I have many memories of struggling with food over the holidays.
When I was single, I feared having food (specifically candy) in the house. At Halloween time I would buy a bag of candy my thought was to use it on Halloween, but that never happened. I always ate it. It wasn’t that I just ate it. I ate it all and felt so ashamed. I was convinced that I could not stop.
I came up with a plan…
I would go to the gym on Halloween night. I don’t know if you have been to the gym on Halloween night- there are not many people there. I thought it was the only way that I could stop myself from overeating on candy. If I was not home to give out candy, they I would not have to buy the candy. It was my way of not binging on candy. It worked if I did not buy the candy.
When I returned home from the gym, I would sneak into the house, go upstairs, and watch television with the lights out so no one would knock on my door. I did not feel brave enough to tell them I had no candy, I wanted to avoid the whole scene.
I then married a man who loved to give out candy on Halloween. He bought the candy and did not open the bag before Halloween. On Halloween he ate few pieces and took the rest to the office to share with his co-workers.
I have learned that it is ok to have candy in the house and I do not have to be afraid of it. It does not call my name like it used to. I used to feel compelled to eat the candy or any sweets if it was in the house. My head would say, you know you are going to eat it, just do it. I was convinced that I had no control over candy.
I learned about Intuitive Eating.
It took me time and effort to feel freedom with candy. It is doable. We now have candy in the house, and it does not call to me. I do not think about it, and I have it when I want it. It is not a struggle anymore.
I have been creating my newest program Peace with Food Over the Holidays and have been looking at what does help to release the grip food and sweets can have on us. Interestingly, it is not all focused on how to manage food. Food is one of the many components that lead to peace with food.
In order to have Peace with Food Over the Holidays we need to look at:
Physical: How to look at food/candy differently. There are simple tweaks that can make you feel so much more successful.
Emotional- How to deal with emotions that surely come up over the holiday season.
Mental: Those thoughts about food can be overwhelming. Finding some tools to manage them is critical.
Lifestyle/Social: Learning how to say no and set boundaries is crucial.
Mindfulness: How can you get quiet with yourself when there are so many competing priorities AND you are not one of them?
Self-Love: What do you really need? If you were going to be loving to yourself, what would you do?
Notice that only one component is focused on the physical, which includes food! The reason why it feels so hard to put food in its place as nourishment is because we focus on food and generally it is on restricting food.
Food restriction does not work.
What works is bringing balance and synergy to all of the components. I will not lie to you; it does take effort to learn and practice this new way. It is worth it, and it does work.
As an end note…
I now happily give out candy to our neighbor kids. I do not feel afraid when my daughter brings home her Halloween candy. I have a piece and it is not a big deal.
Do you find you are already thinking about candy? It is front and center in the grocery stores. I have already heard stories of people buying candy in September and eating all of it.
This is your opportunity to look at this holiday season, which I lovingly call the Holiday Trifecta, differently. The holiday trifecta is the time between October 1 and January 1 where we can be tempted by food. This is 3 months of pressure, stress and overwhelm.
Here are some ways to handle food over the holiday season:
Don’t keep candy in the house?
Think you won’t overeat during a holiday meal and then despite your best intention you overeat to the point of feeling sick.
Plan to overeat this holiday and deal with it (weight gain) January 1 when you plan to go on your diet.
Plan to restrict your food intake over the holidays. Well, maybe not we all know how well that can work after the second week in October????.
The saying “failing to plan means you’re planning to fail” takes on a whole new meaning when we look at the holiday season. We think we will do it the RIGHT way (whatever that is) and not have problems with food.
The difficulty is the plan is around food not around all the areas that lead us to overeat. This is the season of the special foods, the one we do not have all year. The ones we wait all year for (hello Pumpkin Spiced Latte). We want a lot of the special food because we feel deprived of them the rest of the year.
This deprivation mimics when we are on a diet, and we say we can’t have something. We engage in diet type behavior all year when we don’t have these special foods and then at the holidays, we overeat them. One of my wins is to realize that we can have mashed potatoes anytime, it does not have to just be at Thanksgiving. Allowing the food when we want it makes it part of our normal routine.
To move through this time, it can be helpful to have a plan:
How will I address food?
How will I address my emotions?
How will I address my thoughts?
How will I address my social obligations, including family members?
How will I create peace?
How will I act in a loving way towards myself?
All the above questions lead to the overwhelm. This plan does not have to be vast, but it must be in the forefront of your mind.
There is a better way.
The starting spot can be answering the questions we addressed earlier. Make a conscious choice to make it a peaceful holiday season AND enjoy yourself.
Emotional eating is complicated. The diet industry would have you think that there a simple AND QUICK answer: dieting. If dieting would have worked people would not have to continue to look for the next best diet.
I get a lot of questions about emotional eating and overeating. Here are some of the most recent questions I have gotten.
“I cannot seem to quiet my mind for mindfulness practice. What can I do?”
Does your mind keep talking and talking to you? Saying, just eat that, just a little more.
You might try to actively stop it, and that doesn’t work.
You think you can’t be mindful, and you can’t seem to quiet your mind. That has to do with the thoughts that go on in your head, you can’t seem to quiet and also how to be more mindful.
The first thing I think of when we talk about mindfulness is meditation. Many people tell me they don’t know how to meditate. They think it’s a big struggle or a big hassle to meditate or they can’t find the time to meditate. Then they do not do it at all.
Meditation is that time to quiet your mind. It doesn’t have to take hours sitting in quiet with your hands in front of you and your eyes closed chanting, which I think is many people’s idea about meditation. Truthfully, meditation is simply closing your eyes and getting quiet.
There are many ways in meditation to focus on that quiet.
First, you can just close your eyes and just focus on breathing in and out. One technique is to literally say in your head, breathe in, breathe out as you actually breathe in and out. Your mind might start wandering off and thinking about things or worrying about stuff. I’ll just remind myself, okay, Kim, let’s come back to your breath, breathe in, breathe out. Just breathing in and breathing out. Noticing the breath is a really easy way to focus on meditation, it doesn’t have to be any harder than that.
Second, I recommend meditation apps that you can put on your phone. I love them because they give me hundreds of ways to meditate. I just flip through my app and see which one fits for me at that particular time. One that I like a lot is meditation where they just have a gong sound at every so often, and I’ll put it on for however many minutes I want to sit in the quiet.
Third, as you are in the quiet of your mind there will be thoughts that show up. I like to notice them and release them. Sometimes I will go down the rabbit hole of continuing with the thought and when I notice it, I quickly come back to focusing on my breath.
In meditation, it’s really about seeing what works for you. There’s no one way to do it.
Honestly, 100% of the time I feel better after I do some type of meditation and my mind is quieter.
The second question is “I feel frustrated that I can’t eat mindfully all the time. What can I do?”
I am not able to eat mindfully all the time, too. As I practice intuitive eating, I do it more and more often. Go easier on yourself, this is not a race where you have to do this immediately.
Being mindful with my eating is a process and it is a practice. It’s actually what they talk about with meditation as a meditation practice. This is really a mindfulness practice. What do we know about practice is we have to practice that. Just like basketball players have to practice their free throw shot, they have to practice, go into free throws, practice, and practice.
I love the affirmation:
I eat mindfully, more and more every day.
This change in your approach to food is a lifelong journey, we’re really running a marathon. This is not a sprint. There is no end.
The third question is “How do I accept my body when I do not think it looks okay?”
Do you think to yourself, how can I accept my body, it doesn’t look good? My body does not look the way it’s supposed to.
How is your body supposed to look?
We have been taught by the diet industry, models, magazines, television and our families that our bodies do not look right unless we are thin.
This is an opportunity to begin to think about your body differently, and have a different sense of your, your body and its purpose.
I love the affirmation:
I AM not my body.
Your body and your size are not WHO you are. The person you are is not your body size. It could be that your body is not allowing you to do the things you would like to do. That is a different statement. This requires a realistic look at what you can do and what you would like to do. Sometimes there is a grieving that our bodies do not perform in the way we would like them to do and that is a whole different conversation.
Accepting your body as it is, is a spiritual idea. Who am I really? What’s my purpose? And what am I here to do? Those are the bigger questions.
To be more in touch with myself, I like these affirmations:
I am not my body.
I am not, whatever shape my body is, is not me.
I am kind.
I am compassionate.
I am loving.
I am caring.
I love to laugh.
These affirmations are parts of me have nothing to do with my body. Those are all things that are positive about me, and they’re really who I am.
Nothing in my list has anything to do with my body size, my clothing size or the number on the scale.
I invite you to do to move out of the idea of not accepting your body and thinking there is something wrong with you and move into who you really are.
Start with the question I who am I? Take out your journal and write about this and see what comes up.
When I focus on those positives about who I really am, I feel better. I feel better about myself, and I feel better about my life. Then I come to the table differently and my intuitive eating is in alignment. Feeling good about yourself builds on itself.
The last question is, “I can’t come up with ways to take care of myself what can I do?”
It is pretty consistent that I get asked about self-care. Taking good care of yourself is often lacking.
One of the ways I like to introduce an idea of self-care is to star making a list of what you like to do. I have invited people to write down 100 things that you like to do. You might say, this is too hard to do. Let’s see how you can do this.
You can start making a list of things that you like to do.
They don’t have to be expensive or cost anything.
What did you used to do for fun?
What have you dreamed of doing?
What brings you joy?
It might feel challenging to do make your self-car list. To give you some ideas here are some of my self-care go-to’s.
I like to journal. I would love to journal more often.
I love to meditate. And it makes me feel good.
I like to be creative. I like to make things.
I like to go to the gym, and I’m at a gym that really fits for me.
I love going to the ocean.
I love listening to musicals.
I love going to the library.
Having my list of self-care is part of my overall wellness plan for myself. If you do not have a list, just start with one idea, because that will bring on other ideas. Write them down.
My other suggestion is to listen to what others do for fun and self-care. If you feel jealous about what they are doing, it probably means it needs to go on your list.
In conclusion, ending emotional eating has very little to do with food. We have become disconnected to our inner knowing about what we need. The inner knowing is how we start connecting to food as nourishment, our emotions, our thoughts and all the other components that make us ultimately experience overall wellness.
Whether you are satisfied or not is very personal and individual: each person is different and has different requirements. We have often learned to deny our satisfaction, especially when we have been following the diet culture. In order to look at satisfaction better, let’s examine the definition of satisfaction.
The dictionary defines satisfaction as the “fulfillment of one’s wishes, expectations, or needs, or the pleasure derived from this.”
Can you imagine looking at food as a fulfillment of your wishes, expectations or needs?
Could you see yourself being ok with getting pleasure from food? Often the answer to these questions is NO. Why? We are not allowing ourselves to get pleasure from food.
Intuitive eating asks us to look at the ‘satisfaction factor.” Meaning we chose food because it is satisfying to us! How radical is that?
Have you ever considered how to be more satisfied with food? Let’s examine this further.
Increasing satisfaction with food is a multipronged approach.
Consider some of the qualities you can use to determine food satisfaction:
Texture: Is the food hard, smooth, crunchy?
Smell: Is the food pleasant smelling?
Sound: What is the sound when you bite into the food item?
Temperature: Is the food hot, spicy, cold, frozen, or room temperature?
Flavor: Is the food yummy, bland, awful, ok?
Appearance: What does the food look like? Does it look appealing?
Do you get full with this food?
What are your surroundings? Appealing, attractive or bland?
We tend to discard the satisfaction factor, because we have been trained that if the food is appealing, yummy, filling: then it must be “bad” food. Meaning the food is high in calories, fat, etc. In order for food to be “good” food it should be diet food, which is low calories, low fat or fitting into whatever diet you are on.
When you eat diet food, wonder how satisfying is it really? The diet-binge-shame cycle will lead you to ultimately overeat, if you continue to eat foods that are not satisfying.
To increase your satisfaction further consider the following questions:
Do you taste your food?
Eat too fast?
Eat when you are too hungry?
Eat past enjoyment?
Do you enjoy your food?
How can you increase your Food Satisfaction and Intuitive Eating?
What do I really want to eat? This is great starting question. You can, also, look at the food qualities listed above, like:
How will this food sound?
Does the food look appealing?
How will this food feel in my mouth? Do I want it to be hot or cold?
How will my body feel when I am done eating this?
How will I feel emotionally when I am done?
Start eating from gentle hunger.
Be sure to enjoy your food.
After you eat, reflect on the food/satiety.
Did the food meet my needs?
Am I satisfied?
Did I end up not eating what I really wanted?
Satisfaction with food is one way out of overeating and into intuitive eating. When you are satisfied with the food you feel better physically, emotionally, and mentally.
Being present with feeling of food satisfaction is a great gift you can give yourself.
Take some time today, focus on satisfaction with your food. See how it helps you get in touch with your body, so then you are not overeating.
If you are struggling with food and overeating, check out my program Emotional Eating Solutions. You do not have to struggle anymore.
I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Ebony Moore for the Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast about confidence. We had met earlier when I was a guest on her podcast BossWife.live.
Ebony talks about confidence through the lens of modeling. She started modeling when she was 12 and now owns a modeling studio.
She talks about starting at Barbizon one of the big top modeling studios. They liked her and wanted to work with her, but they had two options for her:
She could shave all her my hair off (she was a teen!). Because she always wears her hair towards her face, and she was told it makes her nose look bigger.
She could get a nose job (she was a teen!).
Can you image being a teen and told you either needed to shave your hair or get a nose job? She chose neither and started modeling locally. As she started to model locally opportunities began to open in New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. This led to greater self-esteem.
After getting married at 18 years old she started to have kids and her confidence “took this huge blow, because she had gained weight.” She says she felt like she was “nothing” and her whole identity was wrapped up in her size.
Ebony acknowledges, “I definitely misplaced my identity, I didn’t lose it, I just misplaced it.” She gave up hope.
“I felt like my body was just unacceptable, because when you’re not supposed to be overweight.” Ebony Moore
She started to focus on getting up and getting herself ready and going out. Not staying isolated. Getting up and out helped move her into more confidence. But the change came when she changed her thoughts about herself.
“It was definitely all mental.” Ebony Moore
Ebony saw how focused we can be on how our bodies look and we lose track of who we really are. We can tend to think who we are is the size and perception of our body.
How do you move into feeling more confident?
Start noticing others (ebony noticed it in her kids) experiencing joy in their bodies.
“I wanted them to know, regardless of who you are, what you like, what your nose looks like, what your hair looks like, you are freaking amazing. Like nobody else in this world looks like you. Watching my children helped me to rebuild my confidence.”
Ebony Moore
Kids can have natural confidence that adults have lost. Ebony talks about noticing the confidence in her kids and the kids in her modeling studio. She saw that she had to give that confidence to herself and then to others.
Mirror work as a method of confidence building.
In confidence building using the concept of reflecting can be powerful. Ebony does what she calls “mirror sessions” where it’s just you in the mirror. It’s just you, looking back at you. You kind of talk to that person who you used to be.
Using the mirror to really look at yourself and be ok with yourself.
Here is her method:
First, get in front of the mirror.
Second, look at yourself without make up.
Third, look at every mole, every hair that’s out of place, every hair on your chin. What do you like about your ear lobes? Look at your skin, notice the color.
Fourth, take a deep breath and appreciate the beauty of you.
Love yourself the way you are because that’s who that’s what people are attracted to. People are attracted to you.
Use mirror work to increase confidence?
First, remind yourself of who you used to be.
Second, imagine going back to being a child. Remember that child-like love for yourself?
Third, what was it about yourself that you loved the most, whether it was your eyes, whether it was your hair, your nose, your lips, whatever your skin color, the shape of your face, that’s the person you need to remember.
Lastly, fast forward to now, what has changed? Recognize that you are the same person. Reconnect with that love for yourself.
Now that you have reconnected with your true self, ask yourself, “How do I need to be there for me today?” We know you will be there for everybody else. How you need me to be there for you?
We put out the caring for others, but how are you showing up for yourself?
When we start looking at ourselves in this way we are moving beyond confidence into “Who am I?” This way of looking at ourselves becomes spiritual, and, and mindful.
How do you increase confidence daily?
Ebony recommends you send yourself an automatic text message daily to encourage yourself.
Some of her confidence texts are:
Ebony, how can I be here for you today?
Ebony, I need you to be strong for me today.
Ebony. I need for you to go the extra mile for me today.
Ebony recommends you can open the text at various times of the day to bring yourself back into that place of confidence.
Increased confidence is a game changer in life. Try some of her tips and let us know how it works in the comments below.
