Do you always eat until you feel stuffed and uncomfortable during the holidays?
Food is nourishment and fuel for your body. Enjoying food is a bonus but it often creates many unwanted and unintended consequences.
People come to me to lose weight because they feel out of control around food. They hate themselves and feel like a prisoner in their overweight body.
People don’t realize that food becomes their drug. When they feel sad, lonely or depressed they turn to food, like a drug. When you eat emotionally, you’re using food for pleasure. The pleasure ends when the eating ends. You then feel stuffed, frustrated and uncomfortable. These feelings motivate you to eat more. The kinds of foods you eat at these times are filled with carbohydrates, sugar, fats and chemicals. They are edible, but not food. Your body turns them to fat and the cycle continues.
Eating is a habit, just like any other habit. A behavior that was learned, repeated and reinforced. Any habit can be changed or eliminated. The only requirement to eliminate a habit is a desire to change and a belief that you can.
Many people fail with diets because they feel deprived and depressed. They then over dose on food regaining more weight then was lost.
There is a common myth that food that is nourishing can’t taste good. Cooking fruits and vegetables with creativity can be very delicious and any food can be prepared to be delicious. The fear that nutritious food won’t be satisfying gets in the way of losing weight.
My successful weight loss clients have learned to feel more satisfied with less food. They learned the difference between satisfied and full and hate the way full feels. Satisfied is feeling content, and eating more will not make you feel more satisfied.
Feelings about food have come from years of programming. When you were little, you were taught that sugary or fatty foods were a ‘treat’ and if you were good, you got a treat. Fats and sugars have an addictive component to them so it is not anyone’s fault that you got sucked into this behavior. You can, however, choose to take control and change. Hypnosis and self -hypnosis can change this programming.
Here are a few tips for keeping control during holiday celebrations:
- Do not go to a party hungry. Always have a piece of fruit some protein before you leave the house. A hard boiled egg or some almonds.
- During the appetizer portion of the event, stick with vegetables
- If you want to ‘taste’ something that is not nourishing, you can always have the first bite and last bite. You won’t feel deprived and the first bite is always the most satisfying!
- Have 1 bite of everything and only have more of those things you really want.
- Pay attention to how you feel. Chew slowly and taste the food. You will enjoy it more.
- Do not talk while you are eating because you can’t taste it and you can’t tell when you have had enough
- Learn what satisfied feels like. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being you hadn’t eaten since yesterday and 10 being the way you felt after Thanksgiving last year. Only eat to a satisfaction of 7 or 8.
