Get back on track! This is the little-known secret that causes women over 35 to fall off track with their nutrition and exercise habits during the holidays, and it has nothing to do with food.
In this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode, nutritionist Megan shares what no one has ever explained to you about your habits and maintaining consistency around health habits and goals around the holiday season as well as during stressful life events.
This is the exact reason why women working towards their nutrition and exercise goals during the holidays, causing women to spiral into a restrictive diet every January.
Cut sugar! Cut carbs! Do Whole30! Dry January! Exercise daily!
Women swing into restrictive, unsustainable dieting after not paying attention to their health during the holidays because of this one hidden habit killer and it always begins around Halloween or Thanksgiving.
It is the holiday diet trap everyone falls into.
Megan has been working with women over 35 for 11 years and the issue is never that a woman doesn't know what to do or what she should be doing with nutrition or exercise.
Knowing is never the problem.
The real problem getting in the way that sabotages the majority of women during stressful times in life, and especially during the holidays, she reveals in this podcast episode.
This is what no one tells women about navigating real-life like the holidays and maintaining consistent health habits coming into the new year, or when stressful life events occur.
Get the secret in this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast episode!
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- The Hidden Problem Causing You To Fall Off Your Health Goals During The Holidays
- The Little Known Mindset Problem Women Face During The Holidays
- The Holiday Diet Most Women Are On & Why It's Detrimental
- Why Knowing What To Do Is Not The Problem
- The Missing Ingredient Diets Are Not Teaching You About Sustainable Nutrition & Exercise Habits
- Why Just Calorie Counting, Knowing How Much Protein, How Many Steps, etc. Doesn't Create Lasting Results For Women
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify or Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- Calorie Counting Your Way To No Where
- Fix Your Relationship With Food
- Why You Self Sabotage
- How To Stop Self Sabotage
- 10 Mindset Shifts To Escape Your Diet Prison
- Most Dangerous Diet Optavia
- What Most Women Miss About Weight Loss
Get Back On Track Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Transcript
Well, it’s the Monday after Thanksgiving and I thought there would be no better time than to talk to you about getting back on track. Not with food, not with habits, not with exercise. With your mindset.
Your mindset is the root of the problems people face when it comes to taking care of their nutrition and health.
But before we get started, I want to announce the last cookbook winner of 2024. If you are just joining this podcast big welcome!
I have been giving away a free copy of my cookbook each month the year of 2024 and announcing winners at the beginning of each month on this podcast.
My cookbook was released in 2020. I think I mentioned previously that I was scheduled to be on QVC for my cookbook release in 2020, but the world shut down and it never happened.
I am so grateful for those of you who continue to purchase it and so for the last cookbook winner of 2024 is username happyjackie14.
She says “I’m currently trying to get off Optavia. I can’t believe I ever thought a package was healthier than a carrot. I actually feel dumb. I am learning from the podcast. Thank you.”
Happyjackie please email me at megan@skinnyfitalicious.com to claim your cookbook and I will mail that personally to you! And by the way, you are absolutely not dumb happyjackie. We have all fallen victim to these type of crash diets and doing them is how we learn.
Because diets like Optavia do not work long-term. Yes, you lose weight in the short-term, but you can’t sustain the weight loss because you are not building a lifestyle you can do until you are 85 years old with foods you love.
If you can’t sustain it, the diet does not work. That is a mindset reframe many women need to grasp to get out of the diet prison they’re living in.
So, do not call yourself names like dumb. The marketing for diets like Optavia is very alluring and when we are desperate to feel better it’s easy to fall back into a crash diet.
So, this is the perfect lead into our conversation today because we are in the middle of holiday season.
Thanksgiving was last Thursday and the common behavioral pattern that happens to women this time a year is they stop practicing their habits, often go to screw-it-ville and in January they swing to the other side of the spectrum trying to restrict and diet harder to get back on track.
Let’s clear up one thing. This does not work.
Let’s clear up another thing. This is not a problem of you not knowing what to do. You likely know the importance of steps, getting some exercise, eating protein, eating fruits and vegetables and fiber and balanced meals. Knowing is not the problem.
Most women I have encountered in my 11 years of being a nutritionist are not clueless. They are smart. Smart women.
So, what exactly is the problem? Why do so many women fall into this pattern of getting off track during the holidays, saying screw it with their habits, overindulging then swinging to crash dieting and restricting foods in January?
Their mind. Their mind is the problem and their emotional reaction to their mind causes them to spiral.
For most people Thanksgiving is a time of more indulgent food. Foods you are not usually around, and you may also be faced with emotional triggers from family members who trigger you.
Now you eat more food or foods that are more indulgent. You start to feel guilty for eating these foods.
So, then all Thanksgiving weekend you eat like a jerk because well, you’re already guilty for being off track so you might as well keep going.
Because the food helps you tune out the critical voice in your head telling you how you shouldn’t have done that, you should have known better and the only way you know how to shut that voice down is by eating more food.
Then at some point you get on the scale. The scale is up, and, in your mind, you emotionally react thinking you did something wrong. The scale is up. See!
I’m so out of control! I’ve ruined my progress. I can’t control myself with these foods. I can’t control myself when Aunt Carol says these things to me.
I already screwed up so I might as well keep going.
Because of that emotional reaction and guilt, you begin to justify being off track the rest of the holiday season. I can’t do this right now. I can’t handle this right now. I have too much stress. It’s too hard during the holiday season. I have too many parties. I can’t be consistent.
Your brain begins to look for evidence why it’s too hard to stay on track or do anything to take care of your health.
Then you justify staying off track with these excuses and tell yourself, well I’ll get back on track in January.
Telling yourself that alleviates the guilt in the moment because it’s like you’re giving yourself permission to eat like a jerk now and not pay attention because in January you’ll be so perfect.
You’ll be a clean eater. You’ll do dry January. You’ll cut out all the sugar and carbs. You’ll track your calories.
But the truth is you are really turning your back on yourself because you are looking for relief from the guilt. You think in your brain you are doing yourself a favor and you justify it.
This is what happens to most women and what most women fail to realize is that the problem is your mind and it all starts with your mind telling you that you did something wrong by eating those foods.
Your mind overreacting emotionally to the scale causing you to spiral out of control with food until January and then in January swing to the other side of the spectrum by crash dieting and restricting.
Your mind and emotions are the problem. Not the food. Not the exercise. Not the fact that you don’t know what to do. Not that you are dumb. Not that you are broken.
You are looking for relief from the guilt and this is why this happens. This is a mindset problem. Not a food problem.
Now first of all, let’s get the scale conversation out of the way. Many of you are letting the scale dictate your emotions when in fact, you do not understand how the scale works.
You do not understand how body fat gain works. You are emotionally reacting to something you do not understand OR you do understand, and you still allow your emotions to spiral you out of control.
Ladies, the scale does not measure body fat. When you are a woman over 35, your body composition, how much body fat and how much muscle you have on your body is what is most important. Not the scale.
The scale is always going to fluctuate, and it is especially going to go up after having a day like Thanksgiving where you are consuming more indulgent food and carbs.
Carbs contain water so that will drive the scale up and just the mere fact of having more food moving through your digestive track is going to bring the scale up.
Why would you ever get on the scale if you know emotionally you cannot handle it? Why would you put yourself through that torment? Because you feel more bloated? Because you feel fat?
Those are feelings and our feelings lie to us all the time. You are not going to gain body fat from one day or even one weekend of indulging a little more.
There are 365 days a year and 3 meals a day. That is 1,095 meals a year. A few meals here or there are not going to break the bank.
What does break the bank is this mindset of thinking you did something wrong and feeling guilty then spiraling for the next 4 weeks thinking somehow in January, you’ll just get it together and be perfect.
Our bodies are much more resilient to the holidays and these times that are different than our normal lives than we realize.
If you had the mindset that you did nothing wrong and got back on track with your high protein breakfast and balanced meals as soon as you could, you would naturally consume a little less overall and it would all even out over time.
Except that is the problem most women are faced with. They think they did something wrong. They mentally beat themselves up and feel guilty.
If this is you, your relationship with food sucks. I did a podcast episode called Fix Your Relationship with Food. That episode is for those of you who feel guilty around food. It’s episode 117.
Food is just food. You did nothing wrong. You didn’t kill anyone or run over your neighbor’s dog. You just ate food.
Unfortunately, most women have been taught with all these crazy crash diets that certain foods are bad and certain foods are good.
This then drives you to think that you need to be perfect with how you eat. You should never eat those foods.
Then you struggle anytime you get around these foods or are presented with these foods because you have this mindset.
These foods are not the problem. Your mind is the problem and how you have been taught to think about them.
Your relationship with food needs to be fixed because if you feel guilty eating certain foods, it leads to this whole mess every holiday season.
The guilt, the shame, the negative self-talk, the getting on the scale to beat yourself up, the going to screw-it-ville then going back to a restrictive diet and round and round each year you go.
And the worst part of all this is that come January you become so desperate to feel better that you will do just about anything to feel better as quickly as possible.
That desperation makes you not think rationally and because you’re not thinking rationally, you then fall victim to another crazy diet you that doesn’t address your relationship with food and your mindset and that you could never sustain until you’re 85 years old.
And then the weight all comes back and the relationship with food struggles are still there, and the negative self-talk and guilt are there.
Then you begin to believe this is me. I don’t have any willpower. I must not have the motivation. I must not be able to do this. Now you begin to lose the belief in yourself that you can this.
The crazy part is this entire mess started with you thinking you ate the wrong way and feeling guilty. How does a meal plan fix that?
How does counting calories fix that? How does cutting your carbs and sugar in January fix that? It doesn’t.
This is why I always say it’s your mind that is the problem. Not the food.
And ladies, you can apply what I just said about the holidays to any real-life scenario. A parent ends up sick and, in the hospital, and your off your plan a few days.
A child gets sick. You’re moving. You go on vacation. You traveled for work. All these real-life situations are why people struggle.
Not because food and exercise is super complicated. It’s because our minds catastrophize and make us feel bad and then we want to escape the guilt from feeling like we did something wrong.
So, the number one thing you must practice whether it’s during the holidays or during some other real-life situation is remind yourself you did nothing wrong.
It’s just food, don’t dwell on what happened and don’t get on the scale to shame yourself more. Instead get curious, reflect on what happened, learn from it and move on. Practice moving on.
Honestly, this is the true value of coaching right here. Learning to navigate real-life and correcting the stinky thinking that makes you feel guilty.
The guilt and shame and negative self-talk create more overeating which leads to more restriction and back and forth you swing.
That’s why having a healthy relationship with food is so important because as soon as guilt and shame come sweeping in, it causes disordered behaviors with food.
This is the value of being coached. I think a lot of women think coaching is just having someone hand them a meal plan or give them some numbers like calories or protein and let’s see how perfect you can be.
Oh, you messed up? Let’s just try harder. Except that doesn’t work!
If it were as easy as telling someone what numbers to hit and what to do, no one in the world would ever have a problem with nutrition and exercise.
This is why you have a coach to help you figure out what are you thinking in those moments that trip you up, what are your mindset and feelings when you spiral out of control.
They help you reflect, get curious and figure out how to reframe your perspective and self-talk around those situations so you learn how to treat those situations differently and react to them in a new way so that you can be more consistent and reach your goals.
Not perfect. Consistent!
Honestly, this is what my work with most of my clients is around. The mindset, the emotional reactions and their relationship with food. Because these are truly the root causes of why women struggle.
So please drop the guilt right now and remind yourself you did nothing wrong. Release yourself from that shame. And if you need help doing this, schedule a free weight loss consultation with me and we can discuss how I can help you!
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