‘Tis the Season… for more cookies, calories, and emotional catastrophes!

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‘Tis the Season… for more cookies, calories, and emotional catastrophes!

How to get aware and to take better care of YOU.

Ok — we all know that we can go a bit overboard at this time of year. So much temptation and it’s incredibly difficult to eat clean. But, is it just the kind of food we eat or the “why” we eat the food?

Why do you eat at this time of year? Do you notice changes in how you relate to food, your body image, and stress leading up to and during the holidays? (That would be about now.)

It’s possible that the holidays – and all the flurry of activity – are making you feel too much. And that could be why you’re eating too much

Do you reach for what you consider “bad” food or too much food when stressed, or do you feel badly about eating “bad” food when you’re stressed?

Do you find yourself taking the emotional temperature of a room, and notice you soak it up like a sponge?

Does chewing on a cookie or holiday chocolate calm you down?

If you said yes to any of these, you may be one of those highly sensitive people whose empathy goes on tilt overload and sends you to the fridge to calm down.

You could be eating solely as a means to get “grounded,” not because you’re a glutton or a food addict. It’s a whole different dance, dealing with feelings at this time of year. And it can become a vicious cycle, too.

Most highly sensitive people don’t feel grounded in their own skin. That sense of being firmly planted on the ground is what allows you to turn down the volume of palpable stress. When we’re not grounded, it’s really hard to turn anything down, much less food! Putting food in your mouth is a purely physical, present-moment, sensory experience and is often the quickest detour we can find to take us away from the atmosphere of stress that’s running our days.

Try going to the mall on the busiest day. Bet you feel assaulted when you’re surrounded by the shopping brigade.

Other people’s stressed out emotions are like a big churning emotional catastrophe. You walk into them like a cloud of energy and then you tune into that negative energy, feel accosted by it, and then you need an escape from it! BAM — you don’t even notice you’ve just eaten half a box of holiday treats until your pants start to feel tight, or your friend mentions the weird design of crumbs on your beautiful shirt.

Who just ate that?

You, my friend. You.

So how do we handle this?

First, you breathe. You have to be willing to become aware of your habits.

Take a few days to notice and journal about the times this eat-when-you’re stressed behavior shows up. You’ll quickly see a pattern. Then you can implement some small but powerful changes.

Change exercise #1: Deep breathing. I’m serious! Take a deep breath and create the image of releasing stressful feelings when you exhale. Imagine what it feels like and looks like for those feelings of stress to leave your body. Exhale all of that stress and breathe IN the calm.

Change exercise #2: The honesty plate. Put everything you might possibly THINK you want to eat on a plate and sit down to eat it. Look at what’s on the plate. Think about how you’ll feel after eating everything on the plate. This small act alone could save you so much agony, since by the time you go through the motions you probably won’t want what’s there.

And treats – we all deserve a treat now and then. Allow yourself that treat but save it for dinner. Before you eat it, though, ask your body if that treat is what your body really wants. Just ask…and see what your body answers.

9 times out of 10 your body will say nope! once your mind has calmed down.

And can we talk about the D word for a minute?

Do NOT diet. This is a sure-fire way for you to berate yourself into gaining weight. Self-care is #1. That is about self-love, forgiveness, and self-honesty.

So this holiday season it’s about the “calm” not the cookies, the compassion not the calories. You might even drop a few pounds, or at the very least not gain that expected weight you’ve come to feel powerless over at this time of year.

 

And now, I have an invitation for you.

 

On January 15, I’m hosting a one-day, one-time only webinar to celebrate the release of my book Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much in paperback. In that webinar, I’ll help you go from so much drama to HOT MAMA! by looking at the reasons we all eat when we’re stressed. We’ll wrap up with a 15-minute Q&A session so you have a chance to ask your burning questions.

And here’s the best part – you can access the webinar two ways:

1)    Completely free. Join us. Listen. Learn. Love yourself. Seriously – it’s free.

2)    For only $14.00, the first 100 people to choose this option will get a signed copy of my book – Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much AND my bonus extras:

1. YOUR CHOICE of Bonus CD to go with the Book.
2. Be FIRST to hear about (and get early bird rates on) the Weight Release Energetix program launching in January.

*EVERYONE who registers for my webinar will be entered into a draw to win a Whole Body Vibration machine worth over $2000.00. Exciting!

Isn’t it time you stopped making New Years Resolutions and gave yourself the gift of the body you always wanted.

Skip the lipo. Hop on a webinar with me on January 15^th. It’ll be a lot more fun than lipo, too!

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