The simple 3-step process for surviving the holidays without gaining extra weight
Mama, are you thinking about the holiday season yet? I know it doesn’t technically kick off until we’re a little closer to Halloween, but I want to let you in on a little secret! If you want to make it through the holiday season without gaining extra weight, then you have to start thinking about it now!
Normally, if you go to a party or celebration and overeat, you might gain a pound or two, but when you go back to your normal eating patterns the weight should go away in a week or so. However, the holidays are different. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s are so close together that it can make it hard for our weight to stabilize between each indulgent holiday.
If you want the upcoming year to be different, if you want to make it through the holidays having enjoyed them, instead of hating yourself, then you have to follow this 3-step process! These are the tips and tricks I teach the mamas in my Macros Made Easy Program to help them thrive during the holidays without gaining extra weight!
Look at what your holiday plans are
The first step is always, always, always make a plan! Each month, I have my Macros Made Easy mamas take a look at their calendar and see what events, special occasions, nights out, etc. they have coming up. You need to know what you have on the calendar so that you can plan around it.
This is especially during the holidays! Halloween parties, Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, and alllll the Christmas and winter holiday parties can quickly add up! If you don’t pay attention to all the parties, and just eat whatever you want, your body isn’t going to be able to keep up. You will gain weight.
I always equate overeating to overspending because it’s easier for a lot of people to understand.
Imagine you have a Christmas shopping budget of $3,000 and you have three kids. You could say, I’m going to spend $1,000 on each kid, but when you go shopping for your oldest you don’t pay attention to price tags and you go to the register to check out and you’ve spent $2,000. Now you only have $1,000 for your other two kids. That would make a mess of things, right?
Your food budget works the same way. You only have so many calories your body can burn. If you overeat at one party, you can’t just return the food. (Please, please just keep it! No one wants it back!) Now, you have less to eat at your other two parties.
Instead of depriving yourself for the rest of the holiday season, take a look at what you have going on, then prioritize which parties you’ll stick to your food boundaries for and which ones you want to have more flexibility.
For example, I’d much rather “spend” my calories at my husband’s holiday work party where I get to dress up and eat amazing food than at my kids’ holiday class party where they’re serving hard, store-bought cookies and juice.
Deciding ahead of time which parties and foods are important to you will keep you on track during the holidays. It will help you avoid feeling deprived all the time and you’ll make it through to January in much better shape!
I know it’s overwhelming to try and figure out everything you have going on in three months, so I wanted to make it easier for you! I have a free events calendar that will help you see not only what events you have coming up but it will give you the option to stay within your food boundaries or have more flexibility! That way you can visually see how much you’re going to be indulging this holiday season! You can grab it for free in my Facebook group, Busy Mom Simple Nutrition.
Plan to eat well during the holidays
There’s nothing worse than sitting around the table with your friends and family and having to pass up on all of your favorite holiday foods because you’re “eating healthy right now.” Depriving yourself of food isn’t healthy! A huge part of healthy eating is enjoying your food!
I want you to enjoy the food that makes you happy but I want you to think about more than just one meal. You need to know how to think about your food daily and how to balance out the fun food with the more nutritious foods.
Backward meal planning
First, you should learn how to plan your meals each day so that they fit into your nutritional boundaries. My backward meal planning system is the fool-proof way to enjoy a meal without letting things get completely off the rails.
If you have a party or event in the evening that you want to enjoy, then you should! However, most people think that if they’re going to have an off-meal during the day, then they should just ignore how they eat for the rest of the day because they are blowing it anyway. But, that’s exactly how one meal gets you into big trouble!
Instead, plan the rest of your day around your off-meal. If you’re going to a dinner party where you know there are going to be decadent, delicious foods, then earlier in the day you should choose foods that are lower in fat and carbs and packed full of protein!
This is how you create a balanced diet! It needs to be taken day by day! Don’t let one meal or one day stop you from reaching your goals! Sometimes it won’t feel fun to eat eggs for breakfast, and a chicken breast for lunch, but remember that your dinner out will be fun. You need to make space for nutritious foods along with fun foods.
Healthy food choices and swaps!
The second way to prioritize healthy eating during the holidays is to make healthy food options available! When you’re meal planning for your holiday dinners make sure that there are foods on the menu that will fit into your health goals.
For some holidays, like Halloween, where there aren’t really traditional foods, so it can be easy to plan a healthy menu. My family loves to eat cornbread and chili on Halloween because it feels festive but it’s also packed with veggies, protein and filling carbs. Which will balance out all the candy my kids will eat!
Having a few go-to healthy meals that the whole family enjoys can make holiday meal planning so simple!
However, it gets a little more difficult for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas because a lot of the foods we eat on those holidays have deep traditions behind them. Some of those foods are only available during that time of the year and we don’t want to miss out on them.
For these occasions, again make sure you prioritize which foods you must have and which ones you’re ok skipping. That being said, you can always make a little healthy swap for some of the traditional holiday foods.
I have an amazing healthy holiday food swaps resource that’s available over in my free Facebook group, Busy Mom Simple Nutrition. Head over there to grab it! It’s full of recipes like mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, sweet potato casserole and pumpkin pie! It will be a lifesaver during the holidays.
I know that if you start to create awareness around which holiday foods are the most important (or delicious!) and you enjoy those without filling up on foods that don’t make you happy, you’ll both enjoy your holiday season and not put on extra pounds.
Know your body and mind
I saved the best for last, but please don’t leave because this section isn’t talking about easy fixes. It may seem like the least important part of weight loss, but it’s actually what’s been missing from all of your efforts. Knowing and understanding your body and mind is essential to not gaining weight during the holidays!
Let’s start with the easier part, knowing your body. A lot of mamas are so busy that we learn to ignore our full and hunger cues because we don’t have time to eat or because we’re too tired to think of something to eat! (Can I get an Amen Sista? if you feel this? Bahaha)
The problem with ignoring our body’s cues is that eventually, we lose that connection to our bodies! We basically go into starvation mode. We work ourselves until we can’t go anymore then we stuff our faces because we don’t know when we’ll get another chance to eat.
To change this you need to start listening and paying attention to the signals your body gives you. I have a simple system that I teach to help busy mamas recognize their full and hunger cues. It’s called the -2 to 2 System.
The first step is to create a hunger scale. Zero is your neutral point. You’re neither hungry nor full. Numbers 1 to 10 indicate fullness and numbers -1 to -10 indicate hunger. I want you to jot these numbers down on a piece of paper or a note on your phone because you’re going to write down the signals your body gives you for each number.
When you think to yourself, “hmm I’m hungry” jot that down! That’s probably your body’s first sign that hunger is approaching! When you’re hangry and you could destroy anyone or anything in your path for food, that’s probably a -10. You don’t want to let your body get to that point!
On the other side of the hunger scale, a 10 would be that after Thanksgiving dinner feeling where you can’t move, you want to throw up and you need to be rolled to the couch. Again, not a healthy place to be.
I want you to stay within the -2 to 2 range. This is a little bit past the thoughts, “I’m hungry” or “I’m feeling full” I want you to feel satisfied when you’re done eating and I want you to eat before you start getting frustrated with people. That’s the perfect range for you to enjoy food without going overboard.
Some people will err on the side of getting too hungry before a big meal, but I want you to realize that that doesn’t serve you! The hungrier you are, the easier it is to overeat! Listen to your body and know when you need to eat and when you need to stop.
Next, let’s talk about getting your mind in the right place. A lot of times we think weight loss or even eating healthy is a physical thing, but there is a huge mental aspect to it that is often ignored.
Think back to the last holiday meal you had (even if it was a Labor Day BBQ or a birthday party) what did you say to yourself before and after that meal? Did you speak kindly to yourself or did you beat yourself up for what went wrong?
Women are incredibly hard on themselves for what they eat and it’s not healthy. Instead of beating yourself up after a meal that went off-track, what if you showed yourself some grace?
Saying, “I’m an idiot, why did I eat that much?” doesn’t help you lose weight. It can actually make you pack on more! What if instead, you thought to yourself, “I enjoyed my food last night. It gave me the energy to enjoy the people I was with. It was a ton of fun and today I’m going to go back to my normal boundaries so that I feel my best.”
What a huge difference, right? It’s important to take some time to reflect on our choices after a holiday event. Did you stick to your plan? Did things get off track? It’s ok either way!
If you’re avoiding reflecting on your choices, then that’s a huge red flag! Is there a reason you’re avoiding yourself? Are you disappointed? Are you ashamed? You’re having these feelings and while they may be uncomfortable you need to sit with them and understand where they’re coming from!
These conversations that you have with yourself around your food choices are the most important (and empowering) conversations you can have! Having these uncomfortable conversations are going to be the key to gaining self-understanding and grace! You’ll also build mental resiliency and become the healthy woman you’ve always dreamed of becoming when you take the time to think through your food choices.
Shame, guilt and regret won’t help you lose weight, but reflection, knowledge and action will! Take the time to journal out what you’re thinking and feeling and turn it into new thoughts that will help you move forward.
This holiday season has the potential to be the best one yet! If you can create a plan and stick to it, I know that you’ll have the healthy holiday season that you’ve always wanted!
If you’re nervous about making it through the holidays without gaining extra weight, then let’s talk! I can help you stick to your goals and get to January feeling the best you’ve ever felt - without having to deprive yourself of your favorite holiday foods! Schedule a free discovery call to get started!
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