You might need a mindset makeover if this sound familiar…
“My pattern is to buckle down at the end of the year and promise myself to be good, and not give in to over-eating. ‘This holiday season will be different’ I tell myself. But each time my willpower dissipates and I blow it. Treats are everywhere. Parties are non-stop. At least, it feels like that. I’m afraid nothing will change this year.”
In so many words, I hear this a lot. On the heels of the biggest candy holiday of the year, we can head into November and December feeling like we’re already behind.
What if you don’t succumb this year? Instead, make a commitment to yourself and follow through using a mindset makeover.
Start with an intention of how you will treat yourself this holiday season. What it looks and feels like to enjoy food and love life during the holidays, while making healthy choices for you.
I promise, you can do it better this season, using a mindset makeover:
- Mindset Makeover #1: Before every function – and I mean every function – where food will be available, decide well beforehand how much you will eat. That is, decide if you will eat until comfortably satiated or leave a little room. (Note, you may consciously decide to over-eat, which is anything from feeling the pressure of the food on your stomach to feeling stuffed. Like with all decisions, I want you to make it well before the function, not in the moment).
- Mindset Makeover #2: Once you decide when you will stop eating, imagine being at the function and being at the place where you’ve decided you will stop. Then imagine there is more food that looks super tasty that you’d like to eat. Imagine the pull to eat, feeling a bit uncomfortable. Then imagine gently keeping your commitment to yourself.
- Mindset Makeover #3: Set a personal standard. It’s easy to fall into the “it’s a special treat” argument but in fact, treats are everywhere. Especially if you’re in an office environment. Even a hospital or medical office (seriously, right?!). Decide what meets your standards and forget the rest. For example, in a box of Sees candy, there are relatively few that meet my standard, like a dark chocolate Bordeaux or Scotchmallow. Do I like the others? Sure, some of them. But on a scale from 1-10, they’re maybe a 6 or 7. My standard is at least a 9!
- Makeover #4: If you have an instance where you don’t follow through on your commitment to yourself, have compassion without making excuses. Beating yourself up leads to shame and generally giving up. Rather decide how you can learn from the incident and change your behavior next time. And don’t excuse it away. It only becomes easier to make more excuses for not following through on your word to yourself. It’s a downward spiral.
- Mindset Makeover #5: Focus on people and purpose. Food and alcohol are secondary, maybe even tertiary. If meeting new people, consider all the questions you might ask and all the things you’d like to know about them or what they do. If you’re with folks you know, be present. Imagine how special you can make others feel, and how good you will feel, when you engage and connect below the superficial level.
Sound simple? It is. But simple doesn’t mean there’s never discomfort. You may eat to a comfortable level when suddenly you spot your favorite…. fill in the blank. It might feel uncomfortable to not eat it. But it feels even more uncomfortable to be overly full. And even more uncomfortable to break your word to yourself.
Give these five mindset makeovers a try and let me know your experience! And, get support with your new mindset at the Enjoy food. Love life. Lose weight. Facebook group.
Hi Heather!
This is awesome advice and very much what I need to hear! I will focus intently on this and I hope to share it with you January sometime. Thank you for these thoughtful and doable mindthoughts. It all starts there and what we do with those thoughts sets us back or makes us reach our goals! I want very much to apply what you wrote because I believe that for me, I can then get past the temptation by asking myself those questions. Truth has to be what I face and focus on everyday with food.
I look forward to hearing how you used these, Seta.
Hi Heather–
I’ve been re-tooling my thinking about food and how I consume it. All of your advice is spot on! Boils down to assessing the quality as well as the quantity of what we eat. I started out constantly asking myself “is this worth the calories/carbs/fats? Is it going to taste good enough to be worth it?” That’s now an ingrained habit to the point that last night it was a no-brainer to not order the vanilla bean-pumpkin lava cake with vanilla ice cream and warm caramel sauce. I’d just eaten a 1/12-pound very fresh New England lobster. That dessert, which would have been pretty tasty, would have pushed me over the edge into I’m-so-stuffed-I-think-I’ll-be-sick. I really don’t want to go there anymore, so the no thank you was easy to say. Maybe next time I’ll skip the lobster and have the dessert for dinner.
Yes, it’s about making a decision between two things we want, knowing that to limit it to just one is beneficial. I love that the question you ask is now ingrained – the more “no-brainer” we can make these questions, the better. We always have “no-brainer” thoughts going on…but they’re not always serving us.
Oops. Hasty re-read. It was a 1 1/2-pound lobster.
🙂