hand In Hand?

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holiday-spoons-clotheslineWhat’s your favorite holiday food?  How much of it do you eat?

A lot of us actually plan to overeat during the holidays – although we may not admit it:  think about it — do you know that you’re going to overeat?  Do you think it wouldn’t be normal or celebratory if you didn’t overindulge and eat three desserts at Christmas or double helpings of stuffing and sweet potato casserole on Thanksgiving?

It’s all too easy to do that.  Food is absolutely everywhere.  It’s there for the taking — and most of the time, holiday food is free (and in your face) at parties, on receptionist’s desks, as sample tastes while you shop.  How can you pass it up?

On top of it all, it’s sugary, fatty, and pretty.  How can you not try it?  Of course, sugary and fatty (salty, too) means you just crave more and more.   Do you really need it?  Do you even really want it?  If you eat it, will you feel awful later on?

Are you eating because of tradition – because you’ve been eating the same food during the holiday season since you were a kid?  Maybe you don’t even like the food anymore or it disagrees with you.  So why are you eating it?  Who’s forcing you to?

Do you think you won’t have a good time or you’ll be labeled Scrooge, Grinch, a party pooper, or offend your mother-in-law if you don’t eat everything in sight?  Really?

You can still love the holidays and you can still love the food. In the grand scheme of things overeating on one day isn’t such a big deal.  Overeating for multiple days that turn into weeks and then months can be become a bit and weighty deal.

The question is:  do you really want to overeat?  If you do, fine.  Enjoy every morsel and then take a nap.  Tomorrow is another day.  Just know that you don’t have to.  You make the decisions about what goes into your mouth.  Make thoughtful choices and enjoy them along with everything else the holiday represents.

What To Do

  • Have a plan. Think about how you want to handle yourself in the face of food, family, eggnog, and pecan pie.  Nothing is engraved in stone but if you have an idea about what you want to do and how to do it you’ll be far less likely to nibble and nosh all day and night. You’re the one in charge of what goes into your mouth.
  • Visualize the situation that you might find yourself in. What do you want the outcome to be? Rehearse, in your mind, how you’ll respond or behave to successfully navigate the eating challenges. Sports coaches use this technique to prepare their athletes to anticipate what might happen and to practice how to respond. Sports performance improves with visualization exercises—so can eating behavior.
  • Make sure your plan is workable and realistic for what you’re aiming to achieve over the season.  The plan doesn’t have to be complex – just decide what you want to do and what steps you need to get there.
  • Write it down –even if it’s on a napkin.  It will both reinforce your intentions and act as a measure of accountability.
  • Consider what your surroundings will be.  Will your plan work for you – it may sound great, but is it doable for the situations you might find yourself in?  Will your host insist you try her special dessert and refuse to take no for an answer? Will you be eating in a restaurant known for its homemade breads or phenomenal wine list? Are your dining companions picky eaters, foodies, or fast food junkies? What will you do in these situations?
  • Armed with your rehearsed plan, go out, use it, and stick to it as best you can. You assume control, not the circumstances and not the food.  You are in charge of what food and how much of it will go into your mouth.

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Resolutions And Goals: Perfection Just Might Be The Enemy Of Good

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It’s a week into the New Year.  Your pants are uncomfortably tight and the number on the scale is in the wrong zip code. Trying to right the ship did you resolve – swear — to never again eat another chocolate chip cookie?  Or maybe you’ve taken an oath to lay off potato chips forever or to go to the gym six days a week at 6AM.

Resolutions Can Be Tricky

Count yourself among the legions of people who have a specific end game in mind and then set broad – huge – resolutions and goals to try to get there. Unfortunately, those resolutions and goals usually aim for perfect achievement – something that’s virtually impossible to accomplish.

Aiming For Perfection

Be honest.  You know that aiming for perfectionmeans lining yourself up for a big time fall. Inevitably, you end up feeling awful when you step over the theoretical line – or maybe it’s more like you fall off the cliff.  Why must pursuit of a goal be done that way?  Perfection, in this case, is really the enemy of good.  In the real world, isn’t movement toward achieving your goal good enough?

Two Tips

1.  Ditch the all-or-nothing thinking and overly ambitious goals. Drastic changes usually don’t sync with daily life and probably won’t last more than a few weeks.  Cycle through the drastic changes often enough and you solidly embed a “no can do” attitude in your brain. Remember, your less than ideal behaviors have taken time to develop and replacing them with more ideal, healthier ones takes time, too. Don’t reassess/alter everything at once. Instead, work toward changing one thing at a time. Human brains don’t like too much disruption all at once – they like their familiar way of doing things.  Pick one thing at a time and create a new habit around it. Then go on to the next thing on your list.

2.  Not having succeeded before doesn’t mean you won’t succeed this time. Everyone has made and broken resolutions. We’ve all tried to lose weight or eat more fruit and veggies.  Adopt a positive attitude and frame your resolution in positive terms. “I will eat vegetables instead of French fries twice a week” or I’ll have cereal only on Saturday mornings” is much more positive than “I’ll never eat French fries or cereal again.” It’s easier to put a new habit in place than to change an old one, so embed the positive behavior not the negative one.

30 Days Of Usable Tips And Strategies

For the next 30 days check in daily at EatOutEatWell.com for a practical, usable tip of the day to help you on your way to achieving – and keeping – your resolutions and goals.

 

Can You Deal With One Fantastic Holiday Treat A Day?

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Peppermint candy and holiday chocolates at the receptionist’s desk.  Candy canes at the dry cleaners.  A rotating selection of Christmas cookies on just about everyone’s desk.  Happy holiday food gifts from grateful clients. Your neighbor’s specialty pie. And that doesn’t include the fantastic spreads at holiday parties and family events!

It’s All So Tempting

It‘s incredibly difficult not to nibble your way through the day when you have all of these treats tempting you at every turn. How many times do your senses need to be assaulted by the sight of sparkly cookies and the holiday scent of eggnog or spiced roasted nuts before your hand reaches out and the treat is popped into your mouth?

Be Realistic

It’s the holidays and even though some of these treats are a week’s worth of calories, by depriving yourself of them you’re denying yourself the tradition of celebrating with food.

Make the distinction between mindful indulgence in the spirit of celebration as opposed to mindless indulgence in the spirit of trying to taste everything or to soothe your psyche by eating.  The first is part of the nurturing, sharing, and communal spirit of eating, the latter is an element of emotional and over eating.

Nix The Restrictive Thinking

Creating a restrictive mentality by denying yourself a treat that’s always been part of your holiday celebration means it’s just a matter of time until you start an eating fest that only ends when there’s no more left to taste. Think of this:  what would it be like to swear that you won’t eat a single Christmas cookie when those cookies have been a part of your Christmas since you were a little kid and you baked them with your Mom?

Pick One – And Make It Special

You know that you are going to indulge.  Pick your treat, limit it to one, and enjoy it. To help control the temptation, decide early in the day what your treat will be and stick with your decision. If you wait until later in the day when all the food is right in front of you and you’re hungry and tired, you’ll find that your resolve is not quite as strong!

Just remember that the added treats are added calories – on top of what your body already needs.  And, those treats are often forgotten calories – until you try to snap your jeans.  So remember to figure the treats into the overall scheme of things.

Of course, if you don’t want to indulge on any given day – no one is forcing you.  In the world of caloric checks and balances, that’s money in the band.

Make an informed choice, too.  Being informed doesn’t deprive you of deliciousness, but does arm you with an element of control.  If you know the calorie count of certain foods, you can make the best choice.  For instance, perhaps you enjoy both wine and eggnog.  If you know that one cup of eggnog has around 343 calories and 19 grams of fat and a five ounce glass of red wine has around 125 calories and no fat – which would you choose?

For more hints and tips about holiday eating get my book,  The Sensible Holiday Eating Guide: How To Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Weight, available from Amazon for your kindle or kindle reader.

 

Do You Eat Something You Don’t Want Just To Be Polite?

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Do you think you need to eat to be polite – even if you don’t want the food or you’re totally stuffed – because you don’t want to be rude or hurt someone’s feelings?

You really don’t have to feel obliged to eat out of courtesy – especially if you don’t want the food or you’re full.  Ditch the guilt – the calories are going into your mouth, not your host’s, your Mom’s, or your friend’s.

Who Are Food Pushers?

Food pushers pile your plate high with food and act insulted if you ask them to stop. Food pushers, despite your protests, insist that you try every kind of food.  Food pushers look at your plate and loudly ask why you’re not eating, if you don’t like something, or if you’re on a diet.  Food pushers are thorns in your side and don’t necessarily have your best interest at heart. Food pushers can be your partner, friend, parent, or sister. They may or may not realize what they’re doing.  What’s important is that you do.

What’s Your Game Plan?

You need to have a game plan for how you’re going to deal with food pushers.  A plan sounds clinical but it doesn’t have to be. It could be your saving grace.  Think about how you want to handle yourself in the face of food, family, someone’s special stuffing, your family’s traditional sweet potato casserole (which you may hate but always feel obliged to eat), and the array of desserts staring at you from seemingly every table and counter.

One size – or one plan – does not fit all.  You need to choose the plan of action and strategy that works best for you and your circumstances.

What are you going to do or say to the food pushers?  Are you going to stand firm and say you don’t want to eat the stuffing because you’re watching your carbs – and then steel yourself for the snarky look?  Are you going to say that you really need to watch your weight – or that you can’t eat that much – or that you get sleepy when you overeat and, unfortunately, you really have some work that you have to finish and you need to be alert?

Are you going to say that you really don’t care for pie – pumpkin or otherwise – and that your favorite dessert is fruit? If someone really hounds you about trying certain foods you can always claim an allergy or that you’re eating heart healthy (claiming an upset stomach might buy you an early exit or other guests avoiding you like the plague).

You’re In Charge

It’s so easy to default to shoving food in your mouth when faced with food pushers and potentially annoying family members, some of whom seem spend the entire time carping at one another.

Nothing is engraved in stone but if you have an idea about what you want to accomplish and how to go about it you’ll be far less likely to nibble and nosh all day and night. You’re the one in charge of what and how much food goes into your mouth. Take charge and remain in charge of you.

Take A Cue From Athletes: Rehearse Your Party Eating Behavior

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What happens when you’re invited to a “command performance”  party or event with a long cocktail hour followed by a fancy multi-course sit down meal?  Or maybe you’re going to a gourmet holiday lunch at a friend’s house where there will be lots of hot mulled wine, her special entree, and fantastic cookies accompanying mousse for dessert. You’ve been extremely conscious about eating well but you want to be both polite and eat some of the special foods and still be careful about overindulging on high calorie foods.  How can you enjoy your food, be polite, eat what really appeals to you, and leave with your waistline intact?

What Do You Want the Result To Be?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer since we all have our own needs and preferences. You may swoon over ten- layer chocolate cake while I can ignore it but can never pass up cheese fondue.

Part of the answer lies in figuring out what you really want the end result to be.   Then you can create your own individualized plan  — your own foodMAP — that you can use as a template for what to do when you find yourself in the land of food temptation.

Visualize

Visualizing a situation that you might find yourself in and then rehearsing your actions in your mind ahead of time will help you successfully navigate a whole host of food landmines and eating challenges. That’s a technique coaches use to prepare their athletes. They’re taught to anticipate what might happen and to practice how to respond to a situation. Sports performance improves with visualization exercises—so can eating behavior.

To do this effectively you have to be clear on what you want the end result to be. Is it to enjoy every kind of food available but in limited quantities – or is it to skip dessert but have a full range of tastes of all of the hors d’oeuvres?  Visualize what the environment will be like, where you’re going to be, and with whom. Think about what food is going to be available, how it will be served, how hungry you’re likely to be, what your usual eating pattern is like—and what you would like it to be.

Will your host insist you try her special dessert and refuse to take no for an answer? Will you be eating in a restaurant known for its homemade breads or phenomenal wine list? Are your dining companions picky eaters, foodies, or fast food junkies?  Will your host be really annoyed if you don’t finish every course at the special sit-down dinner?

Proactive Not Reactive

Be proactive.  Figure out your plan in advance — earlier in the day or the night before. Visualize the situation and if there’s temptation or anxiety, close your eyes and picture it. Imagine what people will say and how you will respond in a way that will make you proud of yourself without giving in to external pressures and food pushers.

Armed with your rehearsed plan, go out, use it, and stick to it as best you can. You assume control, not the circumstances and not the food.  You are firmly in charge of what happens and what food and how much of it will go into your mouth.