'tis the season
Heather Maio • November 19, 2019
How to not be a dumpster fire on January 1st...
Tis the season to let everything go to shit...
Thanksgiving, Holiday Cheer, 13 Parties, families in town, children out of school, more drinking, more baking, less time to take care of ourselves. January is diet central for a reason.
From now until the 1st we treat ourselves like shit. (and I will let you in on a little secret gym owners know… the shit continues through the first week or two of January, the first this year falls on a Wednesday and we all know great life transformations only start on Mondays….)
This week marks the start of wheels falling off. You’re too busy, you are spending money on other people and things; god forbid you spend a few dollars on your health, and YOLO! It’s the holidays! You will clean it up later.
But what if this year you don’t have too?
What if this year you keep your wheels securely on, wouldn’t that be wonderful? I think so.
I figured out it really isn’t that hard either. You simply have to make a few things a priority. Yes,
eat your veggies, protein is your friend, SLEEP, make sleep your number one goal, move when you can and try to break a sweat a few times between now and then. All that jazz is really important, you 100% should commit to doing your best with all, but none of it matters until you reframe your thinking. I say this all with love, and I say it as a coach,
I don’t want to be your cleanup crew.
There is this odd human behavior, and I am not throwing shade at it, I get it, I have done this more times than I would like to admit, but stepping back from it
(learning better and doing better)
I see how absolutely crazy it is: to jump off the cliff because you stepped onto the ledge AKA I ate one cookie might as well eat 28 more, a few pieces of pie and wash it down with a White Claw or 7.
This is the biggest trap we fall into to, and it makes NO SENSE. If you break your arm do you quickly run to break the other bones in your body? Make sense right? You broke one, you have that little nagging thing to deal with, might as well get them all cracked and reset them in the morning.
Or your car; if you get a flat tire do you immediately slash the other 3? If your kitchen is a mess do you let your kids go ham in the living room with some play dough, a few sets of Legos, a box of crayons and give them some Cheetos, popsicles and chocolate for good measure?
We don’t do any of these things, it isn’t logical.
Until it comes to food and all bets are off, logic doesn’t apply. One piece of fudge = 3 cookies + what is left of the taco dip and whatever randomness left in your kitchen you MIGHT AS WELL eat cause you already blew it and will start over in January…
First order of business,
fix the way you treat yourself. Parents, this should be easy for you, if you are not a parent this still works really well. Think of someone you love, someone you are in charge of caring for now or maybe will be later. Imagine they ate a brownie, or maybe they at 5 brownies, and now feel like they are undone, off the rails. Would you instruct them to clean out the rest of the kitchen because furthering that somehow makes it better? If they told you they will have “more willpower” if they get it out of their system would you allow them to keep mindlessly eating?
No.
You would call their bullshit, tell them to relax because it wasn’t a big deal, go lay down and watch some TV. Basically you would tell them to keep it moving.
This holiday season, when you eat something “bad” (which isn’t a thing)
KEEP IT MOVING.
Which is the perfect transition into the next topic and point of contention:
No food is good or bad.
(Not so shameless plug, If think foods are either good or bad you need to work with me and get your ass signed up for my January Whole30 group right now)
Before you come at me and say shit like “but Heather, you said McDonald’s is trash, make a burger at home” let me explain myself. In the past I am 100% sure I made statements saying some foods are/were bad, BUT- WHEN YA KNOW BETTER YOU DO BETTER (Growth y’all, it is a thing to be embraced). Now, I know with 100% certainty no foods are good or bad.
I believe what is “good” for you may be awful (bad) for me. Broad example: Imagine I had Celiac Disease; in that case Gluten would not be GOOD for me. But John does NOT have Celiacs, he can eat bread and pasta with no. If bread is “bad” for me does that mean it should also be bad for John who can eat it without complication? NO. It is bread. What is good for me doesn’t matter and should have no bearing on what YOU put on your plate. We can also agree that there is a sliding scale, and we can all should aim to do as well as we can most (not all) of the time. AND THAT IS GOING TO LOOK VERY DIFFERENT FROM PERSON TO PERSON
depending on time, income and location. I will never shame anyone for not buying organic, I don’t always buy organic, that shit is expensive. Let’s all agree everything is on a scale, and it is HIGHLY personal. I eat chocolate every day, that may send you into a binge tail spin making chocolate NOT WORTH IT to you, but it still does not mean it is bad. I also love and eat Swedish fish all the time, but you won’t ever catch me eating Doritos… Doritos are not worth it to me, Swedish fish ARE. Nothing is good or bad, there is worth it and not. I will write more about this soon, clearly I have a lot to say…
Back to the matter at hand. Good and Bad food. No food is good or bad. It is food. Maybe it is food with little to offer aside from sugar and empty calories but it still has its place and that place is IN YOUR BELLY DURING THE HOLIDAYS without guilt.
A CRAZY thing happens when we stop labeling our food.
We are able to objectively look at them.
For the longest time I allowed myself to be brainwashed into the idea that sugar cookies, fudge, and dinner rolls had no place in my life. That they were “bad” and I was bad for eating them. On strong days, when my willpower was on point I would be way to proud of the fact I didn’t eat something. Let me be clear, that is NOT
normal. FOOD ISN’T BAD.
To put it in perspective, imagine your four year daughter old NOT eating a brownie, would you tell her good job? We can all acknowledge that kind of praise could easily mess a kid up, have them thinking they are less than if they simply eat something
… so why do we praise ourselves like that. (Side note: this is why I don’t tell people “good job” when the CHOOSE not to eat something during a Whole30. You are not a super women because you didn’t eat a brownie, that’s stupid, you’re a superwomen when you realize the brownie holds no power therefore you not eating it wasn’t a valiant effort, it was as easy as walking past a piece of broccoli).
When I did eat the brownie I would beat myself up, thinking I ruined something, or did some damage. In reality the only damage I did was to my headspace when I allowed some sugar and flour to determine my worth.
When you stop judging food you take away its power. This is a huge deal. Foods that were once forbidden, therefore alluring and special become average at best. A cookie is the same as the burger you eat every day for lunch. You do not go off of the deep end with your everyday meals because they hold no power over you, you do not judge them. You go HAM when you deem something as bad or off limits.
Something else that appears to be a little known fact this time of year is that you can make pumpkin pie in April. You can make sugar cookies in May. You can make stuffing, rolls, and casseroles (if you’re into that sorta thing) in June.
My biggest take away from Food Freedom Forever (seriously, read it) is this: Very few things are as special as we make them, even those holiday foods can be purchased, made and recreated any time of year.
Lastly, and most importantly,
be mindful and GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION to be present and enjoy. Permission to relax, permission to take 5 minutes away and check in, permission to eat the f*cking cookies. Willpower is not a finite resource, it gets drained quickly, if you think you are capable of white knuckling your way through the next 7 weeks I have bridge to sell you.
Don’t read that as permission to treat you like shit, I didn’t say that. I said permission to relax, and enjoy. No one enjoys feeling like a bloated cow after every party, no one enjoys feeling like a hung-over sea otter after every night out and no one enjoys eating limp celery and carrot sticks through every gathering.
How much better would this season be, your whole life be, if you made a habit of checking in with yourself. It really is that simple.
Pause, breath, take a beat… what are you feeling, what do you REALLY want from this experience- then give yourself EXACTLY that. Sometimes it IS a second or third slice of peanut butter pie (raises hand) and sometimes it’s sitting around the table with your family, not another plate of stuffing or glass of wine. Both are fine. Neither made you bad and neither makes you good.
I’m not going to be a total buzzkill but I would be seriously dropping the ball if I didn’t mention that adding alcohol to the equation is going to make it SERIOUSLY hard to listen to your body, both the night of and the days following. Alcohol is a depressant, and a myopic agent, which can be great at a fun party, and TOTAL SHIT for someone who is stressed, anxious (again, tis the season) sad, feeling crappy, feeling not great in their bodies or has any level of distress in their present environment or on their mind. Take with that what you will, and if you just seriously rolled your eyes at me saying Alcohol isn’t making things easy you should probably look at that.
This season, make it a habit to be present, to check in with yourself often. Make it a habit to have EXACTLY what you want, now and always, because a hungry person is never happy. When you are stopping and asking yourself what your body needs you will be surprised how well it will lead you, and how easy it can be to treat it kindly. (if you have no faith in your body, let me help you figure that out).
Learning to trust YOU over the Holidays may seem like the actual worst time, but I think it is the best. It gives you soooo many chances to learn! To figure out what is and what is NOT serving you. Look at this season like that, your little experiment in being kind to your body, checking in, not restricting it, simply asking it often what it needs and how it is feeling. (How revolutionary) Pause, listen, be kind... rinse and repeat. Not saying it will be easy at first, but it is a hell of a lot better then feeling like trash or eating the forgot about veggie tray...