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 focus.

I can help you. Keep reading.

 

I had a completely different plan for this blog post. I was going to be writing a series leading up to my online weight loss program, complete with lots of helpful tips and insights about how to successfully lose weight permanently. My program is really coming together and there’s so much good stuff in there that some of it has to spill over into my posts, right?

Well…

It does and it will. But when I woke up at 530 this morning and sat quietly in my meditation time, that wasn’t what the Spirit said I was to write about. So here I am, sitting in the dark of my early morning living room with the bright white of the laptop screen glowing, writing a note of love and encouragement to you.

 

 

 

So what are we going to talk about? We all just finished our first pandemic Thanksgiving ever, and no matter how you did it, with or without all the extended family and travel, you probably ate a special meal. And you might have eaten a lot of that particular meal, maybe with a couple of encore presentations (#leftovers). There might also have been extra desserts around, and maybe a gingerbread house or Christmas candy starting to show up around the kitchen.

It seems like the food of the season just happens, doesn’t it? As if it just creeps into our homes and lives without us even noticing it. And that, my friends, is the trap. We don’t even notice it. When we don’t notice, we are on auto-pilot, and when that happens, the unconscious eating follows, along with the holiday weight gain and New Year regrets and resolutions. It’s actually pretty predictable, but we play our part in it over and over.

 

Not this year. Not me.

 

Yes, this slide into holiday overeating happens to me too. Even though I’ve lost this weight and have kept it off all these years, it’s easy to slide back into the patterns of mindless overeating. Really, I did that for so many years that it’s almost rote. Muscle memory. Practice makes perfect, right?

Right.

 

 

Except this practice isn’t what I want to make perfect. When I watched the scale jump up over the days following Thanksgiving, I woke up and got aware. Yes, some of the gain is water weight and inflammation from eating more flour and sugar than normal for me (the Thanksgiving stuffing got me!). So I’m not freaking out, because I know what happened, I decided to eat the food, and I know what to do to get back to where I want to be. But I still remember in past years how I’d panic over the scale and try to double down on my weight loss plan, just to hold off the weight gain through the holidays. And before that, I wouldn’t even try to be aware – I’d just avoid the scale and pretend that I could eat like I always did during the holidays and I wouldn’t really gain that much.

 

Let’s pretend…

 

Well, panic and willful ignorance are off the to-do list for me. They don’t work, they’re painful (either in the moment or later, depending on which you choose), and I know a better way. So for the next few weeks, I’m going to share how I manage the ongoing holiday food festival without depending on willpower or sticking my head in the sand. We’re going to be mindful and intentional about our eating through this holiday season, and weight gain isn’t part of the plan.

Now, before you decide to check back here after the holidays because you think I’m going to tell you to avoid all the fun foods that make your holiday special, hold on. I’m not. You can eat and do whatever you want with your holiday! That’s the great thing about being a grown-up: We can do what we want! I can hear you arguing – we still have to obey the law, I have to take care of my family, I have to go to work. No, actually you don’t have to do any of those things. You choose to do those things because you want to stay out of jail, you want your family to be taken care of, and you enjoy getting paid for the work you do. Your holiday eating is the same – you choose how you want to handle it. You can eat every favorite holiday cookie you see, keep a stash of candy canes in the car, and drink egg nog every night. You can gain 15 pounds by New Year’s and no one can tell you otherwise.

What we’re not going to do is be unaware.

 

 

We are going to decide what we want and stick to honoring our own wishes. We often start out with an impossible wish list of how we want things to go (I will eat all the holiday foods and not gain an ounce), but we rarely actually decide what we want most and move toward it. So that’s what we’re going to learn! Want a preview? Here’s what we’re going to practice for the next few weeks:

 

Week 1: What Do You Really Want? (Let’s make a plan so we get where we want to go)

Week 2: What About Everyone Else (We’ll address how our thoughts about what other people eat and cook and do affect our weight loss plans)

Week 3: What Makes Holidays Special? (Why is the food the center of it all, and does it have to be that way?)

Week 4: How To Enjoy All The Holiday Foods and Not Gain Weight

 

Weight gain for the holidays is not inevitable, and it’s certainly not on my to-do list! Let’s get aware, make our plans, and enjoy our holiday plans without the New Year’s regrets. See you next week!

 

Want a jump start on getting your weight loss mindset right? Here’s this week’s video to get you started…