Ep 39 - Holiday Stress & Overeating
November 07,2024
We’ve officially entered the holiday season—a time of joy, celebration, and… stress. 😬 For many people who struggle with binge eating or overeating, this time of year can feel like a constant battle with food.
But have you ever wondered why it feels so hard?
Today I cover…
the 6 most common triggers of holiday emotional eating
how to navigate these holiday stressors without overeating
the impact of stress on your brain’s decision making
All right confident eaters, we have officially entered into the holiday season. Are you ready? Do you feel prepared? Are you nervous? Let's talk about it. I know that this can be the most challenging time of year as someone who struggles with binge eating over eating food in general, it can be stressful. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. And I have actually created in a company free worksheet that goes along with today's episode.
So you're going to want to make sure that you download that worksheet so you can go more in depth with these prompts today. And really understand what stressors are most relevant for you and how to handle them throughout this time of year. So you can get that in the show notes.
And also if you are looking for support through the holidays and into the new year, so you can have just one Christmas cookie, and instead of sneakily hovering over the counters with five of them all at once, like I get it. I've been there, My small group for the confident eater program is now open for enrollment until Tuesday the 19th with only 10 spots available.
So this is a super high touch group. And the sooner you joined the sooner, you're going to get instant access to the entire confident eater course, And in-depth lesson on navigating holidays with ease and joy..
So how you eat. It's one area of the holidays that you actually have 100% control over, and I will help you get there with the right plan and support in the Confident eater program. So the details are below with your first step, which is to book a free consultation call with me.
All right.
So let's talk about the emotional side of the holidays and why the holidays can be so stressful. When we are stressed, if we are an emotional eater, this can make our eating worse. And especially if we don't have any tools to handle these big emotions. We just go to our first option, which our brain gives us, which is usually food.
So why are the holiday so challenging for emotional eaters? Let's go over six common triggers that tend to come up.
The first one to no one's surprise is our family. So are your family dynamics often a trigger for stress? Maybe your family just isn't your favorite people to hang out with. And that is totally okay by the way, you don't have to love hanging out with your family. But most of us are choosing to spend some time with family or friends for longer periods than normal during this time of year.
So this might need to be where boundaries come in. If you have conversations that tend to be triggering, maybe there's a lot of diet talk happening. Maybe there's unsupportive comments that people have towards you. This is where we want to learn to have a conversation of, Hey, I don't really want to talk about this right now or setting boundaries can look like if you start talking about this, I'm going to leave the room. If there's a sensitive topic that you just want to be off limits this holiday season, tell the people that this holiday season, we're just not going to talk about this. That way people know what's going on in your brain. We always expect people to just know how to act around us, but they don't. They act how they want to act around us. And that is their decision. But if we want to change how we feel in these situations, one, we can ask them to be different. We can request that, but that's not always going to happen.
So that's where a boundary comes in, where we decide how we're going to act. So we might request, Hey, can you please not comment on my weight? Hey, can you please not comment on my food choices, but they might still do it. And so that's where we can say, Hey, if you do this, I'm going to disengage with the conversation or I'm going to leave the room or I'm just not going to come back for holidays again, if that's really like a big topic that's coming up for you if around something that you don't really want to be talking about. You can just decide that you don't want to do holidays there anymore.
Okay. But you also want to remind yourself why you're even visiting your family in the first place. Because the truth is you don't have to see your family. Just because it's the holiday season you don't have to hang out with them. But if you choose to, you want to get really clear on your reasons why. So is it because you only get to see them once a year and you'd like to see them once a year? Is it because you really love them and you want to learn how to manage your mind around their actions.
And finally, with a family, one, remind yourself that it's temporary. This isn't going to last forever. Ultimately the holidays are usually just a few days. So all you need to do is get through that few days with how you want to be in show up.
Okay. The second obstacle that comes up and trigger is the traveling that comes this time of year.
We might go to a different state, a different location, staying in a new person's house, in these different environments. In these houses that aren't your own. It may feel a little bit uncomfortable. You might not have your normal food that you have at home. You might not be in your normal routines and that can throw our brain off a little bit.
So the key here is to find flexibility. It's okay if your habits are not perfect. It's okay. If you're eating choices are not what they normally are. You want to find, okay. What would be minus look like here? Not a plus because that might not happen, but what can I do to get by here? And understanding that while your surroundings may change, how you fuel your body is always within your control.
You get to decide what goes in your body. You get to decide if you want to go to the grocery store and get some of your own food, you get to decide if you want to show up for yourself and go for a walk every day, still. You still get to choose how you take care of your body. And not only do you get to choose that, but it's your responsibility to take care of your body.
The third trigger that may come up is all these extra social events, the work parties, the friend parties, these other events.
And in these social events, there may be more food pushers. There may be more people who say, are you sure you don't want more? You should definitely have another piece. Come on, just have more with me. We're in this together. Okay. If you're in these situations where these coworkers always comment on what you're eating, or maybe you have a relative who always pressures you to finish everything on your plate. This can be a barrier to your natural eating goals. There can also be this expectation that you're supposed to overindulge for the holidays. Right.
Like, this is the social norm, but just because this is a social norm doesn't mean we have to participate. So a lot of people tend to think, you know, I'm just going to start over after the holidays might just eat it all now because I'll be restricting myself in January. So I want to get it in. But just because the dieters mindset can be a little rampant this time of year. You are the one who gets to decide how you want to show up. And if you're showing up as a natural eater, you're not going to engage in these behaviors of let's just overindulge now because TIS the season. Right.
You're want to feel good year round. And again, This is your opportunity to become the person you want to be. And have it be your responsibility to make sure you feel good. So just because other people are overindulging doesn't mean you have to participate. You can turn eating into a spectator sport where you just watch for the sidelines and you still can enjoy the party. You can still enjoy the people, the whole purpose of having a holiday party. Is not just to have the food. It's also to connect with other people. It's also to share memories and stories and listen to nice music. And so focus on those things instead.
The fourth trigger for emotional eating comes with this extra food involved. So if you show up to a party and there's an entire dessert table, or you're baking extra cookies, your gifted cookies, all these holiday treats. If you're not used to being around these foods or having them in the house. These higher qualities of them may start to feel overwhelming and uncomfortable.
This is normal. Okay. If you do not have experiences that are positive with these foods, it's normal that your brain is going to expect a negative experience this time around. But just because your brain is expecting this experience to happen, doesn't mean it's going to. So likely the reason you're fearing having this extra food round is because in the past, you've binged on them.
Now to the natural eater, this extra food is no big deal because they enjoy cookies, desserts, delicious food, all year round. Natural eaters don't feel anxious because they've had lots of practice with these foods before, and it's just like another day to them.
So when you're eating what you want to be eating all year round, This can be just like another day to you. It's just another Friday where there's someone brought cookies into the office. You get to decide. Do I want to have one or do I not? But if you're in this dieting mindset, or if you're still restricting, these foods are normally off limits to you. So you view them as extra special or like it feels like it's this now or never moment. I have to get them now because I don't know what I'm going to get them again. Diet's going to start soon. January's coming. So I want to make sure I get my fill. That's where a lot of this all or nothing thinking comes in. And where we actually ended up eating 10 times more than if we were to just allow a cookie on Monday with lunch and then have another one Tuesday evening and then have another, when we see one on Thursday, That's gonna allow us to get the enjoyment of them and not feel restricted or deprived.
So, this is where mindful eating comes in. If we can eat mindfully, when we have these large quantities of food, this is where we're going to start to be able to be observant of the experience of do I even like this food? What amounts feel good to me? What are the dieting thoughts that come up in? What thoughts are not true that I need to get rid of.
So I actually have an entire five day mindful eating challenge and episode 35 that you can go through. And I would highly recommend going through this challenge during the holiday season. So you can really learn how to eat these foods in moderation.
Fifth, there might be high expectations that you put on yourself and wanting everything to be perfect this time of year. I see this one happening a lot, especially if you are a parent. One of my past clients used to always be so stressed at the holidays. And when the holidays came during our coaching time together, she wanted to have everything perfect. She wanted to have the perfect family photos, where everyone was smiling, all their outfits were matching. So it looked beautiful and Facebook, she wanted to have every introvert house spotless for when the relatives came. She wanted to prepare the most amazing meals and spent so many days stressing about what it all turned out perfectly. Wanting to make sure she had the right gifts for the kids, getting the sales on time. And all of this was so much stress for her, which usually led to a lot of emotional eating. But we worked through that together and coaching by really looking at what was her standard that she felt good about.
So same thing for you. What is your bare minimum that you're like, yes, this feels good to me. Not based off of the imagined perceptions of other people and what their standard is. So we don't want to adopt the standard of what we think our mother-in-law will think or what we think our kids will think or what we think our husband will think. Our partner will think.
We want to say what would make a good holiday for me. What would feel really good for me to do? And how can I show up in a way that still respects my time and energy during the season? So I don't enter January 1st burned out.
So she was able to let go of this perfectionism and just enjoy the holiday season for what it was a time of joy and connection and peace if we can let go of all these excess expectations.
So the final one that I think can be a big trigger is this loneliness. So holidays can be isolating where we end up emotional eating during these hard months. If you don't have as much family, if you don't have friends that you're connecting with and you're spending holidays alone, it doesn't mean you have to feel lonely, but I know sometimes it can feel that way.
And it's hard to not come for herself with food in those moments. So this is why being in something like a group program during these times are so valuable because you're going to have me in all these other amazing people to lean on during these times and get that love and support that you deserve.
Now, why does it matter if you're stressed out in the first place? When we are in a stress state, our logical higher brain starts to shut down. So this higher brain is also known as our prefrontal cortex. And this is the part of our brain that allows us to plan for the future. And to think ahead, and to give ourselves all these helpful reminders of what we want to be doing when we enter the holiday work party and et cetera.
So, for example, you enter this holiday party, you see an entire table dedicated just to the desserts and you don't know how to eat desserts and moderation quite yet. So you start to feel this anxiety, and then you forget all of these things that you wanted to remind yourself of. Now the more stress you feel, the more anxious you start to feel, the more likely you are to fall into autopilot mode and enter your lower brain. So your lower brain is what is they're trying to help you survive. It is the part of you that thinks, oh my gosh, there's probably a lion tiger or bear coming, so we better get ready to fight or run. Due to do something about it. So it doesn't need a tire brain in that moment. It just needs to make sure you survive.
So that's when we go into this autopilot moment, end up eating without thinking. And end up wondering how did that even just happen? So that's why it's so important to see what does trigger my stress and how do I want to navigate through it.
So again, there's this worksheet in the show notes that I want you to use to navigate how are you going to get through these stressors? And I want you to identify out of all of these six, which ones tend to come up for you the most at holiday times, because once you're aware of this, you can start to create a plan to manage it before it leads to the success of overeating.
So now you might be able to see, oh, no wonder holidays have been so difficult for me so far, but it doesn't have to be that way. So imagine being able to enter this holiday season, feeling in control, having tools in place and knowing that you have a supportive community behind you every step of the way. There has never been a more important time to have accountability and support then now. And once you have this community, the structured guidance, this weekly calls. You will get unlimited coaching written wise in the confident eater group. You're finally going to have a safe space to get through these challenges, receive feedback, and really have personal strategies for navigating this holiday season. So you're going to get so much goodness in the confident eater program. And I don't want you to miss out on this and get to new years eve new year's day. And be wishing that you had gotten through the holiday season different. So let's make sure you enter this new years with creating your dream eating habits in place already. You deserve to enjoy the holidays and feel confident in your choices around food.
You have got this, and if you need support, make sure you check out the confident eater group so we can navigate the season together.