Hey, friend – welcome back! We’ve gotten through two of the food holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving and I want to check in with you: How’s it going so far? Are you on your plan, navigating all the pitfalls of holiday treats in the breakroom and Halloween candy lying around and weathering the stress of gifting and wrapping and shipping? Are you sailing right through, watching the scale go down as you still enjoy your holiday season? If so, then get it girl! Keep going!
But maybe your plan hasn’t quite worked out as you wanted so far. The scale has been a little erratic and while you might have had some wins, you’ve had a few setbacks as well. Maybe you gave in to the temptation to eat more than you planned at Thanksgiving and then allowed yourself to eat whatever the rest of the weekend. Or maybe you’ve been feeling pressed about the projected holiday shipping delays and have been stress eating while you online shop.
It’s ok.
Wherever you are, it’s not over! We have another four weeks to get to our goal of losing weight for the holidays. If you’ve lost weight, wonderful – keep going! If you’ve maintained and are disappointed because you haven’t lost any weight, reflect back to the last few years. Did you gain in the past? If you did, celebrate the improvement you’re making already and recommit to your goal. If you’ve gained weight, take a careful look and see if you would have gained more if you hadn’t been making any effort. Maybe you gained more in past holiday seasons. Either way, you can decide right now to double down and move on. If you don’t try, you certainly will fail. So don’t fail in advance – recommit and keep going forward – you can do this!
This week I want to help you plan your approach for the rest of the season. I know, any time I even mention making a plan tons of objections come up. It’ll take too much time, I like to be spontaneous, I’m too busy to plan, planning is no fun. You can add yours – I’ll wait…
But what if I told you that your plan is exactly what ensures your success? Would you be willing to plan if you knew that your plan makes the difference between losing weight consistently or not?
Your plan is the key to your success.
There are two main ways you get to plan. First, you get to plan for an event – a family dinner, party, office gathering, coffee date. The more you can anticipate what it will be like when you get there, the more you can decide in advance what you’ll eat and drink. Even if you don;t know what’s going to be served, you can make your best guess and figure out what you’d like to have. Feel like wings and stuffed mushrooms? Cool – plan to have the amount you think will fill you up to comfortably full and plan to ignore the rest of the buffet. What kind of coffee drink will work on your plan? Great – order that beverage and ignore the pretty pictures of the new frappe of the season. The more you can decide in advance what you’ll do, the less likely you’ll get derailed in the moment when you’re faced with all the choices. Your brain will make the best decision if you make it before you have lots of tempting options. Trust me – it’s how your brain works and there’s nothing wrong with you. So leverage your brain and make a plan before you head out!
The second plan you need is to work your day so you are hungry when you get to the meetup. If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you know that I teach that the only signal you want to respond to with food is hunger. You’re not hungry, you don’t eat. So even if you have a plan for what you’ll eat when you get there, you won’t eat it if you’re not hungry. Then you’re standing around arguing with yourself about wanting to eat and how good the food looks and how it’s not fair that everyone else is eating and then you give in and eat anyway because of all the brain chatter about the food.
So, plan your day to be hungry when you get there. Want to have your main meal at the party? Have your morning coffee and eat a light lunch. What if you get really hungry a couple of hours before the party? Plan to have a piece of fruit so it’ll be gone and you’ll get hungry again when the dinner is served. You get the point – plan for what you want so you can stick to your plan. Then you enjoy your day, enjoy some food at the event, and love the results on the scale the next day!
You CAN do this! It’s simple but not easy. But you can do hard things – you do them all the time! But if you’re ready to invest in yourself at a higher level, if you’re looking for more accountability than you’ve been able to offer yourself, if you’re looking to take care of yourself like you take care of everyone else, I’m here. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up your one-hour free consultation so you can get the help you need!
Here’s your video help for the week!