Hello everybody. Welcome back. So today I want to talk about handling the holidays. So if you are a No BS woman, and you’re listening to this, one of my private members, you know that we spend the month of November every year going through a specially designed course around weight loss in the holidays. Because the holidays in themselves, they just bring up a lot of our food shit and a lot of our personal shit about family, about our bodies and everything. So today in the podcast, what I want to do is I want to address one very specific thing that I think will be helpful for all of my listeners, and that is being around food that you ain’t normally around.

So one of the things that my clients have told me for years and years and years, and every year I do coaching calls and I work with them, and I try to help them understand that during the holidays, yes, you are around very special and unique foods, but we have to have a really good mindset around it. Otherwise we’re going to go through our holidays, scared, feeling helpless, out of control, fuck it eating. And usually what I see is people will give up on weight loss on all the days where they aren’t surrounded by their favorite food, all because of the fear that they have about maybe you go to two or three parties, plus if you’re celebrating Christmas, maybe you do Christmas travel and you do Christmas stuff, maybe you do Thanksgiving. We have all kinds of cultural holidays and all types of religions that go on around the months of October, November and December.

So one of the things that I try to address with people is you’ve really got to have a good mindset around being around these foods instead of going in with a shitty, scary, out of control mindset. So I want all of you to remember, food in and of itself doesn’t control you. There is not one cookie or drink, piece of bread, pasta bowl, whatever you think, not any of it is going to, number one, grow lips and talk to you. Number two, whoop out some handcuffs, handcuff you to a chair. And then number three, insert itself straight into your mouth. You will be a willing participant on eating based on how you’re thinking about the food. So it’s really important that we get our minds wrapped around how much control we actually do have. We get our minds wrapped around, is holiday food actually a problem?

So many of you sit around and think that holiday foods are a problem when I’m just like, no, they’re not a problem. The holidays aren’t all year long. The real problem is the 350 other days of the year that you’re sitting around eating like a jackass because you keep thinking food is a problem. No one’s overweight because they ate Grandma’s Christmas cookies. Seriously, your year long issue with weight has nothing to do with cookies on Christmas. It’s all the other days that you’re eating cookies because you’ve had a bad day, or because you think cookies are powerful, and you’re not exploring all that, and you’re not figuring that shit out.

Don’t forget, in this podcast, I’m all about you figuring out how to solve the root cause of weight loss. If you’re overeating or you’re overweight, there’s a root cause to all of it. So we have to quit thinking like, “Oh, what I need is a good holiday plan, built by somebody that tells me what to eat. Or you know what? The only way I can lose weight is if I just remove myself from all of the foods.” That’s not true because when you remove yourself from the food, you’re not removing yourself from the core root cause problem, which is you’re afraid of the food and you don’t know why you’re afraid of the food yet. And when you break it all down and you get empowered, then guess what? You can go to all your holiday things, be around all the food and just make a decision whether you’re going to eat it or not. Instead of going in and feeling powerless because you never made a decision, you keep thinking the cookie is making the decision, the cookie is talking to me.

All right, So let me go over these three steps and let’s see if we can get some clarity around how to go from thinking that being around holiday foods is going to be a problem, it’s going to prevent me from losing weight, that you can’t control yourself. How do we shift from that over to going into the holidays and thinking there are things I can do to help myself through the holidays? There are foods that are completely worth it, and there are some foods that I eat every holiday season that aren’t worth it, but I’m eating it because I’m giving up. There are so many ways to navigate the holidays and still enjoy them, still enjoy the food and lose weight.

So the very first thing that I like to help my clients do is when they come on, and they want to get coached, and we want to talk through how they’re going to show up for the holidays, is the first tactic is to realize that you can be selective ahead of time about which foods you really want and which ones you’ve been eating in the past and you didn’t really want them. So I think this is the first place where we start taking some of our own control back over. So what I always tell people is, “Tell me when you think of the holidays, what are the worth it foods? Let’s just get really clear on what you absolutely love.” And then we talk about, “And why do you love it? What makes it special?”

Because a lot of times what we do is when we go through that list and I add the part where, “Tell me why it’s special? Why are you going to want to eat it? Why is this going to be something that you will look back and be like, zero regrets. I’m proud of my decisions. I’m glad that I enjoyed it.” Because if you’re going into it with that attitude, then guess what? You’ll savor it. You’re going to not eat it from guilt. You’re going to eat it because you thought it through and you really do want it. And when you are enjoying something, you don’t need to eat too much of it. When you’re eating it from fear, shame, or guilt, you tend to eat more trying to mask the shame, fear and guilt that you have around the eating.

So what we want to do is we want to get super clear in our mind first and foremost on what is special? What is a worth it food? Think about all of the parties, think about all of the gatherings you’re going to have. What are the things that you’re just like, I am definitely going to want these things, these are the things that will be worth it? This was always helpful for me in the past because I figured out that there were very few things at the holidays that I really, really wanted. But there were a lot of things that I tended to eat during the holidays that I just was saying, “Well, it’s the holidays. I might as well.” And I remember going to my in-law’s house. My father-in-law makes the best stuffed mushrooms. Oh my God, they’ve got cheese and mayonnaise. And I mean, it is all the things. Them things are backstroking in oil by the time they come out of the oven. And I love them.

And so when I was thinking about when I would go to my in-laws, what are things that are really going to be important? And I was like, those mushrooms, I want to eat those mushrooms. And then my mother-in-law used to make really good peanut butter cookies. And I was like, peanut butter cookies and mushrooms. Those two things. Then I thought back on, all right, all the other holidays, what else did we have? I realized she would make sweet potato casserole. They owned a pizza restaurant. So when we would get there for a couple of days, we would order pizza from the restaurant and stuff. And I realized while my husband loved the pizza, it’s just okay to me. I mean, they do have delicious pizza. Do not get me wrong. If you live in Union City, Tennessee, you should try Snappy Tomato Pizza. That is my father-in-law’s restaurant. Him and my mother-in-law are now divorced, but everything’s cool. But he owns the restaurant and delicious pizza.

But I’m not a huge pizza fan, first and foremost. I like pizza, but it’s not something that I’m like, you know what? I’m going to look back on this Christmas and I’m going to be like, “Thank God I had that ranch pizza.” No, but when I look back on many of our Christmases, I think about them fucking mushrooms and them peanut butter cookies. No regrets on those. And when I look back, what I think I appreciate the most, and what I want for all of you is that I went into the holidays deciding these are the foods that will help me make the whole weekend special. Because I believe food can do that. I know a lot of diet coaches are just like, “Food is just fuel.” I don’t believe in that. I think food is fuel, but it’s not just fuel. Food is important to a lot of our cultures.

For me, when I get together with my mother fried chicken, fried chicken livers, those things are special. It reminds me of all of the times that I had Sunday dinner with my granny. It takes me back, it has memory attached to it, it has nostalgia attached to it. So be decisive about what you’re going to eat so that when you get there, you’ve also already decided and used your logical brain, these are the foods that while they taste good, and in the past I’ve ate them, I’ve realized I don’t have great reasons to eat them. So I want to save my eating for the great reasons.

So that’s my first big tip when it comes to the mindset. And I promise you when you do that, you’re going to go in more calm. If nothing else, you’ll have pauses right before you grab some roll that the neighbor brought to a gathering that they probably just bought. It wasn’t like they made them rolls homemade. They got them out of the Kroger, heated them up and brought them in. And you’re eating a couple. Well, because they’re there. I mean, mama brought them, even if mama didn’t make them homemade.

The second thing that you can do to feel more empowered is to remember that when you go and you’re around a lot of the foods that you’re not used to, it doesn’t matter. What truly matters in weight loss is are you hungry before you eat the food? And are you willing to stop when your body says it’s had enough? So you get to rely on what I teach you in the podcast. You get to tell yourself when your brain is freaking out about all the foods you’re going to be around, you get to tell yourself, I’m going to rely on doable hunger. It’s something I can travel with. It’s something that can give me pause before I put something stupid in my mouth. You know when you go, there’s going to be Christmas Reese’s, people are going to have candy laying around and it ain’t special. Just because Reese’s put it in red green foil don’t make the Reese’s special. It’s just like the one at Easter. It’s just like the one in the summer. It just got a different rapper on it.

So when you are relying on doable hunger, you give yourself the opportunity to pause and think. All of my steps are about the thinking. So we are going to think through first what’s actually special? What’s worth it foods? What are the foods that I know if I’m eating them, I’m probably just in fuck it mode or I’m not paying attention? So if I catch myself eating these foods, I at least am aware enough to be like, all right, I can stop it anytime. I’m over here just fuck it eating. I don’t need to do that. I’m over here eating because candy was in a bowl and I grabbed one like I did last year. Oh wait, I forgot. I’m not acting that way no more. I’m going to put the rest down. So you can rely on doable hunger to give you that pause. You can ask yourself before you eat, or even if you start eating, was I even hungry when I started? If not, then I know I can stop if I wasn’t even hungry. And then have checkpoints.

Just tell yourself I’m going to have regular checkpoints of eating because I know it’s easy to get carried away with the fun, the celebration, the food tasting good, your brain’s going to want to go on the autopilot. So figure out some check-in points that you can do to ask if you’ve had enough.

The last thing is don’t save up or earn your food. This is one of those things that’s just laced with diet mentality, and it all comes from thinking that food somehow is good or bad, like there’s no way that you can just have it because you like it, plan for it and want it. Food does not have to earn its way into your stomach. You don’t have to earn your way to eating it. What we’re going to do is we’re going to think through and make decisions. That’s the core skill of weight loss. When you learn how to think through your eating decisions instead of just eating, just reacting, and not making decisions ahead of time, that’s what makes weight loss hard.

So one of the things I want you to remember is the best way you’re going to lose weight this holiday season is to remember, all you have to do is learn how to be present and mindful. Make decisions that you like for yourself. And at any time, remind yourself, I have control. At any time, you can stop and overeat. At any time, you can say no to something. At any time, you can say yes to something because you’ve thought it through in advance.

Now, for my No BS women, when you go through the handling the holidays, you know that we are going to talk about several other things. So if you are one of our members that’s been in the program for a while, a lot of our members love to stay for a year two or three. They not only lose their weight, but they like to stay longer so that they can really make sure the lifestyle is ingrained, they enjoy the community, they enjoy the learning. Let me tell you a few things that we are going to be doing together. And then for those of you who are not in the program, listen to how I outline what they need to do and see if you can do it yourself.

If you can’t do it yourself, I highly encourage you to go to nobsfreecourse.com. Take my free course. That will get you on my email list. And if it’s the first time you’ve taken the free course, you will get a limited time offer to join the membership for $59. And if you decide you don’t want to, then you’ll at least be on the email list and you will get notifications of when we’re open. I send out a Monday Motivation every week that’s just solely dedicated to telling people a little nugget to help them make weight loss easier this week. But if you’re in No BS, a couple of things got added this year that are going to be very helpful.

One of which is I knew a problem that a lot of us have around the holidays, because I’m always talking to y’all about we’re going to solve the root cause problems of weight loss. We are around people and we have a lot of rules around how they should act. And we also have a lot of rules around how we should be at the holidays. Some of the times it’ll sound like this. I should have lost weight since last year. I should have been thinner. I should get my kids all the things. Our expectations for other people are like, they should and shouldn’t say these things. They shouldn’t tempt me. They should thank me for gifts. They should help me in the kitchen.

We just have all of these rules that we have and shoulds just feel like shit. And so I did an entire lesson this year on how do you identify your shoulds? How do you change them? And how do you evaluate them so that you can start having the conversations you may need to need around the holidays? And then sometimes you may just want to drop them. Once you really take a look at them, you’re like, oh gosh, this is kind of a unrealistic expectation that I’ve been carrying around because I’ve never thought about it.

The other thing we’re going to do is I added a lesson on how to address the most common excuses we have around the holidays and what to do about them. So some of the ones that we work on this year are traveling makes it hard or impossible to plan my food. It’s hard to stay on plan or stop it enough when you are surrounded by your favorite foods, which is what this podcast was dedicated to. If I try to lose weight through the holidays, I can’t have fun is another one that comes up a lot. One of the things we’re going to work on is people will be hurt if I don’t eat what they make for me. And then if you are trying to lose weight, you are worried that people are going to think, “Oh, there she goes again, trying to lose weight. She’s like this every year.” How do you deal with the shame of that? And then the last one that we’re going to really work on is those assholes that show up at the holidays and make an out loud comment about our weight.

As you know, inside of No BS, we call those people Uncle [inaudible 00:19:27]. And when Uncle [inaudible 00:19:29] has had enough Mich Ultra, he is sitting around and he’s talking about the size of your ass. So we are going to do that. Plus we’re going to do some of the things that we always do, which is figure out what your goal for the holidays is when it comes to food and your weight. And we are also going to do what we call the doable holiday event planning worksheet where you look through and figure out what your holidays look like and you prepare ahead of time for the food, the feelings. A lot of people, if you’re an introvert, holidays can be a tough time for you. You’re not used to being around a lot of people and it’s exhausting. So we think about that.

And then the last thing that we’re going to do together in this workshop is we are going to be doing the Doable Reentry Plan. So it’s like, here’s how I’m going to plan my holidays, and now here’s how I’m going to make sure that when the holidays are over, I transition back to more of just my day to day losing weight and what does that look like. So I like to always do a really big planning session with all of my members around the holidays because I know so many people give up on weight loss in the holidays. And I’m like, the holidays are the best time to try to lose your weight because during the holidays, all of your overeating excuses, all of your fears and stuff, they naturally come up. This is when we get to see the most of it. And if you are giving up during that time, you miss out on the stuff you’re eating over the rest of the year. It’s always happening all around you.

So we use this time to actually listen to more, get smarter about ourselves and be able to lose weight while having the life that we absolutely want. I make my promise to everybody who listens to this podcast as always, I’m going to teach you how to lose weight the way you’re going to live your life. I’m not putting people on diets. I refuse to do that. All right. Go to nobsfreecourse.com. Take the free course, and get your limited time offer to join our membership for just $59. If you’ve already taken the free course, keep watching your email for Monday Motivations, podcast updates and all the things to help you keep losing weight. All right, talk to y’all soon.