[WORKSHEET DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE!] How NOT to Binge During the Holidays http://www.nourishyourlifestyle.com/cheatsheets
Ever wonder if you can actually have a holiday season where you don’t overdo it food-wise? This video (and included worksheet) will get you there.
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Xo
Cheri
How NOT to Binge During the Holidays. Now, you know I live with a bunch of girls when you know that my Santa hat has a tiara attached to it. Happy Holidays, friends! Holiday season is upon us and I wanted to just give you six quick tips on how you can have a totally different holiday this season.
If binging and overeating has been in your past, I’m going to teach you how to make a change this year and do it differently. So, it’s never too late to change. It doesn’t matter how many decades you’ve been doing this holiday thing, and maybe feeling like you’re screwing up, and you always gain weight, and you always go off track during the holidays – some people end up then going off track again for several months after – and we can change that, we can change that trajectory this year. So I’m going to give you six quick tips on how you might do that, all right?
Now these are things that we talk about in the Eat to Live Family, the Eat to Live Accelerator, on my coaching program; so if you’re interested in that, feel free to reach out to us – we can get you on a strategy call, we can talk about how you can join one of our awesome programs, but let’s get into it. Okay, so number one, tip number one: envision what I call BDA, all right, BDA. What does BDA stand for? It’s before, during, after.
So, envision yourself before the holidays. So right now, perfect time, you know it’s the middle of November when this video is coming out, and Thanksgiving is upon us for some of us, you know, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s on the way, we’ve got lots of other holidays going on – so I want you to envision what it’s going to be like before the holidays. So let’s just take Thanksgiving as an example, right? Now, this video I think is coming out like about a week or so before Thanksgiving, so let’s say, let’s envision this next week.
We’ve done a lot of holidays before, right – we’ve done decades of holidays before – so, what have they been like? What have we gone overboard with before, right? And I want us to envision how it could be, like what would it look like if we weren’t going overboard, right? So take some time to envision that.
I want to mention also that all of the things that I’m putting in this video I’m going to put into a worksheet for you so you can just go through, fill this out, and get an idea for what you’re going to be doing this holiday. Now I am going to guarantee you that if you do this worksheet, you’re going to have at least a 10% or more better holiday season just from filling this one worksheet out. It’ll take you 15-20 minutes, if you can increase your progress and your success this holiday season just from one worksheet, wouldn’t you do it?
Okay, so you can download that worksheet at nourishyourlifestyle.com/cheatsheets. Just sign up for that, we’ll send you the password for it, and then you can go get that worksheet, fill it out for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s – whatever you got going on – fill it out, make a plan, and I guarantee you’re going to have a better holiday season than you would have before, okay? So, that’s that; and all of this is going to be in that worksheet, so make sure you get that, all right?
So, BDA: before, so envision – what has it been like before? Do you start to – I mean do you have Halloween candy around? Do you start to nibble on that too much?
Maybe you could consider just throwing out any sort of junk food that you have in your area right now up until Thanksgiving – just maybe we just throw it out. Better to waste it in the trash can, than to waste it by holding onto it on our body all day long and all night long for days and days and days in the form of fat, right, because that’s what’s gonna happen to it. If it’s any extra food that we eat, any calories over what our bodies actually need, we’re just going to hold on to it with fat, and we don’t need that, right? So why hold on to it on our bodies when we can just throw it in the trash, okay?
This is the – maybe one of the most important ones. I’m getting hot – a hot flash – and so I’m gonna take this hat off for a second, I might have to take my sweatshirt off, too, holy cow! Okay, so, during the holidays same exact thing: envision what it has been like for you before, and envision what it could be like this time, okay. So, “I always overeat on this,” or “I always feel this very frenzied crazy feeling,” “I always have these big cravings for this” right, during.
Say like – because for me I remember at holiday gatherings the first thing that would set me off would be the appetizers upon arrival, right? So I might start to just have some thoughts about what that’s going to be like and what I might do appetizer-wise, right, like what am I going to allow myself to have perhaps? What do I just want to – maybe it’s just the vegetables with some ranch dressing, or maybe it’s you know, just a few of the little things, but we only do one plateful – whatever that is. Just envision that, envision what that would be like if you were successful.
And do the same thing, I think, with all of the meals, right? So I gave a tip recently: perhaps you have an idea where you’re like, “I’m just going to do one plateful of each thing,” so one plateful of appetizers – doesn’t matter what it is, but one decent plateful – one plateful of Thanksgiving actual meal, and then one plate full of desserts. So I can have all the desserts if I want as long as they’re tiny pieces and I can partake, right, but that way, I’m not going to come out of Thanksgiving – you’re not gonna have to roll me out of there, and it’s not gonna be super uncomfortable, right, because I’m gonna have sensible portions. And maybe my dinner plate is going to be full of half veg, you know half vegetables or something, and the rest can be all the other fixings, and dressings, and things like that – so just having a plan ahead of time.
What is it going to feel like when you want to have more, right? Like let’s say you have that first course of dessert like everyone has, and then a few hours later everyone’s still hanging out, and they have some more dessert, right? Like, what are you gonna do at that moment? Just envision that; envision what that might be like for you, okay, and I guarantee you that if you do this just even this envisioning it’s going to make your Thanksgiving so much dinner – “so much dinner” – so much…that’s a Freudian slip for ya.
After Thanksgiving, same thing. Now, here’s what – I hear this from so many clients all the time: “I did great on the holiday, and then the next day, when I was left to my own devices and I was all alone, that’s when I started binging,” right? So this is actually a really important part and don’t gloss over this part: what’s gonna happen afterwards when you have…a cat, rubbing up against you all the time…when you have plates and piles of leftovers in your fridge, what’s that gonna be like for you? Are you going to want to be binging on that again?
What if someone pushes off all the desserts to you, and you have them at your house and you’ve got to like resist them or whatever, right? What if this year, for the first time ever, you just take them graciously, “thank you so much,” throw them in the trash can immediately, right? Better to have them in the trash can than to create a bunch of fat perhaps or just drama in your head about that, right – who needs that food? You don’t need it.
Just go back to your regular plan perhaps, right? Of course, so there’s some thoughts there, but envisioning what that’s going to be like, just taking the time to do that is really going to help. Step number two: I want you to just think about what you believe the purpose of this holiday is, all right. This is a really good exercise; just a quick thought about like, “why do we have these holidays,” right?
So Christmas, for many, is about – it’s a religious thing, right, and so that’s the actual purpose of this holiday for you. For many, it’s about getting together, it’s about family time, it’s about friends, it’s about togetherness and gathering, right? For many of us who have lost individuals over holidays, and maybe we’re having our first set of holidays without those people – we’re missing them, whatever – maybe this holiday is going to feel quite painful; but if, especially if it’s about together time and that person is no longer with us, right, it might feel very painful. Maybe for some of us, holidays are just painful in general because maybe we don’t have you know a regular place to go, or we don’t have family around, or anything like that so it’s just very painful; so we, you know.
So what I want you to do is just take a moment to sort of think about what the purpose of this holiday is, and what are our patterns with this holiday, right? So let’s take the example of if we’ve just lost somebody recently this last year, and it’s going to be our first holiday without them, what is the purpose of this holiday – it might be togetherness. I had a client recently who had a very similar situation who said that this is the first holiday that she wants to just go off and do her own thing because she lost a loved one, that loved one is no longer there, she wants to now take care of herself and do her own thing, and so that’s what the purpose of this holiday is for her, right? Maybe the holiday purpose is to be together with family.
Is it to eat all the foods that you haven’t had all year? Perhaps, right, like – and there’s nothing wrong with that, let’s just say that’s what this is. Like, I’m excited say – you could say I’m excited for Thanksgiving because I’m gonna get to have turkey and I never have turkey, or I’m gonna get to have stuffing, and sodium, and pie, and you know all these things like, perhaps this is an opportunity for you to eat stuff that you don’t normally eat, maybe. And maybe that’s what you really are excited for.
Okay, great! Let’s just admit that out loud, let’s just say that’s what it is, we’ll write it down, we’ll create our intention for what this particular holiday is for us, and then we’ll make a plan to support that instead of it being out of scarcity, “oh, this never happens, I gotta eat as much as I can now,” right, instead of “oh, this never happens, let me have – let me have this and enjoy it,” right, and “I don’t have to overeat, but let me just enjoy it,” right. Or maybe, maybe we don’t have a lot of friends and family, we haven’t been invited anywhere, we’re not hosting or anything like that, we don’t really have anywhere to go; what is this holiday, what do we want this holiday to mean for us? Do we want it to be a time where we take care of ourselves, or do we want it to be a time where we don’t take care of ourselves?
So, not taking care of ourselves might look like not managing our emotions, right; not managing the loneliness, or the aloneness that we feel, and instead trying to cover it up by eating and binging, right? So can we accept our circumstances for what they are and take care of ourselves? So what does taking care of ourselves look like? Maybe having – maybe going out to a restaurant, enjoying a Thanksgiving meal there, and having that be it, right, and going back to our regular plan the next day, perhaps, okay; so those are some things to think about as far as the purpose of the holiday.
The next tip is to plan ahead and write it down. Now, it’s kind of like the envisioning one. What I want you to do – now this one is just a little bit more nitty-gritty – I’m going to actually take a piece of paper and on your worksheet actually, you can do this here, take a piece of paper, write down what your plan is for Thanksgiving Day, or for the days leading up to it, for the BDA: before, during, after; just write down what your plan is going to be. Do a specific one for Thanksgiving Day itself: how much are you going to eat, what are you going to eat, what are you looking forward to, how much of that thing are you going to eat, right?
Now, even if you don’t stick to that plan perfectly, just by virtue of writing it down, you’re gonna do I’d say 25% better at the actual eating part than you would had you not written something down, okay, so that’s a really, really important one. And then you can just keep reviewing it in your head before, during, and after the event. After being the debrief: how did it go, why did I – why do I think I did that, how did it – you know, what was the success, what didn’t work so well; that kind of thing, right?
Okay, number four is what we call Joy Eats in my coaching. So Joy Eats is…we kind of already touched on this a little bit before, but it’s this idea of – listen, we have something out of the ordinary coming up here, there are a lot of things that I like to eat, they bring me joy, I enjoy dopamine, I enjoy that pleasure, I’m going to partake, but I’m going to treat them as if they were an out of the ordinary thing. You can think of it like, “it’s out of the ordinary, so I must binge because I’m not gonna have it again after this,” or you can choose to think of it like, “it’s out of the ordinary, how cool is this, I get to have some, I’m gonna have a piece,” right, “this is great, I’m glad I get to enjoy it.”
What you would do is say, “what quantity of this food would I eat and feel good,” right? So that’s the question you ask yourself ahead of time – maybe it’s one piece of pie, maybe it’s three pieces of pie spread out over a day or two, right? How much of this, and when is the line where it starts to feel not good anymore, where it starts to feel bingey? That’s the part you plan for, so you plan those Joy Eats, and stop when you’ve had enough, right?
The fifth one here is the idea of cravings versus hunger. So I want you to…and maybe if you haven’t done this work before, this is going to take a little practice – this might take months to sort of start getting, right – but it’s the idea of looking at the difference between cravings and actual hunger, like how much fuel your body actually needs on that day. I’ll tell you, the amount of fuel your body needs on Thanksgiving is about the same as all the other days, right, so when we’re having plates and plates and plates full of food – not helpful. so, trying to distinguish the difference between “is this a craving because I don’t usually have this food or whatever,” or “is this true hunger?”
And then this brings me to my last tip which is: if all else fails – all else fails – just use your hunger scale; your hunger signals, and your satiety signals that your brain will naturally give you. If you’re not in very good practice with these tools, I totally understand this is something you’re going to want to work through – this is what we teach in my programs, right, we teach this in the Eat to Live Family and Eat to Live Accelerator: how to understand your hunger, and whatever – but the point here is: if all else fails, just use your hunger and your satiety, so when you feel full: stop, right? So tell yourself before, during, and after, “listen, I’m not really going to do my – I’m just gonna I’m just gonna eat whatever, but I’m gonna stick to my hunger signal, so when I feel full, I’m gonna stop; if I don’t feel hungry again, I’m not gonna eat again,” right, “I’m only gonna eat when I’m hungry, and I’m gonna stop when I’m full; I can eat whatever I want as long as I stay within those parameters.” That’s another way that you can kind of manage things, okay?
All right, so I hope that these tips were helpful; let me know what you think down in the comment section. If you learned something, or if you use another tip for the holidays to kind of get you through and make it so that you don’t overeat so much, let me know down below; let’s talk about this. Remember to download the worksheet so you can fill this out for each of the upcoming holidays. Just go to nourishyourlifestyle.com/cheatsheets, you can download that worksheet, fill it out for Thanksgiving, Christmas; whatever holiday you want to fill it out for – you can use this for any event in the future as well – birthdays coming up, or whatever, right?
So I hope you love this one. I especially hope that you have the most wonderful holiday season, ever. I hope you have a beautiful Thanksgiving, if you celebrate that, or any other holidays coming up – we are here for you. If you’re interested in anything that we’re doing, just keep an eye out!
If you sign up for those cheatsheets, you’ll automatically get on our email list, too, and we send out some pretty killer emails every week to help you with this mindset stuff, so don’t miss out on those, all right? So, uh that’s it! I wish you a great holiday season, and I’ll see you all in the next video! Bye!
Oh, maybe I should put this back on. Oh wait, I know! No? Poor Moo, you’re like a princess…not so much? Merry Christmas, Moo!
The above is a transcript from this week’s YouTube video. Click here if you’d like to see the video.
