Holiday Thoughts:
Moving beyond "calories in, calories out" for the Holidays
Written by Neil Hansen, Owner, MAT Specialist, RTS, CTA Life Coach
The Holiday season is fast approaching and this time of year is usually a time when we eat more, drink more and put on a few extra pounds. Every year there are a ton of healthy strategies out there to help guide you to make better choices through the holidays so you don't over-consume. You hear things like: if you don't want to eat too much at a party then you should eat a healthy snack before you go or if you do snack at a party try to stick with the healthier foods and eat those in moderation. And you also probably have heard that monitoring your alcohol will work to keep you from taking in too many calories along with helping you to keep away from the munchies (alcohol can increase food cravings not to mention lead to poor choices). You're probably been made aware that eating more often throughout the day (small meals/snacks) will certainly help you make sensible choices when presented with snacks and holiday fare, as you will not be so hungry that you make poor choices. I think these are some great suggestions to help with some of the physical actions but I think there is often a huge aspect left out of what really helps us to be healthy and happy during the Holidays. What's often overlooked are things like being emotionally balanced during the holidays, understanding why we overindulge, or why we pack on so much weight even if we didn't eat that much over our allotted calorie amounts. I consider these things to be the "x-factors" that can make the difference of remaining healthy - mentally and physically - over the holidays or not (or anytime for that matter).
It all comes down to the fact that there is more to having a healthy life and body than "calories in, calories out".there is a human being behind (driving) the eating and drinking. This human being is a thinking, emotive, and chemically reacting being that causes change in the physical environment and in the physical body. Trying to control the physical environment without understanding our individual, human involvement and influence in it is often creates a potentially fruitless and never ending task.
It is my hope that this information gives you more insight into how your thoughts and emotions affect not only your body and your choices about food and drink as well as dealing with people in this potentially stressful time of year (Holiday Thoughts - Getting Together With Friends and Family).
Emotional eating/drinking
Almost everything we do physically (like eating and drinking) we do in hopes that we will feel better in the doing of the action - physically and emotionally. Impulses like eating and drinking are merely your internal-striving to take physical action to feel better from where you are. Those impulses may be as simple as being thirsty or hungry and your body is asking for nourishment. But sometimes an emotional driver is driving those physical cravings. Often when we are in larger company, like at a party or visiting with your family, other things may come up for us that puts us in a state of emotional discomfort (like anger or frustration/annoyance or insecurity or jealousy or even a feeling of depression) that causes us to reach for relief from an outside source like food or alcohol. Most of us don't realize that we have a choice in how we feel and may need to rely on outside comforts to find relief. Understanding a little more how we operate may help to change some of these outside actions that feel a little uncontrollable.
Most of us are on autopilot when it comes to reacting to life emotionally - meaning, we don't realize that we have a choice in how we react to life's situations. When something "bad" happens, we don't take time to realign ourselves emotionally before we reach for physical comfort. I think that's because so often when we are in a state of feeling bad we think it is the situation outside of us that has us feeling bad - meaning we often think this outside situation is responsible for how we are feeling at the moment (e.g. "my mother makes me so mad"). And we know deep down that trying to control others so we can feel better is pointless, not to mention an endless task (just too many people in the world to control), so we often feel powerless in our situation leading us to take other actions to create relief from our negative feelings. But it is not the outside situation that has you feeling negative emotion - it is your thought, interpretation, and meaning about the subject that has you feeling negative emotion. Nobody or anything can make you feel anything - it is always your choice to feel first. When something happens in our day we have a choice to interpret it in one of many ways - we could interpret it as bad, good, or neutral. But when we feel bad it is only because we are looking at the situation in a limited perspective. Think of your emotions as guidance tools from within that help you direct your thoughts. If you feel bad that means you are looking at this situation in a way that your inner, broader self does not. So, feeling bad would serve you to help you notice when you are thinking thoughts that are not congruent with who you really are at your core - your negative emotions serve as a guide to help you steer your ship in another direction.
What to do about it
Understanding that your thoughts are what cause you to feel any emotion, not the things happening to you, can help you to make better choices when it comes to food and drink as it puts the power of choice in your hands. If when you feel negative emotion you take a moment to investigate what thoughts are present you will have somewhere to start working in an attempt to slowly shift from your current perspective to one of a lighter and easier perspective. In your relief, your interest in reaching for an external aid to comfort you will/should diminish. Then, from wherever you are you can continue to reach for thoughts that feel even better. The idea is from where ever you are you can almost always reach for better feeling thoughts. I think the easiest thing to do when you feel negative thought is to ask yourself: "what am I making this mean?" Most often, when you understand the meaning behind the thoughts and emotions, it is much easier to let go. So, if you change your thoughts you may not still want to reach for the food or drink but if you do chances are you will do it without overindulging. At that point it's just consuming something delicious rather than reaching for something physical to create an improved emotion.
Split energy
Most often when we are at holiday parties we are presented with many tasty items that would entice our taste buds - things that we would just enjoy eating (with no negative emotional drivers present). When presented with these things we often have one of two things happen: either we indulge in a bit (or a lot - see above) of the item and we feel guilty for eating it or we deprive ourselves of eating something we desire for fear of the result - the first being the bigger issue.
This split energy works against us in keeping a healthy body through the holidays (or any time of year for that matter), especially if we eat with worry, guilt, regret or remorse. If we eat (or drink) something our palette would enjoy but feel negative emotion like guilt about eating it at the same time, we create an energetic and chemical environment in our body that prohibits the body from doing the best it can with the food ingested. Thing is, provided with the right environment, the body has the ability to take anything we put in our body and either extrapolate the good stuff from it or turn whatever it is into something that the body can use - after all, your body is the most advanced chemical factory in the world. But if you eat something and have regret or guilt about it, the negative emotions from your regret/guilt/etc. will cause chemical and energetic responses in your body that will impair the body's ability to work efficiently, making this food to be potentially as bad as you originally thought it to be. It's almost like a "self-fulfilling prophecy" in that if you think it is bad, it will be handled that way - not because you told your body to but because your body will not be working at 100% - energetically (vibrationally) and chemically your body will be out of alignment.
If you find yourself in this situation you have one of two choices: either make peace with the food/drink so you can enjoy it - truly enjoy it for the eating/drinking experience - or don't eat it (never eat anything you have split energy about). To make peace you would need to acknowledge first the thoughts about it that have you feeling bad. Feeling negative would insinuate that you have thoughts that are not congruent with what your broader, more knowledgeable inner self knows to be true - these are the thoughts to challenge, to make peace with. Once identified, work to find thoughts about the item that feel better and continue to do this until you are in a place of peace about this item - meaning no negative feelings are associated with this item. If you do, you will be aligning yourself to the tone of inner self and will be creating the environment where your body can handle this item with no problem and you truly get to enjoy the experience the item has to offer. And if you don't eat it, which may be the path of least resistance, you may want to at some point challenge your beliefs surrounding these items so you can live your life a bit freer and begin to enjoy things (of course in moderation) a bit more. Note: You can start to challenge your belief by looking around for evidence of people being able to consume these items while being able to maintain their healthy and lean body. Sometimes we need to see evidence of something before we are able to accept it as possible for us.
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