3 Strategies to Manage Emotional Eating During the Holiday Season

 

If you are one of the many people who struggle with emotional and stress eating, then you may be dreading the holiday season. Whether because the holidays themselves are stressful or just the addition of holiday treats being everywhere all the time is stressful—or both, stress and emotional eating can become especially rampant this time of year.

It starts with the Halloween candy. You might think to yourself, “I’ll have just one piece---you know---as a treat.” The next thing you know you have an empty bag of Reese’s Cups and you are at the store purchasing two more bags of Reese’s—because now they’re on sale, 2-for-1! 

This triggers an attitude of, “forget it, I’ll just start over in the New Year”—an attitude of eat whatever, whenever. In the back of your mind, you know this is NOT what you want. You really want to END this cycle of gaining and losing the same amount of weight every year. You want to stop this negative, damaging cycle of emotional eating. But the leftover Halloween candy is just the beginning, enter Thanksgiving…

Now, there’s pumpkin pie, apple pie, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole and more to contend with! We essentially dive into a sea of sugary foods from Halloween all the way through December! By January you may have put on some weight and feel frustrated and down on yourself. You may feel overwhelmed by how to start all over—yet again…

You do not have to spend another holiday season fighting yourself! Here are three simple and highly useful strategies to help you manage your sugar intake, be more mindful with your choices, and make it through this holiday season feeling empowered, healthy and strong rather than disappointed, frustrated and hopeless.

1. Give Yourself a Sugar Quota

According to the American Heart Association, women should have no more than 24 grams of added sugar per day and men no more than 36 grams of added sugar per day. For example, a Pumpkin Latte from a certain coffee spot has 49 grams of sugar! When you begin to pay attention to how many grams of sugar are in certain foods, you can make more empowered decisions about what to eat and how to “spend” your sugar grams each day.

During the holiday season you might choose to increase your daily sugar quota by a bit more than 24 grams, or you might make certain days exceptions, but just not every single day—which is where the trouble lies during this season! When you predetermine how much sugar you will take in daily, you are more likely to pay attention to the amount of sugar in foods and more likely to make informed decisions. This allows to you to feel strong and in control rather than weak, shameful and deprived. 

2. Make Choices Based on How You Want to Feel

When you make decisions based on how you want to feel, you are more likely to make an empowered and positive choice in the moment. Start each day with asking yourself “How do I want to feel today?” If you want to feel strong, ask yourself with each decision you make around food and in general, “does this choice support how I want to feel?”  If not, you have an opportunity to make an empowered choice to say NO to that particular food while choosing to say YES to yourself, YES to how you want to feel. There is no better feeling than showing up for yourself and making empowered choices!  This stops the feeling of deprivation and builds inner strength.

3. Focus on Vegetables

At holiday meals, (and all throughout the year!) aim for at least 50% of your plate to be loaded with vegetables. When you do this, you are not only getting in the nutrition you need, the fiber in vegetables helps to fill you up and create a feeling of satiation. This leaves less space for the sugary foods—both on your plate and in your belly! Vegetables are where “it is at” nutritionally! When you are taking in more nutrients you feel better. This sets you up to manage your stress more effectively, which helps you curb the stress-eating! When you are well nourished you tend to have fewer cravings which allows you to resist the second helping of pie at the holiday table!

Use these three strategies during this holiday season and notice how they impact your choices, your ability to manage your craving and how you feel about yourself. When you try these strategies, let me know how they work for you! 



Why Eating Well Is a Form of Self-Respect

Food is tricky. There are so many enticing foods out there. Food is often used as a motivator, a treat, and a reward. So how do we tease out eating well, intuitive eating, and being our best and healthiest versions of ourselves? This is super complicated and that’s what I am going to talk about here, so read on!

When you respect yourself and your body, you consider what you eat a part of the process of respecting yourself. While I DO NOT recommend food restrictions (dieting mindset) or withholding foods that you enjoy. This only causes feeling of deprivation, however, there are some useful guidelines that can help you make the best choice possible in the moment for your mind, your body, and for your future self—when the decision relates to what you are about to eat.

Here are a series of questions that you can ask yourself about the foods you are choosing to eat:

• Before you eat, ask your food: “what do you have to offer me?” Ideally, we want our food to offer nutrients: fiber, vitamins, minerals, protein, health fat, and carbohydrates in order to give our bodies the nourishment it needs to build healthy cells and tissues. Nutrients are the ideal answer to this question!

• Next, ask your food, “are you desirable and enjoyable to eat?” This is super important as well because if your food does not offer some form of pleasure, that may be placing you at risk of feeling unsatisfied. When you are feeling unsatisfied by a meal, you may end up mindlessly grazing other foods in order to feel a sense of pleasure and satisfaction. This contributes to the negative cycle of emotional eating.

• Next, ask yourself, “am I actually hungry for this food?” If the answer is yes, you will most likely eat the food! If the answer is no, you can ask yourself “do I want to eat this food for any reason other than taste and nutrition?” If the answer is yes, ask yourself, “why do I want to eat this food?” This is where it may get interesting. If you want to eat this food for comfort, to avoid feelings, to fill the time or to fill any other void you may be experiencing in your life, this is indicative of emotional eating.

Emotional eating is eating for the purpose of numbing out or disconnecting from uncomfortable emotions. This creates a disconnect between our bodies and our emotions. Here are some common examples of emotional eating:

• Eating when lonely which causes food to become your friend,

• Eating when you are bored which causes food to become something to do to fill your time

• Eating when you are anxious which causes food to become a way to calm yourself down

• Eating when you are tired which causes a sugar rush for energy

• Eating when you are sad which uses food to help escape the discomfort of sadness and to temporarily feel happy

• You can read more about how to heal emotional eating on my post: 6 steps to finding freedom from emotional eating.

These examples of emotional eating are not healthy reasons to eat. When you eat emotionally, you are essentially demonstrating a sense of lack of self-respect or honoring your emotions and your internal experiences.

Offering yourself empowerment when it comes to your food choices allows you to move away from a deprivation mindset. A deprivation mindset is: “I can’t have that” while an empowered, Inner Strength based mindset is: “I choose not to have that because it does not serve my health and wellness goals.” This mindset demonstrates a form of self-respect.

This is how you build your Inner Strength over time and prepare yourself to manage your emotions in another, healthier more empowered manner. You can read about this on my blog post: 5 Stages of Awareness. Emotions offer incredibly valuable information about your experience of the present moment. When you learn to become present with them, food can be just food, and this is where your power lies!

One way to begin practicing healthy eating as a form of self-respect is to go through these questions each time you make a choice surrounding food. Allow yourself to make empowered choices, listen to your intuition and your body and you will feel uplifted by your food choices.

If you are in need of support for your emotional eating, know that you are not alone. I encourage you to reach out. I have a workbook and expressive journal titled Wholistic Food Therapy: A Mindful Approach to Making Peace with Food. It is place to explore your relationship with food, emotional eating patterns, while offering exercises and practices to help heal and create a healthy and peaceful relationship with food. I also created the online course, Freedom from Emotional Eating, which is also designed to help you get to the root of your emotional eating and offers a step-by-step approach to heal your relationship with food as well as yourself.

5 Wellness Practices to Help You Transition Into Fall with Ease

5 Wellness Practices to Help You Transition into Fall with Ease

If you have been following my blog, you may have checked out my post from last week. It was all about how eating with the seasons can help create ease in your body as it transitions to the changing patterns in nature. I heard from several people that they’d like to know other ways to support the changing of the seasons as they are finding the transition into fall rough on their skin and energy as well as disruptive to their daily routines.

There are several wellness practices that can assist your body in this transition and I wanted to share my favorite top 5 here!

1.    Daily Self-Massage with Oil

Self-massage improves circulation, moisturizes your skin, and is warming, grounding and calming in nature. Daily self-massage will help to offset the cooler, drier air and the impact it has on your skin and energy. Choose an oil that is warming in nature such as sesame oil, sweet almond or jojoba oil. Before you shower, massage a small amount of oil into your skin— beginning with your face, neck and shoulders— massaging your entire body all the way down to your toes.

2.    Take a Mindful Moment Everyday

With the increase activities and routines of the fall and the diminishing daylight, you may be feeling more scattered and as though your energy is more quickly depleted. Adding a mindful moment into your day will offer you a major return on your time investment! Choose a time that works for you and practice consistently. Set a timer for 1-5 minutes. During this mindful moment you might simply breathe deeply and attempt to remain connected with the rhythm of your breath. You might set your intention for the day and visualize yourself living this intention throughout the day. You might journal or pray. Whatever you do in this mindful moment, allow it to be centering, calming, grounding and peaceful.

3.    Add A Restorative Yoga Posture to Your Evening Routine

Try this restorative yoga postures before going to bed. It will help calm your mind, body and nervous system to help prepare you for deep sleep.

Reclined bound angle pose: Recline in bed or on the floor, step your feet in towards your hips, allow your knees to open out to the sides and bring the soles of your feet together. Place pillows under your knees for support. Allow your arms to rest comfortably alongside your torso or rest your hands on your abdomen. Breathe deeply and remain in this posture for 2-5 minutes.

4.    Eat Cooked Vegetables

This time of year, your body will most likely prefer warmer foods. All summer you may have been like me and enjoying salads, smoothies and raw fruits and veggies as snacks. As the temperatures begin to dip, my stomach responds to raw food in a completely different way! This is related to our digestive fires and the response our body has to the changing temperatures. In order to keep your digestive fires stoked and happy, add in cooked vegetables. Simply steaming, sautéing or lightly wilting your kale, spinach and arugula rather than having raw greens will make your digestive system oh so happy!

5.    Create a Consistent Daily Routine

The scattered feelings that come with transition and change can be eased by having a regular, consistent routine. Simple practices such as going to bed and waking at the same time each day, regular mealtimes and integrating the other wellness practices listed above into a plan and structure each day will provide the routine. Following your desired routine will offer you a sense of being grounded and calm and will help alleviate scattered energy. Once you create your specific daily routine, challenge yourself to follow it for one week and take notes on the impact. I hope it will help you feel balanced, peaceful and comfortable in mind, body and spirit.

When you begin integrating these five wellness practices into your daily routine, let me know how they impact your life including your energy, mood, body and mind as you continue to transition into the fall season!