How to feel more in control of your eating this Christmas!
Let’s look at how really enjoying your food can help you feel in control of your eating this Christmas. This is for you if you’re worried about your eating going out of control over the festive season.
You can watch the video below for my tips on this. Or keep scrolling to read the full blog.
Feel out of control with your eating? Try Mindful Eating.
Mindful eating is something I love teaching, because it can really help you to feel in control of your weight and your eating. Plus it’s about really enjoying your food, so what’s not to love about that?! I believe we should enjoy our food with zero guilt about our eating.
You might have heard of mindfulness before. It’s all about living in the moment, being curious, noticing and observing what’s going on around you and what’s going on inside you. Not with any kind of judgement, just being aware and being present. Mindful eating is applying that mindfulness to your eating. It can help you to enjoy your food better as well as help you to regain that sense of control over your eating.
I’ve got three tips to help you enjoy your food more with mindful eating over the festive season. Even if you just try one thing it will make a difference, but remember it’s all about practise. You don’t need to do it all perfectly! No need to do it 100% all of the time, it’s about trying to make some kind of change most of the time that makes a difference.
Here are my tips to help you feel feel in control of your eating at Christmas:
1. Ditch the judgement
Remember it’s OK to overdo it occasionally. You really don’t need to beat yourself up about how you’ve eaten. Don’t tell yourself you’re a bad person because of the way you’ve eaten. If you think you’ve ‘blown it’ or ‘failed to eat right’ then you’re more likely to keep eating more. Remember Christmas is only one day. Even if it ends up that you overdo it for the entire week or the entire month – remember the bigger picture.
Give yourself permission to have a little of what you fancy. If you give yourself permission to eat the food that you love, you’re less likely to overdo it than if you were to tell yourself you’re not allowed to eat it. Mindful eating is about ditching the judgement and all those labels that you have about food and eating. Labels like ‘being a good or bad person’ because of what you’ve eaten. Labelling food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is dieting mentality that doesn’t help you. Time to ditch all that shit!
2. Be aware of your eating habits
Mindful eating is about noticing and observing what you’re eating without judgement. Be mindful of what your plans are and try to keep following a routine with your meals. Keep trying to eat regularly throughout the day, whether that’s three meals a day or maybe four or five smaller meals. Try and stick to what you do normally as much as you can, fitting it around your plans for parties and meals out.
Try to tune into your appetite as much as you can. Ask yourself if you’re really hungry and notice when it’s true physical hunger rather than just wanting to eat. True physical hunger is when you can feel it in your stomach – a gurgling and rumbling, empty feeling. It can be easily confused with thirst so it’s worth having a drink to check, then give it a few minutes to see if it feels better. But if it’s been a good few hours since you last ate and you feel like you could eat anything then it’s likely to be true hunger.
Try to follow your appetite as much as you can. Ask yourself whether you really do need to eat or if you’re eating for other reasons. It can help you to avoid overeating quite a bit if you learn to listen to your appetite, but remember it does take practise.
3. Really enjoy your food
Take time over your food, rather than eating on the go or while you’re doing other things. Try to pay attention to the food that you’re eating. Eat when you’re together as a family group or with your friends or whoever you’re with, rather than eating in front of the TV. Remember again this is about doing this most of the time, it doesn’t have to be perfect 100% of the time.
If you can, try to eat your meals up at a table so you notice what you’re eating. Then you can look at your food, you can eat more slowly and focus on chewing well. Enjoy all the different flavours and textures. All of this helps you to notice when you feel satisfied. You’ll feel fuller sooner than if you were eating quickly while you’re watching TV or eating automatically while you’re doing something else. When you eat while you’re watching a film and not noticing what you eat, you can end up eating way more than you actually need. Instead make the most of meal times to really enjoy your food and you’ll feel more satisfied by your meals.
So there’s three things to think about. Remember you can just pick one that you feel drawn to trying to start off with and see how it makes a difference to you:
- ditch the judgement and the labels about your food, your eating and about yourself
- be aware of your eating habits and follow your appetite
- take the time to really enjoy your food
Enjoy yourself this Christmas, with zero guilt – even if you overdo it!
Ditch dieting forever, because you absolutely deserve better.
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Freebies!
My Weekly Round-up! AKA; what I’ve been up to recently…
- This blog post has been brought to you by Earl Grey. I feel like I ought to have been drinking something a bit more festive, but I forgot!
- We’ve had quite a busy week as we’ve been away for a few days. I’ve had a few health appointments. Plus we’ve been visiting family and sorting the last few bits n bobs before Christmas.
- Because we’ve been all over the place, the exercise has pretty much gone out of the window – eek! I’ve not even had the school run to go on as school has broken up for a few weeks now. Oh well, going to try to go for a walk at least once next week I reckon.
- We went to Harry Potter Studios on Monday. I’m not particularly a fan, but I love anything to do with films, especially behind the scenes stuff. It was a birthday present for Genevieve from my parents back in September, but we didn’t manage to get a tour slot booked until this month. We all enjoyed it, although we were all shattered from all the walking!
- It’s been a slightly stressful couple of days too as Genevieve had been a bit poorly over the weekend. She’d perked up enough that we thought she’d be fine for the HP Studio Tour… then the day after she was diagnosed with Scarlet Fever! Luckily she’s been improving loads since she’s been on the antibiotics, but it’s meant we had to cancel some of our plans to make sure she doesn’t pick up anything else before she’s better.
- Bird Nerd Report: I’ve barely seen any interesting birds as I’ve not been out on any walks. Although we did see a kestrel and a heron while we were driving back from London. Then we also saw a field full of deer so that was pretty exciting!
Like the Monster Book of Monsters – check it out.
