Here’s how you start thinking ahead. How do I want to feel during this really think, how do I want to feel during this event?? Present, involved, calm, eager, available, joyful. The second question is how do I want to feel about myself during this event? Proud, supportive. Then you’ll think about what are the foods that I want to eat and why. What are the foods I don’t want to eat and why? So for example, you might decide, you know what?

If there’s homemade bread or rolls there, I will eat them. If there’s a store bought, I won’t eat them. If there’s homemade cookies or a specific fudge or some holiday treat that really entices a great memory you’ll have that. But if it’s store bought cookies, or it looks like dry cake, maybe you won’t have that. 

Maybe you won’t eat should foods. Like, I don’t like green bean casserole. Why would I eat green bean casserole? I will absolutely have sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes. I will have some stuffing, but if there’s corn, that just doesn’t do anything for me. I will eat the dark meat.

White meat is okay, if that’s the only thing, then I’ll for sure have some gravy on it. I don’t like dry food. If there is mint chocolate, ice cream cake, I will have it. If it’s some sort of store bought sheet cake, I will not have it. That is not interesting to me. If I can have dessert with a cup of coffee, I’m more likely to have it.

If everybody is standing around and eating a dessert without coffee, it’s not interesting to me. So I want you to just get clear on what you like. What do you not like? Then just think through the event. Likely you’re going to an event that you have either been to in the past or something very similar.

And I want you to list the obstacles that you can anticipate will happen or you know will happen. This can be anything from it’s a long drive, I need to pack snacks. Dinner might not be on time. I don’t know what I’m going to wear. What am I going to do when my mom asks me an ABC question?

What am I going to do when somebody brings up this topic? Think of all the things that aren’t the most pleasant parts of your holiday that you want to solve for. How have you responded in the past that you didn’t really like how that went down? How am I going to respond when everyone’s having a conversation in the kitchen? How am I going to respond when I’m sitting there watching football and I start picking at the nuts in front of me? 

Just think about how you’ve responded in the past, if that worked for you and you. You can respond that way again. But remember, part of this  is recreating your holidays, knowing that it’s a hundred percent possible to respond differently. You get an opportunity to create a new holiday, to create a new game plan. How will you respond this time?

The last two things I want you to consider is what do you need to do to prepare ahead of time for this game plan. If  you know there’s the potential for dinner to be three hours late, what do I need to plan ahead of time? Do I need to bring a snack? Do I want to bring a specific dip that I like to eat with my vegetables that might not be there?

Maybe I like to eat hummus instead of a dairy dip. Do I want to bring a Clif Bar, if I want to have a sweet treat because I have committed to myself that I won’t eat chaos foods, and maybe sugar is a chaos food for you. 

Do you need to plan specific, safer foods for you to just have stashed in your purse? If you have decided that you want to bring games ahead of time, do you need to bring some cards, put them in your purse? Do you want to research some conversation starters?  Do you want to look at how to play a new card game, so that you can play it with the kids or somebody else?

Do what you need to do ahead of time and make sure that you schedule that. Finally, one of the biggest hacks and the freest things that you can do for yourself is to think about the plan that you created, visualize yourself at that event using your new game plan. Walking through in your mind the obstacles that you anticipate coming up and visualizing yourself.

Implementing your new response. The reason we do this is because the brain is very good at doing things that are familiar to it. If you visualize ahead of time, your brain doesn’t know if you’re actually doing it, or just visualizing it. And this is a hack so that when you get into the situation, doing what you really want, that new game plan will be even more automatic and won’t take so much effort.

A few extra tips. At the event, you really want to prioritize the foods that you enjoy. I want you to  prioritize the foods that are holiday specific or part of a special memory for you so that you aren’t wasting stomach space or risking being uncomfortable for should foods.

Like I mentioned, green bean casserole, not my favorite. I will take more of that stuffing and sweet potatoes. You want to eat with a safe eating plan. In our community, we create what’s called a safe eating plan, which is just the opposite of chaotic eating. For you listening to this podcast, chances are what will keep you safe is food that you put on a plate and eat seated. 

What can feel a little chaotic and mindless is food that we eat standing from the appetizer table. Once you put it on a plate, you feel like you have more control. And once you sit down, you feel like you have even more control. And then once you’re actually eating the food, there are three habits I suggest you practice.

The first one is you chew your food 20 times. The second one is that you empty your hands between bites. And the third one is that you don’t put more food in your mouth. Until  your mouth is empty. Doing those very simple things, you can enjoy all of the holiday treats, all of the celebratory foods and you won’t feel regret and you won’t feel guilt. What’s most surprising to most women when they start implementing this is they start to be surprised at how satisfied they are with a lesser amount than they’re used to eating. Their brains just say, wow, that was enough.

I’m full. I’m full. I am actually satisfied. A few other things, when you’re at the event, just check in with yourself every once in a while for your reasons for eating foods. You want to love your reasons. We don’t want to eat foods out of obligation or pressure. If you’re feeling pressure, just take a little break. Decide if it’s a food that you really want to eat. If you do feel free to eat it, but usually if we feel pressure or like someone’s pushing food on them, you can say, let me get back to you. Give me just a moment. No, thank you. There are many options other than eating it on the spot.

Check in with yourself, if you’re feeling pressure, usually you will regret eating that food. The other one is if we’re bored. And as you heard, when talking about the game plans, if you anticipate being bored, just have a few things that you will do instead of eating out of boredom.

Because we want you to enjoy your food. We want you to splurge. We want you to indulge. We want you to enjoy all of the exciting celebratory foods, but without the guilt. And you’re not enjoying celebratory foods if you’re simply eating out of pressure or boredom. A few other things that I like for women to notice is to continue to check in with themselves. Notice if they’re having a stress response. If you start to feel stressed out, the only thing you can do is to go calm yourself down.

Calm  yourself down. A calm brain does not stress eat. The more calm you can put in your brain, the more prevention you’re putting in from feeling guilty or about overeating. So sometimes you might be at an event at your house or someone else’s house and you just start to notice yourself being stressed. 

Put that on your game plan. What will you do to calm yourself down? With these tips, and you thinking ahead and creating your game plan, you will be able to splurge this holiday season without the guilt. All right, everybody. Merry Christmas.