Hi Friends!
The holiday season is upon us and many people will be discussing the topics of holiday weight, eating themselves into a food coma, eating napping and then eating again. These conversations can be funny when you have the humor to separate the joke from reality. However, the fear of the holiday “weight gain” is a reality for some individuals especially those struggling with their relationship with food.
During this holiday season have some compassion for yourself. Easier said than done, right?. Have you ever heard of the saying “we are our worst critic”? We really are. Let’s start by saying holding yourself accountable or to a high standard isn’t the same as criticizing yourself with negative self-talk. Here is an example: You are enjoying your holiday season, you attend the dinner parties, eat the dessert, drink the wine, and notice your weight went up on the scale. Then you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror at a dinner party and don’t like how your stomach looks. The moment you do this, your mind starts flooding with thoughts of “you are overeating”, “you look so fat”, “you have no self-control”, “you don’t deserve dessert”, “you’re drinking too much alcohol”, “my significant other probably thinks I’m fat too”, so on and so on.
These thoughts start to consume you and start repeating themselves and by January 1st, you’re all set on starting a new diet. All of these negative thoughts have play a role in your head the whole holiday season and you notice that you didn’t even enjoy the holiday’s because you are too focused on the food failure and negative self-talk.
Take a deep breath.
Let’s introduce: Self- Compassion
Self-compassion is extending concern for the suffering, perceived inadequacy, or failure to one’s self. Meaning you have concern for the way you’re suffering, your perceived inadequate or a failure you have committed and you lend yourself the compassion you would lend a friend.
In the Intuitive Eating book by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, I really love the self-compassion exercise. After digging deeper into the topic of self-compassion, Dr. Neff states self-compassion can be broken down into three components as well: Self-kindness vs self-judgement, common humanity vs isolation, and mindfulness vs over identification but before dive into the details, let’s do an exercise.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Think about a time you’re struggling with eating: What do you typically say to yourself? Is the tone harsh, intense, forgiving, and/or positive?
- If your best friend, significant other, and/or loved one was struggling with his or her eating, how would you respond? Is the tone harsh, intense, forgiving, and/or positive?
- Is there a difference between the ways you would talk to your loved one compared to how you would talk to yourself? If so, what factors or fears come into play that lead you to treat yourself differently?
- How might your self-talk change if you responded kindly to yourself?
- Do you use self-criticism or self-bullying as motivators for your eating issues? Do you place rules on yourself and if you break one, the self-discipline talk turns into self-criticism? What are the top 3 phases you tell yourself?
- What compassionate words or phrases could you use to replace the negative phrases?
Now that you have answered these questions, how do you feel? Did you realize something about yourself? Did this stir up any emotional discomfort? Is this an exercise you can use this holiday season?
I have completed this with athletes and it never ceases to amaze me (and them) how negative we can be with ourselves but never to our loved one. This is one exercise to jumpstart you on reframing the self-criticism to self-compassion phrases. Try this for a week or two, set a reminder in your phone of self-compassionate phrases, this way you can be reminded throughout the week to extend concern to yourself. If you start now, the holiday food stress will play less of a role in your head and you will play a bigger role with enjoying the holiday season. The gift of giving yourself some compassion starts now and continues each day!
Have you ever considered being your own best friend and lending the same compassion to yourself as you do to others?