Five Ways to Stay on Your Diet Over the Holidays
8 Ways to Eat Healthy and Still Enjoy the Holidays
Get Fit Not Fat Over the Holidays
Stop the Friggin Insanity
Seems
like almost every year around this time, the industry comes out with
their usual crap advice for the holidays. Every year I get just as
infuriated and feel as a responsible coach it’s my job to address this
nonsense. Why? Because this particular nonsense has the potential to do
so much real damage in the human psyche.
Every
year industry diet and industry fitness “experts” write on ways and
means to control your holiday eating or do specific workouts for burning
off those extra indulgences. (Hence my mock headlines above.) This is a
lot more troubling than most of you will accept. And it is also a huge
mistake!
I think the best reference here is the lyrics of the En Vogue song, “Free Your Mind, and the Rest Will Follow.”
Well the Industry Gurus in their infinite genius of stupidity do not
want you to free your minds. They, in fact, intentionally or not, want
to give you cause to be anxious and fearful about your
celebrations over the holidays. Creating anxiety about how to control
your eating during Thanksgiving or Christmas, and how to workout to burn
off the excess creates a huge psychological battle in the minds of
those who buy into this nonsense. Cultural traditions of holidays and
the good spirits they engender in oneself are now purposely
psychologically negotiated with conscious trepidation of “don’t overdo
it,” “don’t eat too much,” “don’t gain weight.” In terms of wellness,
this is a huge mistake.
People
have been connecting food with celebration for as long as recorded
history. Isn’t that what the first Thanksgiving was represented by?
Appreciation and indulgence in bounty and abundance. See, the diet and
training industry have this backwards because of their bodily
obsessions. Being prisoner to diet-consciousness and body awareness at
these once per year times, violate the human spirit and that natural
food-connection we all have: and the resultant confusion and anxiety
creates much more psychic harm than good. “Free your mind and the rest will follow.” Indeed.
But
what is the mantra of the fitness and diet industry during the
holidays? It is dangerously the exact opposite: more like “trap and
confuse the mind and anguish will follow regardless.” I get sick of this
nonsense every year. If there is one message I can get out there it’s
that this is just flat out WRONG.
There are only a select few, shared, heightened, positive cultural indulgences in a year. To “flatten”
this experience with weight consciousness and diet consciousness is to
flatten the spirit and the intended sensibilities as well.
Most
of us have our culturally held traditions in a very specific memory
context of childhood. These memory connections are usually positive and
expressive. This is important to hold while dealing with the notion that
takes that connection away; that notion of diet and body-image sabotage
during the holidays.
Diet-Consciousness vs. Food-Connection
At
my last workshop we spent a good deal of time going over what is wrong
with the diet and fitness industry and their lack of basic understanding
of “food connection” in people. Before anyone can be healthily diet conscious they must first be healthily food connected. (You can see some points to follow to reach this in my 2010 Workshop Workbook)
Let’s stop creating guilt and shame to surround the most cherished traditions and celebrations that include food. This intrusion of confusion into the psyche is damaging. This is the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bath water. You cannot “free your mind”
and fully embrace your holidays if your mind is set to consciously be
preoccupied with diet and body image at a time when it wants to be free
and enjoy human connection. Food connection is tied, even in memory, to
that human connection! How do words like “guilt,” “fear,” “worry,”
“anxiety,” connect to the word “celebration”” THEY DON’T!!!
The inner turmoil this creates will usually result in a sabotage of both
diet and celebration of the holidays, in the most intimate and
important ways. Most who struggle/suffer/deny/stress about food or
training during the holidays just have that play out down the road
anyway. Why is it everyone is led to “trust their beliefs about diet
rules during this time, and question their bodies” How about instead
learning to “question your beliefs about diet rules during this time,
and trusting your bodies?”
Celebrating
with food, these special traditions can be a good thing. They are a
good thing. Celebration that includes holiday festive food can reconnect
you to yourself and positive memories. It’s expressive.
Generating guilt and shame and worry surrounding these traditions is ridiculous nonsense. It’s repressive.
We need to get back to our mental/emotional healthy food-connection;
instead of the guilt/shame/pressure cycle of diet-consciousness. So for
the purpose of this blog here is what you need to know (these are also
the emphasis of good coaching relationships as well):
The
way you eat is inseparable from your actual beliefs about being alive.
Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about
what and how you love, what and how you fear, what and how you feel, who
you are, and how you live! This relationship is either a gateway to
freedom, or a self-imposed prison. Your relationship to food not only
tells how you relate to the world, but also tells on what level you know
and love or respect yourself. So, even separate from holidays ask
yourself, is this relationship angry, hostile, antagonistic, fearful?
Controlling? Desperate? Confusing? Infantile and Immature? Abusive? Or
is it Loving? Nurturing? Indulging? Engaging? Supportive? Healthy?
Invigorating? Holistic? Etc. (I think you get the picture)
When
people are told over and over again to subtract their enjoyment of food
from the traditional celebrations they have known their whole life,
then there is no more safe-haven. And then there is no more a place to
ground oneself into being and feeling whole; embracing joy. Without
being able to psychologically embrace the whole experience of the
holidays, including food indulgence, then more is lost than gained. If
you want to measure that and judge it on a bathroom scale, then I say
even greater is the loss. “Free your mind” indeed.
I’ve
been in this industry for decades. I know its strength and weaknesses,
its truths and its falsehoods. And to generate an attitude of fear and
guilt and shame around the holidays via diet and training consciousness
is a mistake; a travesty, really. You can never own or have a truly
positive experience with anything that generates fear, stress, or
anxiety.
The Industry message seems to be, “Don’t let your holiday experience get in the way of your diet strategy, body-image goals.” To that, I say, “bullocks!”
I would rather put it this way, “Don’t let your diet-strategy, body-image goals get in the way of your holiday experience.”
See, the diet and fitness industry is very myopic and reductionist in thinking. Experts from this industry try to always “reduce”
variables to simple equations that are not always true or valuable. The
operating mantra of the diet/fitness industry is always the equation of
behavior àoutcome. However most of us know this to be quite limited on second round inspection. The truth may be more to the point of thought à behavior à outcome. And of course, at an even higher level of awareness is the truth of thought/feeling àbehavior àoutcome à experience.
To create emotional angst around part of the holiday celebratory
experience is to negate and dilute that experience. Emotional connection
is imperative to a positive experience. Therefore in terms of the
holidays a positive emotional connection to food is also a part of the
overall experience. It should be embraced, not poisoned with rules or
false constructs.
Take
my own approach for example. Every year I look forward to the holidays.
This time each year one of the big Supermarket Chains releases their
“Insider Report” for all the seasonal goodies they offer. We look
forward and anticipate its arrival, and we circle all the foods we will
indulge in. Then we go get them. All part of the “experience” for
us you see. I take two weeks off each Christmas, and I celebrate. I
might have hot chocolate or egg nog or Christmas Cookies for breakfast.
Whatever. I embrace all of it, especially the food.
I don’t weigh down
the experience with morning weigh ins, or double-cardio. I don’t
workout at all during that time. I just enjoy and embrace the whole of
the spirit of the tradition. Food is part of that connected-experience. I am food-connected, not diet-conscious.
Therefore I’ve never had a weight problem or a diet issue, and yet I’ve
been practicing this behavior for decades. Some things are more
important than diet, weight scale, mirror. Some things are bigger and
have been part of who we are. Reduce, flatten, or sabotage those things,
and you reduce, flatten, and sabotage wellness as well.
I mean, what is the message here, have a good holiday, but holiday
food is the enemy. Create a mindset of “resistance”? I say to do that
is to have your holiday experience be one of collateral damage,
spiritually speaking. I know many of you are nodding your heads in
agreement with that sentence!
The
diet/fitness industry would have you believe that this time of year,
“well doing leads to well being.” I say bullcrap to that. What I have
always tried to teach and coach, and especially so this time of year, is
the deeper reality, that “well-being leads to well-doing.”
I’m
reminded of the lady who wore a ribbon of achievement she received from
Weight Watchers which she changed slightly. It said, “I stayed on my
diet and lost 10 lbs over the holidays,” and she wrote underneath that:
“and I still feel like sh$t!”
The expression is “Happy Thanksgiving.” It’s not “Happy Thanksgiving, but…”
The expression is “Merry Christmas” It’s not “Merry Christmas, but...”
The
expression is “Season’s Greetings.” Don’t allow the industry to prey on
you and reduce this emotionally to self-induced “Season’s Beatings.”
Diet consciousness or food connection; and a time for every purpose under heaven.
Free your mind, and the rest will follow! Indeed.
Time
to reconnect. Life and food are to be engaged, not resisted. And it’s
alright to indulge with food to do that. There is a difference between
whole-heartedly honoring and embracing tradition vs. the eating
convenience of a Friday night.
Some of you will get it, some of you will not.
Sincerely, Happy Holidays to you all!
