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I know that I go way overboard with my eating habits during the holiday season. Here is what my holidays look like:

• At Thanksgiving, I fill up on starchy carbs until I am about to burst, and then add a slice of pecan pie, with whipped cream, to top off my already full stomach.  
• At all the holiday parties during the month of December, I drink (well not this year) more wine that I normally would, and indulge in all those special holiday cookies and sweets.  
• Of course, there is my mom’s Christmas baking tradition—sugar cookies in the shape of Christmas items topped with frosting, Mexican Wedding Cakes, and Peanut Brittle.  
• When Christmas finally comes, Christmas Eve starts with cheese fondue, and followed by meat and veggie fondue.  Christmas morning is candy in our stockings and homemade Eggs Benedict with lots of Hollandaise sauce.
  

It is all so delicious, but always leaves me feeling a little guilty and shameful by the time New Year’s rolls around.  Does something similar happen to you too?

Mindful eating is difficult, but if we pay a little bit more attention and change a few small things, we can escape some of the guilt associated with holiday overindulgence.  These are some suggestions to try.  See what works for you.

At holiday parties:

• Hang out in the “food free” space at the party, so you aren’t tempted to eat just because it is there and looks so good.  Visual cues and proximity increase our changes of indulging.
  
• After every alcoholic drink, have a glass of water.  By trading off, you will find yourself feeling fuller, and less likely to drink as many alcoholic drinks.
  
• Use a tall, slender glass when pouring your drinks.  Due to visual illusions, we tend to pour (and drink) 25-30 percent more from a short wide glass, then you do a tall, narrow one.  
  
• If you are talking to someone, put your plate of food down.  When engaged in conversation, we tend to eat mindlessly, not even tasting the food, nor knowing how much we are actually eating.  
  
• Put only a couple items on your plate at a time, and walk away from the table.  We love variety, but it can cause us to eat more than we really want or need.  By limiting your choices, you can limit your intake.  
  
• Arrive late and/or leave early.  The longer you are at the party, and surrounded by temptation, the more likely you are to indulge.  
  

At holiday dinners:

• Eat the healthy portion of the meal first.  When we are famished, we are more likely to chose and eat unhealthy foods.  Fill up on the good stuff first, and then check-in with your body before you fill up your plate with everything else.
  
• Choose a smaller plate.  The larger the plate, the more food we can fit on it, and the more we will eat.  By choosing a salad plate instead of a dinner plate, we can avoid eating so much.  We will have to pause and think twice about going back for seconds.  
  
• Arrange to have the buffet in the kitchen, rather than all the bowls on the table.  This goes back to the idea of proximity.  If it is right in front of us, we are more likely to go for seconds without much thought, but if we have to get up and go into the kitchen to fill up again, we might have second thoughts.  
  
• Turn down the lights and put on slow music.  Creating a comfortable atmosphere, with slow music and dim lights will help us to eat more slowly.  It takes 20 minutes for our brain to recognize it is full, so use your environment to help make this happen.  
  
• Put your fork down…after every bite if you can.  I know how hard it is when you haven’t had your mom’s stuffing in a whole year, but it isn’t going to jump off your your plate and run away, so take it slow and enjoy your food. 

In the kitchen:

• Cut that cookie recipe in half, or quarters.  I know baking is a great part of the holiday tradition, but the fun is in the baking, right?  You can still get the same joy, even if you don’t bake quite as much.
  
• Freeze it!  Once you bake those cookies, or breads, or whatever, freeze some of it.  If it is out of sight, you are less likely to indulge as often. 
  
• Keep it out of sight.  If you keep your cookies in the cookie jar on the kitchen counter, the sight and proximity will lead you right to it.  Instead keep your fruit bowl with its luscious oranges, apples, and pears in sight, and stash your cookies in the cupboard or pantry.
  

In no way am I suggesting that you try to avoid all those tempting foods over the holidays.  Depriving yourself only leads you to want it more, and then when you do have it you feel guilty.  Indulge, just do so in moderation, and balance it out with the healthy stuff too!! 

Happy Holidays and Happy Eating!

A little over a month ago I attended a seminar in which we spent a good deal of time talking about the difference between an unfulfilled expectation and an unfulfilled commitment, and how it affects us. 

Let’s say I am trying to turn a new leaf and make healthier choices and improve my nutrition.  I create an expectation that I will eat 3 fruits and 4 vegetables each day.  As I work toward meeting this expectation, I falter one day, and get pretty upset.  The expectation that I set for myself went unfulfilled and I failed.  I probably spend some time beating myself up, and figure out how to start over with a new expectation.

Now, let’s change the language a bit. 

Let’s say I am trying to improve my overall health.  I make a commitment to myself to be healthy, including improving my nutrition.  I start off strong and am making healthy food choices, and then I attend a birthday party and have a big slice of chocolate cake and a glass of champagne.  I faltered on my commitment, but has my commitment changed?  No.  I am still committed to my overall health and nutrition. As soon as I finish licking the crumbs, I can continue with my commitment without beating myself up. 

An expectation is finite and has an end point.  It is about DOING something.  Unfulfilled expectations lead to upset, feelings of failure, and often self-sabotage. 

A commitment is through time, and takes time.  A commitment is a pledge to a way of BEING.  A commitment to something big will never be fulfilled.  If, for some reason, a commitment goes unfulfilled, it merely leads back to the original commitment. 

We have this false sense that when we set goals and expectations for ourselves; we are eventually going to get to this magical place of perfection.  (I hate to tell you, but that magical place doesn’t exist.) As we strive and strive to DO more, we eventually falter and get upset. 

Instead, I ask you to commit to BEING something more. That doesn’t mean that you don’t ever have to take action and do something, because you do, but change the language.  Make it about BEING, not DOING.

What are you committed to for yourself? 

I have never been one to weigh myself on a regular basis, at least not since I was in high school.  We do own a scale, but we use it more for when we have to weigh our luggage before a trip to France, than we do for weighing ourselves. 

Now, though, I get to see the numbers on the scale on a regular basis for my monthly pregnancy check-in with the doctor.  To be honest, I sometimes get on the scale at home before hand so that I know if I am going to be “talked to” about my weight gain at the visit.  It seems absolutely ridiculous, since I am obviously supposed to gain weight during pregnancy, but I still get all worried about it.  I have become slightly obsessed with the number on the scale. 

What do I weight now?  Am I gaining too much?  Is the doctor going to have to talk to me about my weight gain?  Is she going to ask me about what I have been eating and if I have been exercising?  Do I weigh more than my husband yet? 

The other day I was actually down 0.4 pounds since my visit a month ago and I did a little happy dance.  Instead of the nurse asking what I had been eating, she asked me if I had been eating. The irony is that I am bigger—I actually look pregnant now. 

We, women, seem to put so much weight into that number that appears on the scale.  It seems like we always want it to be smaller, no matter what we look like.  I have a former client who used to weigh herself 3 times a day, and all it brought her was misery and that feeling that she wasn’t enough.   

Why do we do this to ourselves?  Our weight is a factor when we are gauging our health, but there are so many other factors to consider beyond just that one number.  I talk to women that workout on a regular basis, keep a balanced diet, and still want to weigh less.  When I ask them what will be different, they often say that they will be more confident and just feel better about themselves. 

At what point can we be confident and feel good in our skin no matter what our size or our weight?  At one point can we love and accept ourselves for who and how we are? At what point can we let go of that number on the scale?  

Last week I was reminded of the Aesop’s fable about the Ant and the Grasshopper. 

It is summer time, and the ant is busy preparing for winter by storing lots of food.  Meanwhile, the grasshopper is singing and dancing, while also making fun of the ant.  As fall turns into winter and snow covers the fields, the grasshopper can no longer find food.  Thinking back to the summer, he knows that the ant has food, so he goes to the ant to ask for food and warmth.  The ant doesn’t help him out, and reminds the grasshopper about his idle ways over the summer. 

What immediately comes to mind with regard to this fable is whether we are spenders or savers, but I started thinking about it from a different angle—our health. 

If we take these same roles and apply it to our health, then the grasshopper would represent those of us, or those times, when we overindulge in the present without regard for our future health.  The ant would represent those times when we think twice about something, knowing how it will impact our future health. 

Herein lies the problem; as humans we do not have great self-control, so we tend to act like grasshoppers more often than like ants.  We have what is called a present focus bias, meaning that we tend to put more stake in our current situation than we do in our future.  Things in the future seem less important than what is enticing us in the present.