What I ate over the holidays….

First and foremost, the purpose of this blog post is to share a positive story about how I ate over the holidays.  This is the first time in as long as I can remember that I don’t feel guilt ridden and horrible after Christmas, so I thought it was important to share my mindset as perhaps it might help you to feel the same way (as otherwise, who the heck cares what I ate, right???)

So here goes….

For starters, I have been doing a bit of an experiment with myself over the past several months (I’m my own best guinea pig when it comes to trying things out for my clients) and that is to try and release negative thoughts about food.  I have tried to look at food as completely innocent and not assign it as “good” or “bad” and I’ve been really tapping into the signals that I get from my body about what makes me feel my best and making choices about what I eat from that space.  This has lead me to a place where, for the most part, I haven’t been eating much wheat or dairy.  Now this is NOT because I think that these foods are bad.  No, this is because my particular snowflake of a body (we are all unique!) has guided me towards other foods.  I’ve been feeling pretty good, and of course, now that I am in this space, I certainly don’t want to leave it, right?  Well, enter Christmas….

Christmas is a notorious season for me and one that I have battled with myself for years.  I will begin the season saying things to myself such as: I will NOT eat that, I will NOT overdo it, I will NOT keep eating cookies after I already feel sick, and so the story goes.  Just look at all those “NOTs!”  And I consider myself to be a positive person, but heck, that is one big pile of negativity!  So I thought, how can I look at this differently and how can I avoid assigning labels to food (i.e. wheat and dairy are BAD and I will probably overeat like I always do)?

Well, in an effort to keep this post from turning into a mini novel, this is what happened….

1. My grandmother makes dozens of incredible Christmas cookies each year and I usually find myself eating them long past the point of being stuffed.  I even eat the ones that I don’t necessarily like!  So I thought, what if I only eat what I REALLY want and appreciate the love that she put into making them.  And that is what I did!  Rather than viewing them as BAD or that they contained ingredients that I “don’t” eat.  I just ate a few.  And guess what?  They were fabulous!
2. My husband makes a mean lasagna and that was part of Christmas dinner at his parent’s house.  Again, in the past I would have viewed this as multiple layers of foods that I try not to eat (pasta, cheese, more pasta, more cheese) and I would battle with myself over: will I eat it? will I not? am I a failure if I “give in” and eat it? will I hurt his feelings if I don’t eat it?  So what happened?  I didn’t give it any thought until I was seated at Christmas dinner, and as I was dishing pieces into the plates of others, I put one on my plate as well.  I enjoyed every bite of his labor of love and relished in telling him how good it was.
3. December 26.  I woke up, and normally I would have started fretting about what I would eat and do now that I had eaten from the “forbidden” food groups, but instead, I had coffee, eggs, and fruit and I felt just fine.  I did notice that I was more hungry than I should have been (probably due to eating a bit more than usual), so I let myself get liberal on my snacks later that day, which included cashews and sweet potato chips with hummus.  And the next day I felt fine and returned to “crowding out” those food groups that don’t make me feel my best.

Honestly, this is the first Christmas in YEARS that I don’t feel like a complete food failure, and I learned a huge lesson about how much negative energy I had been inflicting upon myself and food.

So I hope that this helps you find a more positive space as it relates to YOUR life and how YOU eat.  Please share your stories below if you are so inclined!  The more we share, the more we collectively heal.

Happy New Year!

PS……Find this helpful and want to chat more about how to feel more vibrant and healthy in 2016?  Check out my program: New Year, New You today!

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