Hello, Reddit!
About a month-ish ago I made a couple of posts highlighting my ten years of weightloss/maintenance and how I worked through habitual overeating.
With the holidays here, a lot has been on my mind about how to save our sanity trying to lose (or maintain) weight during a season of celebration consumption, where we are often at our most-stressed, most vulnerable, and surrounded by food and people encouraging us to eat.
This may not be what you want to hear, but it may be what you need to tell yourself: don’t make yourself miserable by forcing it.
I’m not saying, “eat an entire sleeve of cookies, YOLO!”
I am saying, give yourself a freaking break.
Figure out your maintenance calories and shoot for those. If you go under, great! If not, okay!
You’ve probably gone at least a few cycles of gaining 5ish lbs over a holiday. And probably resolved to lose it in the new year. Cut that shit out. If that worked, it would have worked.
You’re gonna have maybe 40-60 years of holidays left. If you don’t figure out how to enjoy them while maintaining eventually, you’re going to drive yourself crazy for 40-60 years.
It’s okay to go a month or two not losing weight. Maintainable and sustainable weight loss is all about developing a different relationship with food, eating, and replacing our bad habits with food ones. You didn’t get to where you are with one or two bad months of eating. You got there when years of it. So take this time to practice what life will be like post goal weight (and you WILL get there!)
Here’s what’s worked for me:
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Drink water. Tons of water. More than you think you need.
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Try to prioritize sleep; exhaustion makes it so much more difficult to make good choices.
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Find a way to keep your body moving, if at all possible. This can also be a positive mental health habit- an evening walk, 20 minutes of yoga, etc can give you some “you time” in a season that is very emotionally demanding
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If you know you ate a lot of high-sugar and high sodium food, and you maybe didn’t sleep great- it’s OKAY to not weigh yourself the next morning. Don’t set yourself up to feel like failure when you know your body will be retaining water. Drink more water today, try to get to bed early, and weight yourself tomorrow.
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Try to limit grazing. A good idea I heard that has stuck with me is to only eat while sitting down and really intentionally eating. This cuts off the grazing/random snacking that we tend to do (without even enjoying it)
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Choose one meal a day that you’re going to be thoughtful about. It doesn’t have to be the same one every day, but if you’re going to a dinner party, a high protein, high fiber lunch will go a long way to keeping your eating habits in line.
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Know that you may gain a little weight, and that’s okay. In the end, as long as you lose more than you gain, you’ll end up where you want to be.
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Make sure there are activities that you enjoy that are NOT food related. If all of your holiday plans involve food, find something else to begin including. Ice skating? A tour of Christmas lights? Christmas caroling? Do something that isn’t food-focused.
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On that note, make sure there are things you enjoy, period. If you’re emotionally exhausted from giving your time and mental energy, it’s okay (and IMPORTANT) to give yourself a break. Watch that Hallmark movie alone with a hot coco, take a bath while listing to Mariah Carrey on a loop, get out that Christmas cross-stitch, whatever you can do that gives you some reprieve from the insanity.
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Think ahead of time to family gatherings, etc. that might be hard to cope with, where you might expect some random aunt to tell you how fat you are, some cousin who has always been your grandma’s favorite, or your perpetually skinny sister who can’t help but comment on what you’re eating, and plan ahead for how you’ll deal with/respond to/put up boundaries in these kinds of situations. Try out phrases to deflect and respond ahead of time. It will make you feel so dumb to say them out loud, but DO IT so that when that aunt asked if you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you’re not unable to reply in a productive way. Give yourself a fighting chance to not think of a retort in the shower next June. Plan it out ahead of time.
This is a tricky time of year, but you’ve got this.
Happy holidays. I hope this helps someone.
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