Updated: December 12, 2023
Episode 138. What To Do The Day After Thanksgiving
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THREE TIPS ON WHAT TO DO THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING
Tip 1: MOVE ON. If you overate, let’s not make this bigger than it was. It was one day; one meal. You ate. Remove the drama and move on. If you ate and everything was fine, celebrate it and know you can do this!
Tip 2: SKIP THE LEFTOVERS. Do you eat leftovers because you don’t want to waste food? Girl. You’re doing much more harm than good. Toss them, portion and plan them, or you’re gonna WAIST them. Nobody wants a WAIST full of waste.
Tip 3: STOP THE JUDGMENT. If you overate yesterday, check-in and ask why. Were you reacting to something somebody said? Did you tune out and just eat without noticing? Quit judging yourself and start figuring yourself out.
In this week’s podcast, we deep dive into all the things that come up today. The good, bad and especially ugly. Listen HERE to my best tips on What to Do the Day After Thanksgiving.
Feeling Bad About Overeating
After Thanksgiving, you probably have one or two things going on:
1) You listened to all of my pre-Thanksgiving podcasts and you were on plan and no one pissed you off.
2) Or I listened to the podcasts and things were going good till someone pissed me off or that pie was brought out and I ate all the things.
What are you going to do today?
Whether the day went awesome or not great, don’t judge it. It just happened. There’s no need for subtle aggression. That judgment or subtle aggression will wear you out.
- Listen to what you’re saying to yourself instead of trying to change it.
- Listening to what you’re saying to yourself will help you to slowly speak differently to yourself.
Notice your feelings and don’t feel bad because you have bad feelings:
Stop trying to change how you feel on the rough days, instead just sit with it. Allow the feelings to be there instead of saying “I don’t want to feel this.” Sitting with it is not wallowing on the couch. Think about how you are physically feeling and then see what you’re thinking that is creating the physical feelings in your body. Sitting with it means paying attention to what’s going on and realizing you’re the one creating it.
- Don’t frantically work to feel something different.
- Be with the emotion mentally.
- Listen for the sentences you’re telling yourself.
How often are you negotiating in your head how you SHOULD be feeling? Instead it’s okay to say right now it’s time to be tired, right now it’s time to be scared, right now it’s time to be sad.
- After Thanksgiving, if you feel like you ate too much, use it as an opportunity to figure out what to do next. Not as a signal that you’re broken and going to fuck up the next 30 days, you decide how the next 30 days go. After Thanksgiving, it’s okay to feel bad about the way the day went or dread over the rest of the holidays, etc.
- You don’t have to feel anything, just notice what you’re thinking and decide if that feeling is worth it. Maybe you feel awesome because you stuck to your plan on Thanksgiving. Remember that’s how you want to feel the next 30 days. Or you may feel guilty or like you fucked up, if so, why do you feel like that today? It’s probably because of how you showed up for yourself.
- Look at what you did and didn’t do and learn. Allow disappointment or guilt to teach you how you want to show up for the next 30 days. Don’t just start over on January 1st.
If you have anxiety, before you can quit feeling it, you have to quit thinking it is bad.
- Don’t be anxious about anxiety.
- Sometimes anxiety is going to hit. Sometimes, at the moment, you feel like you’ll never recover, but you will.
- The fastest way to feel better is to quit feeling bad about feeling bad.
You may have to pray and practice gratitude for the rest of your life, and that’s okay. Don’t wish it will go away. You may always wake up with anxiety, handle it, and move on.
Write down what went right and what you could do better:
#1 Don’t make yesterday anything other than it was a meal.
- These are the things that happened.
- These are the things on repeat.
- These are the things we’re tweaking going forward.
#2 Leftovers.
I have a client that overate because she was putting away leftovers and some of the food didn’t fit in the container and she didn’t want to waste it, so she ate it. She felt bad for the rest of the afternoon. It didn’t dawn on her that she could have grabbed a second container. Plus, what is the worst thing that could have happened if she threw the extra away?
- When losing weight, it’s not your food plan that will get you there:
- It’s what you’re thinking about that will get you there.
- Wasting food isn’t a bad thing,.
- Throwing it away isn’t the only way to waste food.
2. Those bites you’re taking when you’re already full are taking minutes off of your life.
- Your body was designed to eat just enough, not to be overstuffed.
- You overfilling your body is wasting your life.
- You can also waste food in your body.
- Throwing it in the garbage is the better option.
3. After Thanksgiving, don’t hang on to a ton of leftovers just so you don’t waste it. If you keep it, eat it responsibly. Portion it out.
- Don’t keep leftovers because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.
- Don’t keep them because it would be wasteful and then you binge on them at night.
- Don’t let “I’m going to waste it” be the difference between you feeling good about yourself or not feeling good about yourself.
- Don’t hang on to food because you’re afraid to throw it away or to hurt someone’s feelings.
- Don’t use being broke as a vessel to overeat or to eat junk. You can figure out how to eat healthy. Rice and beans and a stock of broccoli are cheap. Stop using your situation against yourself.
#3 Did I show up yesterday for myself or in reaction to someone else? Did I eat in reaction to something someone said or based on how I wanted to feel and my goals?
If you shoved pie in your face because someone said they noticed you gained weight, you showed up for them and they’re opinion, not for yourself.
- Don’t allow them to hurt your feelings.
- You might be proud of how you handled one situation, but need to look at another.
- There’s such a benefit to know what’s going on.
- You get to decide if you want to use it to make a change in the future.
The only reason you’re ever afraid of what is going on in your head is because of what you think of yourself because of it. Quit judging it. You get to choose what’s next.
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