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7 Tips to Avoid Overeating During the Holidays

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Do you approach the holidays with joy or stress? The holidays are a wonderful time for some and a nightmare for others.  You may feel a combination of both happiness and despair. If you feel conflicted about the holidays, you’re not alone.

The meaning you put to it will make the difference if it feels stressful or joyful, you get to choose! This may appear easier said than done. You may have learned to make the best of every situation, but there are some of us that no matter how old you are, when you get back together with your family you regress to a younger version of yourself. Did you ever wonder how that happens? You forget everything you have learned that got you as far as you have and you become a child again! Emotions are running high, and there seems to be more pressure to be perfect and expectations don’t meet reality. We become stressed and when we are we tend to “DO” stupid things to ourselves.

Control Your Emotions During the Holidays

It is so easy to lose perspective of how wonderful we are during the holidays. While connecting with family and old friends can bring joy, for many of us, it also reminds us of any perceived failings over the past years. If we do not make a plan to deal with any stress or strong emotions that may crop up this holiday season, it can be difficult to control our feelings.

First thing to remember is that everything you do is your choice. Where you are today is all based on the choices you have made in the past. You either choose to love you or you don’t. Know that someone that truly loves themselves would not use poor food choices to hurt, make them feel ill or get them angry later. Once you decide to love yourself first it is easier to control your emotions during the holiday.

Here are seven important things you can do during the holiday season to help keep your emotions in check and avoid overeating:

  1. Identify what is eating “at” you instead of what you are eating. If something in your personal narrative is weighing you down, acknowledge it so you can change it. The holidays are a time of reflection for many of us and you may tend to overthink problems in your life and the food becomes an easy escape from feeling the emotions. Remember you are the director of the movie of your life. You have the power to cut out any tragedies or horrors that are hurting you. Acknowledge the emotional baggage you are carrying around and put it down with the food for good. Stop allowing others to bring it back this holiday season.
  1. Identify potential emotional triggers and challenges now. If you know that a certain person or event causes you particular stress, recognize that fact now and make a plan for dealing with it. Maybe you can avoid it completely. If you cannot for some reason, you will at least be able to plan ahead for a way to mitigate its effect on your emotions. Change the dialogue, find a place of refuge. Spend time with those that make you feel good.
  1. Be aware of holiday treats you love and make a plan to enjoy them. Food is not the enemy. If you love a certain pie that your mom makes every Thanksgiving or Christmas, instead of feeling guilty about having some, plan for it. Plan to have the treats you really love, and take the time to be present and enjoy every bite. Feel what it feels like in your mouth, savor every morsel. You will find that by eliminating the guilt associated, you will be much more satisfied with an even smaller portion. It is when you come from deprivation that you will over eat. It might actually be the first time you ever really tasted it too.
  1. Notice holiday junk foods that give you no joy and swear them off. Perhaps potato chips are at the holiday function, but they aren’t your first choice, instead of eating unconsciously and inhaling a few handfuls of empty calories choose to say “no” before you go. Those calories add up very fast! Don’t waste calories on a junk food that you aren’t enjoying fully. Instead hold a glass of water and take a drink if you feel the need to put something in your body or have something in your hand. Saying “No” to poor choices are saying “Yes” to you!
  1. Eat what your body wants until you are content. Our bodies are better at figuring out what we need and want than we think. By allowing ourselves to have what we really crave, we are much more likely to feel satisfied and content. Know the difference of what your body wants and what your mind is craving. If you are thinking of the cake and ice cream before you get there it is your mind that wants it not your body. If you do end up having a huge craving for a piece of chocolate, it is much healthier to let yourself have a bite or two than to have a whole package of diet cookies to try and distract yourself. Remember that you are in control. You do not have to finish something just because it is there. When your body has gotten what it needs, feel comfortable stopping.
  1. Take it one meal at a time. Eat each meal independently of the others. During the holidays it is easy to anticipate the big meal and decide to skip a meal or save up those calories but if you do, you may be setting yourself up to overeat or binge. If you get to the point of being so hungry you are more likely to lose control and make poor choices.
  2. Learn to F.L.Y. (First Love Yourself). Choose you first over the food, the fuss, the confusion, the anxiety, the stress. Food is a temporary solution to a problem that will only make it worse. If you have already eaten and you are looking for more food, drink water and wait twenty minutes. Learn to know the difference from hunger and wanting to fill a void. Remove yourself from the kitchen. Only eat when you are sitting down, never standing.

This holiday season, be conscious of your body and your emotions. When we are in tune with both, it is much easier to avoid emotional overeating and overeating during the holidays. If you find yourself sliding back into old self-sabotaging habits this holiday season, use these tips and my proven Neuro Associative Programming techniques to get yourself back on track.

You are powerful and fabulous! This holiday season, commit to loving yourself above all else. When we love and take care of ourselves, controlling our emotions and our food becomes easy during the holidays and every day.

How to Deal With Your Feelings

How to Deal With Your Feelings

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Just for the moment sit with it. Sit with whatever feelings are coming your way. Do nothing! Nothing more than feel them. It is that which we think will kill us that only makes us stronger.

How often I can remember doing anything not to feel something. I would do anything not to deal with my feelings. I would find myself in the kitchen opening up all the cabinets, followed by the refrigerator. I would start pulling out food even when I wasn’t hungry just to stuff the feelings that were coming up. Never knowing what it all meant, or why I was doing it. I spent years doing destructive things to myself. Back then they didn’t have names for them all, today is so common. Everything was a secret. Today I believe secrets kill. They kill the person holding them. Before long thirteen years had passed and hundreds of thousands of calories were consumed through binge eating, compulsive overeating and eventually eliminated through purging. A vicious cycle that I thought was perpetuated by a lack of will power only to learn it was a fear of feeling. Will power had nothing to do with it. I experienced plenty of that in other areas of my life, just not around food. I found food was my substance of choice. What about you? What do you use to stuff your feelings?

When food was no longer the focus I conveniently found other culprits to fill the void. Stinkin thinking was one that played a big part in the whole game. I later turned to other activities to distract me from feeling. I see people today using social media, facebook, twitter, foursquare, Instagram etc and have more of a relationship with their smart phones than they do themselves and others. What are we all running away from?

Want to know the secret to stopping the insanity that keeps you from feeling? The answer is quite easy. Are you ready for it? Listen because I do not want you to miss it.

Allow yourself to FEEL!

Yes, that’s it. Feel! Do nothing but sit with it. Observe how it makes you feel and understand it will pass. It is our impulse that makes us run and flee as we did back in the caveman days when we were being chased by tigers. You are safe. Breathe! Sit with your feelings and give yourself permission to experience whatever it is you sense at that moment. Become aware of you for the first time and watch all the anxiety, fear and frustration fall away with the pain that you are holding on to.

Know that when we live in past we have pain, live in the present we have gifts. When we live in our heads we are dead. Choose to live now! Be still and BE Free!

Love,
Lisa

Why-92%

Why 92% of New Year’s Resolutions Fail

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Happy New Year 2015! Last night many people declared a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight, exercise, quit smoking, build their business or something they have been putting off. Statistics show despite all the good intentions, only a tiny fraction of us keep our resolutions; University of Scranton research suggests that just 8% of people achieve their New Year’s goals leaving 92% to fail.

I haven’t made a New Year’s Resolution for at least 10 years and I will tell you why. I didn’t want to be a statistic. Most people make lofty resolutions that are too big to tackle or very abstract and they set out with good intentions only to throw in the towel for some within a week, a few make it a month or two.  Instead I make a daily intention to be all I can be. To love and respect my body and take care of myself. To do whatever it takes to be successful and happy. Every day is a choice and I choose me.

Choose YOU this year! Choose to love yourself more than the food. Take care for your body more than the coach you watch TV on. To use your muscles so they won’t have atrophy and be healthy for years to come. To say nice things to yourself daily when you look in the mirror. To smile every chance you can because you have so much to be grateful for. You are here!!!

As the creator of the cutting edge neuroscience Neuro-Associative Programming (NAP), I know that when you use these proven techniques that you are able to reprogram yourself on a daily basis without setting yourself up for failure. Don’t wait for the end of the year to decide to live your best life, do it daily!

Surviving the Holiday Season without Putting on Extra Pounds

Surviving the Holiday Season without Putting on Extra Pounds: Five Tips to Enjoy Holiday Foods While Still Losing Weight

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For many of us who struggle with emotional or disordered eating, the holidays feel dangerous. All those tempting, high-calorie foods start showing up at the office, at parties, and even our homes. Most of the year, I commit to keeping foods that give me trouble out of the house, but during the holidays, sometimes they show up regardless. How do you survive the holiday season without putting on the extra pounds. Well, I’ve been doing it for the past twenty years let me tell you how.

Unfortunately, during the holidays, those irresistible treats will show up. A well-meaning guest may bring a few boxes as a hostess gift, or your new neighbors make something special as a kind gesture for all the houses on the block. You take the gifts graciously as a polite gesture, but then find it looming over you. The good news is that these holiday treats and triggers don’t have to sabotage healthy habits. You can even enjoy the special holiday foods that make you feel festive without putting yourself in danger of reverting back to sabotaging your efforts or putting on extra holiday weight. Just follow these five important tips in order to enjoy those holiday foods while still losing weight.

    1. Trust your body to tell you when you are hungry. I always remind my clients that there is nothing more dangerous to your weight loss than hunger. This is especially true when we find ourselves surrounded by foods during the holidays. It may seem counter intuitive, but you need to feed your body enough to keep going, or you will end up hurting yourself in the long run. Your body will go into starvation mode and actually store even more calories. That said, you need to learn to tell the difference between actual hunger and boredom, self-consciousness, or any other emotion. For many of us, food becomes a source of habitual comfort rather than the source of fuel it should be. This holiday season, trust what your body is telling you, and only eat when you are actually hungry.
    2. Be fully present when you eat. Avoid distractions such as watching tv, chatting with friends, or other activities. When you are fully present as you eat, you can stay in tune with what your body is telling you, allowing you to be aware of when you are satisfied and stop. Plus, you can enjoy your food more. If you have a holiday craving for pumpkin pie, you are much more likely to satisfy that craving with a few bites that you savor than with a whole piece that you eat while distractedly sending emails. Finally, it is much easier to make note of how much you are actually eating when you are paying attention. Why do you think movie popcorn disappears so quickly? We are eating it out of habit, and before we know it, it is gone, because our attention is elsewhere.
    3. Eat what your body wants until you are content. Our bodies are better at figuring out what we need and want than we think. By allowing ourselves to have what we really crave, we are much more likely to feel satisfied and content. If you have a huge craving for a pumpkin spice latte, it is much healthier to let yourself have what you want than to have six cups of coffee and a several “healthy” snacks to try and distract yourself. Once you are able to recognize when you are hungry and are fully present while you are eating, you can listen to your body to tell you when you are truly content. Just remember that you are in control. You do not have to finish something just because it is there. When your body has gotten what it needs, feel comfortable putting down the rest and saving it for later.
    4. Eat consciously (This means no “sneaking” or “cheating”)! I find that many of my clients feel so guilty about a small “treat” that they pretend even to themselves that they are not eating that food. They either “sneak” the food when they think no one is looking or call it a “cheat” as if it does not count. This kind of stinkin’ thinkin’ is part of the reason that we internalize hurtful eating habits. There should not be guilt associated with what we eat. When we eat consciously, acknowledging each food as we consume it, we are much more likely to keep ourselves in control. Plus, we will enjoy that food more, allowing us to feel content with a healthy portion.
    5. Enjoy everything you eat. Food isn’t the enemy. When we realize that these holiday foods aren’t put in front of us as an evil temptation, we can not only enjoy what we eat more, but also remove that feeling that we are not good enough when we eat anything that is not a salad. While I think that when we are really trusting and listening to our bodies that we won’t want as much “junk,” there does not have to be a list of “bad foods” on our mind to protect ourselves during the holidays. Enjoy your food, and let go of the guilt. Eating healthy during the holidays shouldn’t deprive you of any of the joy of the season.

This holiday season, shut out the voice telling you that holiday food is the enemy. As the creator of the cutting edge neuroscience Neuro-Associative Programming (NAP), I know that when you use these proven techniques that you are able to reprogram yourself this holiday season to enjoy eating without self-sabotaging. You can enjoy this season and keep losing weight, so long as you keep these tips in mind and trust yourself. You are beautiful, intelligent, and in control. Have a FAB holiday season!