Is this the time of year that you give up on your weight loss plans for the holidays? It can feel like your options are to throw your hands up and eat whatever temptations come and accept the inevitable crappy number on the scale in the New Year, or avoid all parties and fun and have a crappy, deprived holiday season just to stay on track.

But those aren’t your only options. It’s possible to enjoy the holidays AND lose weight.

It’s not impossible.

You just need a special kind of focus.

I can help you. Keep reading.

 

It’s week 2 in our series Getting In Charge Of Your Weight For The Holidays, and this one is a good one! Did you get through last week and make your plan? Did you get all your reasons straight for what you’re gonna do and why? It’s not too late and you’re not behind – read last week’s post and take a couple of minutes to get caught up!

 

The holidays are full of tradition, decorating with things we’ve collected for years, making foods we only eat once a year, and listening to special music. It’s a nostalgic time with lots of memories and hopes for creating new special memories. I put out my Black Santas on the mantle every year. My collection was started by my grandmother who has since passed, so I get to remember her every year when I open the boxes of Santas.

 

Many of us spend our holiday time seeing family, visiting friends, and going to parties. For many of us, this year will be different. My parents aren’t coming to visit like they usually do and there will be no parties or white elephant gift exchanges. For an introvert like me, I won’t miss the parties too much. They’re fun but exhausting for me, so I’m good with skipping a year. My extroverted husband probably doesn’t feel the same.

In our traveling and partying and special family meals, we find those special one-time-a-year foods. Grandma used to always make stewed tomatoes as one of the Christmas side dishes and I loved them. In your family, there might be a cake or pie or a special Christmas cookie recipe that only gets made for the holiday. So when those foods show up, you have to eat them, right?

 

Christmas exchange cookies – gotta have some, right?

 

No.

No, you don’t.

Let me tell you why.

 

When Aunt Jackie makes her special Christmas casserole and brings a whole pan of it because she knows how much you love it, you can feel compelled to eat it because you think it would hurt her feelings if you didn’t, even though you know it’s not on the plan you designed, You might be wishing she wouldn’t make the darn casserole so you didn’t have to struggle not to eat it!  Or maybe you think that since you can’t get it any other time of year that it’s ok to go off the plan and get back on track tomorrow. But those aren’t your only options.

First, if you want to eat a special dish, plan for it. You can specify in your plan a space for your holiday meal and how much of it you’ll have. You can plan to have a piece the size of a deck of playing cards and decide not to have seconds or finish the leftovers the day after Christmas. You can even decide that you won’t eat it this year because your weight loss would be derailed and you really don’t want that to happen, even more than you want the treat.

The reason why you feel compelled to eat the special food all at once is because of the scarcity mentality. You think that because these foods are around once a year you have to eat them.  But you could make these foods any time of year you wanted. You could freeze the Christmas stuffing and gravy and eat it in July if you want! I saw a box of Krispy Creme doughnuts in the office the other day that looked so special and tempting in the pretty red and green Christmas box. So I opened it thinking there must be some extra special kinds of holiday doughnuts inside. But when I opened the box it was just a dozen regular old glazed doughnuts. I could get those any time I want (and I generally don’t want to buy those!).

You think you have to eat the food because you don’t know Aunt Jackie’s special recipe. What if you asked her for it so you could be the person in the next generation to make her special recipe? Then you could make it whenever you want. She won’t give up the recipe? Then eat it or don’t, save some for later or don’t. Think about what you really want and then you get to decide.

 

 

The other thing we often think about other people and the holidays is very sneaky. We think something like, “It’s not fair she can eat all that stuff and stay skinny. I just want to be able to eat like everyone else.” Then you pile up your plate so you can’t see any of the decorations and stuff yourself like everyone else.

This thought deserves to be questioned. Is it really true that you want to eat like everyone else? Did you know that the US is fast approaching epidemic proportions of overweight and obesity? That means if you eat like the majority of Americans then you’ll also be in the group of overweight or obese. Don’t you have plenty of people in your family with hypertension and diabetes and heart disease? Most of us do. That’s not what you really want.

What you want is to eat anything you want and be thin – and you know that’s not how it works. We all have that one cousin (or someone) who seems to eat anything they want and not gain weight. While that usually catches up with people later in life and they don’t gain weight, for now, it just seems unfair. But really, what other people eat doesn’t make you gain weight. Only you can figure out how much fuel your body needs and not give it more for storage. Being mad at your body for doing its job is just maddening, and you’re doing that to yourself. You can decide to be happy with the plan you’ve designed and stick to it, knowing that you’ll feel incredible when the scale doesn’t jump up, or maybe even goes down. Nothing tastes as good as that!

 

Here’s your help in video form for this week!