We are officially in Christmas Season! I am grateful that I have all the tools to prevent overeating at Christmas and all the torment that comes from beating myself up for not having the willpower or control around food and alcohol. My Christmas gift is to share some of those tools with you. Your welcome!
Along with the Christmas season and the cold weather come Christmas pies, stodgy heart-warming meals, and a bit of extra merriment in the form of mulled wine or apple cider (unless you are in the southern hemisphere with your cold wine or beer!). It is a time of year where our Christmas family traditions and beliefs are out in force.
Some of these beliefs serve us, like giving, like spending time with family… and others… such as stuffing ourselves to resemble the turkey and drinking too much, do not.
Does this sound like something you do and then regret? Or perhaps berate yourself for overindulging and wish you had done things differently?
In that case… it tis the season to get conscious! I don’t mean conscious after too many mulled wines. I mean conscious of beliefs and patterns that are not serving you in what you want. Patterns that may lead you to feelings of regret or self-loathing on boxing day after having consumed your 10th helping of leftover Christmas pie or cake.
The main piece of advice I want to give you is to make the decision on your weight loss goal leading up to the Christmas celebrations. Making the decision will give you direction and avoid you beating yourself up, quickly choosing it is all too hard, eat some more and then decide you will start in the new year.
So, do you want to:
- Lose weight before the new year – in a way that is healthy and kind.
- Maintain your current weight.
- Put on a couple of pounds and enjoy all the Christmas trimmings by planning the foods you will enjoy, but don’t just say “stuff it”.
Once you have decided, ask yourself ‘Do I like my reasons for my decisions?’
Are you making the decision to take care of yourself, or to punish yourself after looking in the mirror? We want you to enjoy Christmas by taking loving action toward yourself.
So, whichever decision you make, make sure it comes from a place of love for yourself. Check out my blog last week on how to love yourself in weight loss (or even weight gain at Christmas time!).
If you are looking to avoid weight gain in the Christmas month…
- Decide ahead of time what your plan will be. Your brain likes direction and if you give it a plan (a written one is even better), then there is less chance of your primal brain kicking in and seek the pleasure, in the form of all the sugary or savoury treats, in the moment. That is an example of the ‘stuff it’ moment. But more about how to manage your primal brain in next week’s blog.
- Plan your meals. How many will you have (this includes snacks)? Are you hungry when you eat? Be curious to dropping one of the snacks. If your body has fat on it to release, allow your body time to use the fat stores you already have for fuel. Do this by reducing your eating window, or not eating in the evening after dinner.
- Plan joy foods, so that you don’t feel deprived. A joy food is something that equates to about 10% of what you will eat that day. It might be a Christmas pie or a piece of stollen. If you are losing weight, this may be once or twice a week, if you are maintaining weight it may be 3 or 4. Plan to enjoy it. If you plan it, you did it with your long-term wellbeing in mind, so no need to feel guilty.
- Watch out for self-sacrifice and people pleasing. Decide how you will manage other people offering you Christmas delights like chocolate or Christmas cake. Practice ‘No thank you’. You are important, and ‘giving’ at Christmas doesn’t mean ‘giving away’ your goals to please other people.
- Practice following your plan, and notice patterns when you are more inclined to overeat. Did you overeat because you were hungry, because you are told it is useful to eat a snack at 10am (you so do not need to), or because it made you feel better? Love yourself enough to plan how much of something you will eat and stop if you are satisfied. Also, love yourself enough not to beat yourself up if you make a mistake. Just make the decision to learn from it and move on.
- Plan how many drinks you will have in the week. Decide what you will drink. Pre-made drinks have lots of sugar, mixers often have a lot of sugar, champagne has less sugar than wine, wine has less sugar than beer. Lime and soda is a tasty non-alcoholic drink. Christmas drinks in Star Bucks and the big coffee houses look amazing, but one of them will equal up to about 1/3 of your daily suggested calorie intake. Not that I agree with counting calories, but good to know. Green tea, normal coffee and tea are better alternatives. Hold or reduce the sugar.
- Start to question the traditions of your family when you were young. Can you maintain the good memories without having to indulge in the same foods that cause weight gain? If the answer is ‘Yes’, ask yourself a great question about what you could eat instead. Could you reduce the portion size?
- Watch out for sneaky thoughts – ‘I need to buy Christmas pies, mulled wine, apple cider, pigs in blankets, fruit cake, candy canes or gingerbread men because I am not going to have them again for another year’. This comes from a place of scarcity. This was me with hot cross buns for the longest time. In truth, all these things are available on the world wide web all year round. The smarter you are the better the reasons as to why you need it. Watch yourself think and be entertained.
Ready to learn all the tools to stop struggles with food and weight? Ready to take a deep dive and learn causes and solutions to your personal patterns and beliefs that have prevented long term weight loss? Schedule a FREE no-obligation mini call by clicking HERE, send me an email with any questions to find out if weight coaching is a good fit for you or sign up HERE for my Power Hour. The Power Hour is a coaching session with me to generate the mindset needed for success with the actions to take to get there.
This is not another diet. This is life-changing coaching. Schedule a call today.
Have a beautiful week.
