Top tips for navigating holiday food!

I have posted this the past couple of years, but I think it is ALWAYS worth re-visiting.  Our diets are a work in progress.  Every year that we practice wading through the holiday treats we get better and stronger!  It is almost impossible to expect that we will be able to bypass every single treat and not-so-nutritious food out there for the holidays.  But there are some things you can do to make it a little more successful - so you don't have to make such a huge New Year's Resolution to lose weight, or get back on your food plan, or whatever the goal.  And so you can simply feel good and more peaceful over the holiday season.    My holidays are so much more happy now that I don't overeat or eat sugary, fat-laden treats.  It took me a long time to get to that point, but it was worth the hard work!  Here are my top tips for navigating holiday food...

1.  Have a plan for what and when you will eat.  Without a plan it is impossible to navigate the food.  For example, eat a healthy meal before you go to a Christmas party or somewhere where there will be lots of treats.  Or instead of buying Christmas candy for stockings and having it around the house where you will graze on it all day, buy trinkets.  Or if you can't stand the thought of not having candy in the stockings, buy it at the last moment so it's not sitting around.  Another example (that I used in my last year's post) was to find other yummy crunchy treats, such as nuts, to put in bowls around the house rather than candy.  Now, of course you can overeat on those too.  But I can stop eating those much easier - yet get my crunchy fix!   

One of the most helpful things I did when I was trying to kick the sugar habit was to make a rule for myself that I had to eat my sugar at the end of a meal.  No eating it as a snack or snacking on it between meals.  You wouldn't believe the difference it made.  I didn't feel deprived because I knew I would be getting my fix.  But I had to eat it as a dessert after a meal.  After a while I ate less and less sweets, and eventually the treats just faded away because I stopped craving them.

2. Find some new recipes for tasty, healthy treats so there are things you can enjoy without the guilt.  Finding new recipes is super helpful in the quest to substitute old habits for new.  And there are lots of healthy treats you can make that taste good too and that use natural sweeteners. 

3. Don't beat yourself up if you do eat a few treats.  Just move on to the next meal and make a better choice next time.  This may take some practice...at least it did for me.  I was an "all or nothing" person.  So I had to learn how to be gentle and accepting of myself when I ate something that I hadn't planned to eat or when I ate more than I had planned.  I had to erase the thinking that if I "messed up" at one meal, then I might as well mess up for all 3 meals.  The minute you eat something outside of your plan, just renew your efforts for the next meal.

4. Try to center your activities around things rather than food.  There are so many fun things to do over the Christmas season, that it is entirely possible to center your traditions around everything but food.  We do.  Of course we have a few things that the children love that they look forward to eating.  But for the most part the fun comes from things like the nativity set that the kids play with all season long, decorating the tree, the advent calendar with little trinkets to look forward to everyday, the music, the lights, and, last but not least - the real reason for the season.  There are soooo many things to fill your season with fun without the food.

Top tips for navigating holiday food

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I wrote a post last year about planning for food and the holidays and I wanted to re-visit the issue for this year.  It is almost impossible to expect that we will be able to bypass every single treat and not-so-nutritious food out there for the holidays.  But there are some things you can do to make it a little more successful - so you don't have to make such a huge New Year's Resolution to lose weight, or get back on your food plan, or whatever the goal.  And so you can simply feel good and more peaceful over the holiday season.    My holidays are so much more happy now that I don't overeat or eat sugary, fat-laden treats.  It took me a long time to get to that point, but it was worth the hard work!  Here are my top tips for navigating holiday food...

1.  Have a plan for what and when you will eat.  Without a plan it is impossible to navigate the food.  For example, eat a healthy meal before you go to a Christmas party or somewhere where there will be lots of treats.  Or instead of buying Christmas candy for stockings and having it around the house where you will graze on it all day, buy trinkets.  Or if you can't stand the thought of not having candy in the stockings, buy it at the last moment so it's not sitting around.  Another example (that I used in my last year's post) was to find other yummy crunchy treats, such as nuts, to put in bowls around the house rather than candy.  Now, of course you can overeat on those too.  But I can stop eating those much easier - yet get my crunchy fix!   

One of the most helpful things I did when I was trying to kick the sugar habit was to make a rule for myself that I had to eat my sugar at the end of a meal.  No eating it as a snack or snacking on it between meals.  You wouldn't believe the difference it made.  I didn't feel deprived because I knew I would be getting my fix.  But I had to eat it as a dessert after a meal.  After a while I ate less and less sweets, and eventually the treats just faded away because I stopped craving them.

2. Find some new recipes for tasty, healthy treats so there are things you can enjoy without the guilt.  Finding new recipes is super helpful in the quest to substitute old habits for new.  And there are lots of healthy treats you can make that taste good too and that use natural sweeteners. 

3. Don't beat yourself up if you do eat a few treats.  Just move on to the next meal and make a better choice next time.  This may take some practice...at least it did for me.  I was an "all or nothing" person.  So I had to learn how to be gentle and accepting of myself when I ate something that I hadn't planned to eat or when I ate more than I had planned.  I had to erase the thinking that if I "messed up" at one meal, then I might as well mess up for all 3 meals.  The minute you eat something outside of your plan, just renew your efforts for the next meal.

4. Try to center your activities around things rather than food.  There are so many fun things to do over the Christmas season, that it is entirely possible to center your traditions around everything but food.  We do.  Of course we have a few things that the children love that they look forward to eating.  But for the most part the fun comes from things like the nativity set that the kids play with all season long, decorating the tree, the advent calendar with little trinkets to look forward to everyday, the music, the lights, and, last but not least - the real reason for the season.  There are soooo many things to fill your season with fun without the food.

Meals plans to help the holidays go smoothly

I really enjoyed this post from the Simple Mom blog.  It talks about planning meals for the holidays in order to lessen the stress of the season.  I have been inspired.  So I am going to have a planning session this weekend and follow her suggestions.  I hope it inspires you too!

Navigating food around the holidays

I am not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. (Just ask my husband and children!) But I have been refined by my weaknesses. As I have struggled around food for basically my whole life, I have been motivated to find solutions. When people look at me, they can't believe I can resist the sugar and all the tasty treats. Some think that perhaps I have never been plagued by them and it must be easy for me. Well, exactly the opposite! I have been sooooo plagued by them in the past, that my only option for personal growth and happiness has been to try and figure out how to overcome the urge to eat them! So now that we've established that I am a very real person, with very real weaknesses, I hope I can write the rest of this post with more credibility :-) I hope I can be an inspiration because I've been where you're at. I've lived it and I've struggled with it and I've gained some experience and knowledge that I hope I can share with you to help you in your struggles.

One of the key principles I've learned to help with overeating and/or the temptation to eat too many empty calorie foods is called "crowding out". The key is to focus on adding in good things instead of trying so hard to resist and fight against the bad things. Does that make sense? Instead of trying so hard NOT to eat everything you feel that you shouldn't eat, try preparing some healthier dishes and eat those things first. You will notice that, even if you do give in to the urge to eat junk, that you will not feel so drawn to it and you will eat much less of it as a result.

For example, the other day before my husband went to a place where they would be serving donuts for breakfast, he drank a huge glass of whey protein shake blended with some almond milk and blueberries. He would have normally been tempted to eat the donuts, but he said he was so satisfied from what he drank that he had no desire for the donuts. See, most of us crave and just "can't resist" those things when they show up. We have to change our behaviors and habits to make real lasting changes so that we are not just acting in the moment. Ultimately, if we want the donuts and we are hungry and right there with them and we tell ourselves we can't have them, it will be a fight. Even if we don't eat them, it will be a fight. I got tired of those days of fighting. And finally I learned the principle of "crowding out" and started to focus on adding the good things to my diet instead of focusing on fighting against the bad things. That is when things started to turn around for me.

I challenge you this holiday season to try this shift in perspective. Make some plans to have some healthy foods around that you like. Find some new recipes that sound good to you that are healthy. Or just try something like putting out walnuts or almonds in a bowl instead of something else crunchy. Execute those plans. Make the recipes, eat those foods first. And then if you want something else, eat that too. But notice how it isn't going to "call" to you as it has in the past if you have first filled your body with good, wholesome food.