Stress eating can be real anxiety for the best of us (that can easily become a bad habit).
Feeling anxious from a negative thought can cause overeating and shoveling food into our mouths. This feeds our natural desire to enjoy pleasure. But then we regret our decision the next day, as it shows up on our body and then can turn into anxious body thoughts (in the mind-body connection).
Below are some ways to break the stress-eating vicious cycle, especially around the winter holidays.
Especially in December, we can’t avoid messages about the new year being around the corner, that brings awareness to what we need to do to finish up the year, and then that reminds us of the hoopla of what happened and disappointments of what hasn’t yet. We just want peace, joy, and love.
By no fault of your own, holiday anxieties can be triggered in your mind-body, and aggravate stress eating as a comforting behavior that disturbs healthy living aspirations.
One way you can start to change this is to find a healthy set of friends (or a virtual community) who will support you and you can share your successful moments with. Choose these optimistic friends over complainers. You want to leave your near-year ending on a sweet (not sour) high note. Stay encouraged, growing, believing, and finding new year inspiration.
On that note, I have some holiday stress management encouragement…
Because we all bear some kind of stress as humans. At a bare minimum, you may have been thrown a few monkey wrenches within the year and an uneventful holiday ending.
You may have thought you’ve had enough, and you would just coast the rest of the year and take time off, and then something suddenly came up. You’re asked to make an off-course decision or two, be more creative than you’ve been (thinking outside the box), and work harder in your uphill climb despite facing ups and downs.
You’re not alone.
Look on the brighter side of things, you’re needed and you have a chance to make an impact in some unique way.
Those you-matter thoughts help your inner peace, that you can get back and are just a few steps away in your meditation practice, prayer life, or relaxed walk.
By a simple choice, you can change your mind and attitude just like that if you want to, despite your feelings or moods.
You always feel better than you did after the fact. You never know what thoughts and ideas are on the other side, but the time you put in is rewarded.
You’re better off if you find some way to be optimistic, even if it’s just borrowing a belief. Sometimes you have to just do it, to adopt a new way.
Recently I was tasked to virtually decorate my Zoom screen background for a holiday meetup… those are common this year, right?
I don’t how you feel about yourself in a digital world, but coming up with a digital holiday background isn’t in my go-to wheelhouse bag of tricks, and maybe not in yours either. So I dug deep and basically looked around (…isn’t that how we were resourceful when we were younger?), and that led me to bring out the soft felted stockings and artificial decorations from the Christmas storage bin.
I’m an arts and crafts type. As a scrapbooker, I like handmade, decorating with brads and ribbons, and the whole nine yards for anything you can touch and feel…
Anyway, my point is, a slight shift in your what-can-I-do thinking, showing up feeling good I did something (perfectly imperfect), and not caring so much what people think, can help to get your ball rolling and produce the desired result.
Maybe that’s what you need now… to just lower the expectation bar and take a small action somewhere in your life where you can?
Holiday Stress Management
For sentimental reasons, I hope stringing Christmas lights as a universal tradition, gets preserved. Similarly, board games and puzzles haven’t changed much in our society, despite sweeping technology trends, that has evolving change as a constant.
Around the holidays, finding downtime, getting distracted with entertainment, creating a new hobby, or bringing out an old pastime can help with stress.
In that spirit, I recently found a bag of oyster crackers past their prime and revived their lack of taste by dipping them in chocolate that make them taste as good as any mini-chocolate cookie treat (I’m waiting for the app to alert me on food and product expiration dates…. that’s coming soon 😊).
Resourcefulness is timeless innovation. And that’s the type of stuff that can get you giggling and feeling proud again like when you were a schoolgirl.
Simple actions and activities can positively turn holiday anxiety upside down, while you’re doing the relaxing, comfortable things you enjoy. You can exchange stressful feelings for feeling useful or helpful, even if you’re just saving a bag of crackers…
These are 8 ideas/ways to spark encouragement, avoid stress eating, eliminate holiday anxiety, and any holiday blues.
1. Gain empathy so you feel better. Find stories of hope that inspire. You can always feel compassion for someone who has more worries or reasons to be sad than you. Looking around, there is always someone you can cheer up.
2. Take care of yourself. Even if you have nowhere to go socially, use that as a reason to try a new self-care practice, and take time to be kind to your body.
Moisturize your hands and feet. Bring the flannel out. Use those masks, nice robes, soft socks, and cozy slippers. Paint your nails and toes in those beautiful royal and rich colors. Embrace the luxurious-relaxed homebody lifestyle with lavender or peppermint sea salts. That’s the type of living I aspire to. No-fuss, no muss… but spa pampered inspired (that you can easily create with products sold at a Target or CVS).
And here are some ways to how you can eliminate stress eating or overeating.
Stress eating is rarely about healthy eating because we usually choose a convenient packaged or boxed snack. We easily crave the foods that are available in our pantry with 2-year-old good expiration dates.
Opting for healthy foods isn’t natural in our society surrounded by tempting comfort food choices. That’s especially true during the holidays and in the colder months.
How can you transform temptations into healthy eating ones?
Remember the young days when you were on a mission to get super fit, run a 5k, beat your last record, fit into a special occasion dress or get ready for bathing suit season? Well… you succeeded because you decided you were all in.
You cut out daily alcohol, excessive carbs and fat, and extra calories because they went against meeting your goal that you were determined to achieve.
Staying on that mission now.… you can do these things without much effort.
3. Do daily ab crunches. Laying on your back and gently moving your stomach can be less work than changing daily outfits. In between going to the bathroom, do some quick core exercises. When you focus on your stomach in a healthy way, then you’re less likely to eat unhealthy as you’re working on getting healthy.
Your mind doesn’t like to have conflicting messages, so you pick a mission as you did years ago. Your choice now can be to either to eat whatever and whenever you want or to get healthy.
You can do several sets of ab crunches a day, to set the healthy intention and reminder.
4. Keep a food journal. When you record what you eat in a daily food journal, then you gain insight and awareness. Your mind wants you to succeed and written down, you can spot the foods that don’t fit the healthy lifestyle. Then you notice patterns, and you do less of the ones that don’t help your mission.
Remind yourself that your body is forgiving and heals quickly, so don’t beat yourself up for a not-so-ideal day of eating or binging. You can just try to make a little progress each day, and that will be far more productive in the long run than going overboard eating the unhealthy stuff or going too healthy (and gradually craving the unhealthy foods your body knows and wants).
5. Drink tea. Sometimes you don’t know if you want a salty or sweet food snack (common for a Vata). That’s likely anxious food eating. If you have a cup of tea near you, sipping on that can serve as a reminder that you don’t need anything else in between meals.
If you’re trying to eliminate alcohol and wine, you can sip on herbal fruity teas. And you can substitute your wine glass or flute with cranberry juice, apple juice, or sparkling cider. It’s that simple if you want.
Remember back in those young days of college when you were out with friends and you couldn’t decide if you wanted a beer, nachos, or dessert? Now you don’t have those pressures. Going for a tasty drinking tea is the cool new thing, and if you need a snack, opt for fig newtons, almonds, dried currants, or raisins. None are too salty or sweet but is enough. And you gradually stop the food addictions and desiring the really bad stuff all the time.
6. Find sweet and salty neutral alternatives. If you have a desire for sweets, you could also opt for apples, apple sauce, Greek yogurt, cereal, and healthy bars. You can make your own granola or trail mix, and add more of the good stuff like dried cherries and nuts, and less chocolate.
You could also suck on Vitamin C cough drops (sugar-free if you’re worried about the sugar on your teeth).
Eat whole fruits in between meals. It’s a good snack to open up the juices before a meal and helps eliminate a sweet tooth. Have a small bowl out with fruit to avoid unhealthy stress eating.
If you’re jonesing for a salty snack, you can opt for baby carrots you dip in hummus or edamame snacks. You could bake kale chips. Just a ‘lil sea salt can be the magical ingredient to end your salty desires.
Avoid the light and airy snacks as you can trick yourself into thinking they’re light and then you can end up binge eating. Popcorn is famous for setting you up for this fallacy.
If you like pretzel snacks (I’m a huge pretzel fan!), you can add small mustard or avocado dip. With a dip, you’re more likely to treat it like a meal and eat less, e.g. once the dip runs out.
7. Use a pleasant mouthwash for a friendly reminder. In between meals, take care of your teeth.
These days you can find light or florally fresh-scented mouthwashes (I dare say pleasant balancing scents), like green tea and mint flavor, instead of the common heavy alcohol scented ones that linger for hours and when you’re down the hall.
When you’re on a mission to eat less, focus on taking care of your teeth well, and that will also help change your overeating or stress eating habits. We all have the same hours per day, and keeping your teeth clean can help you manage to eat less in those hours.
8. Eliminate decision fatigue with a warm stew. Cook a warm hot stew with your favorite soup base and add lots of root vegetables and your favorite beans (you get to use your creative juices). Then keep reheating and eating the hearty soupy stew for when you’re hungry. You’re less likely to snack as much. Think lunch, dinner, and breakfast!
And keep adding to the slow cooking stew so it lasts for a good week or so. This is a brilliant way to “kill two birds with one stone,” staying healthy and losing weight.
Plus, you cut down on monotonous daily meal decisions that can add to the stress that you’re trying to eliminate.
Have a happy and healthy holiday!