Controlling The Festive Season Emotions And Other Temptations!

Now that you have got your weight where you wanted it to be, the holiday season approaches with the speed of light! Delicious, unhealthy, fatty food will be everywhere and they will come with an assortment of family and friends that will add to the emotional pressures on your weight control achievements and what you worked so hard to achieve in weeks or months could be wiped out in days. 

However, and in spite of all of these pressures, you can still limit the damage! And this is going to be my tips for you this Christmas season:

The influence of your emotions

It is not just the delicious food items and the handmade cakes or that favourite dish of yours that are the problems. Research has indicated that emotions play a part. It is those emotions that contribute to overeating at the festive season. A publication concluded that for many of us, our emotions control our desire to overeat. And when that is the case, it was found that, it was harder for those subjects to lose weight and keep it off.

"When it comes to successful weight loss, our research showed that our emotions and our thoughts seem to actually play a bigger role than environmental cues -- we eat in response to feelings -- and for many people, the holidays can drum up a whole treasure chest of feelings, both good and bad," says Niemeier, a researcher with Miriam Hospital's Weight Control & Diabetes Research Center and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Rhode Island.

The weight control argument is confirmed by psychologists. It is those conversations about holidays and the struggles that we face in our lives and share with family members that can create an atmosphere of sadness which in turn makes us more susceptible to comfort eating. "If we have somewhere in our history an emotional response that we responded to by eating, that's going to get triggered again -- that connection gets built and doesn’t get broken, particularly since we keep reinforcing it over and over, over time," says Katherine Muller, PsyD, director of the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Program Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

To reinforce the emotional influence, another research finding concluded that food may act as an emotional trigger causing even further consumption of food in a vicious circle of indulgence. In a similar way to listening to musical memories, the smells of foods associated with events in your life will result in triggering an emotional response which results in having a much bigger portion and possibly repeat helpings of a dish you would have otherwise only had a modest helping of.

I would advise my clients and friends to realise that there is a link between their emotions and the food they eat. Such a realization will make them conscious and will help break the cycle of overeating.

Planning not to add weight

This is another tactic that will help you stay focused and alert. Make a plan to handle the expected temptations. Otherwise you will end up spending all your time at the buffet table. Researchers concluded that dieters planned to control their food intake using avoidance strategies were less successful than those that prepared plans to cope.  Positive self-talk was identified as the most successful tactic with the help of appetite "flash cards," says Judith Beck, PhD, clinical associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia and author of TheBeck Diet Solution.

"Part of the Beck Solution is to make a list of every good reason why you want to lose weight, and read it to yourself every morning -- and when you are tempted to eat something you hadn't planned, just read it again, so you're constantly reminding yourself why it's worth it to turn down food," she says.

Dr Beck thinks that if you remind yourself of your reasons to lose weight, you will be less likely to succumb to your temptations. "You have to condition yourself and change your mind-set about what food means to you," says Beck. This method would suit the “thinkers” among us. For those that are more spontaneous another method is proposed called “mindful eating”

"So often, overeating is connected to a primitive, emotional place inside us, and we just mindlessly start eating," says Muller. "So one of the strategies would be to cultivate mindfulness: Keep bringing yourself back to the here and now, notice what's in your hand, notice what's on your plate, and pay attention to what you are eating."

You could easily go from a party to a party with a plan for each and you will succeed in limiting the quantity on your plate and your refills. In fact you could decide from the start that you will only eat three of your favourite dishes. Furthermore, you will only eat so much of each and you will be surprised at the success you will have using a simple tactic like “mindful eating”

Know the “food pushers”

Identify the food pushers as those who are hell-bent on spoiling your weight control plans! They could be colleagues from work, friends or family members who would not take “NO” for an answer. They seem to think that the festivities are not complete without reversing your weight control efforts.

The way out here is the “broken-record NO”! Just say NO over and over again. There is no need to explain or give reasons. A simple, polite yet firm NO. Eventually, they will get the message and no more food will be pushed in your direction. Also, you need to think of it as your right. If the pressure becomes too much, accept it then disappear in the room next door and loose it. You do not have to eat anything just because it happens to land on your plate or your hand.

I wish my clients a merry Christmas and a happy prosperous new year and I also wish them the best of luck in fighting the festive season temptations. Remember, it took you weeks to 

get here and it will only take days to take you back to the starting line!

Heba Al-Zuhair | M.Phil in Nutrition, Physical Activity & Public Health