(upbeat music)
- Hey munchies, welcome to the channel.
If you're new, I'm Alyssia
and I'm so happy, you're here either way.
My relationship with the holidays and with food has shifted
a lot over the past few years.
And Thanksgiving is this week.
Oh my gosh, I can't believe
that this year has gone by so fast somehow,
even though it feels like it's taken forever,
but I wanted to talk about relationships with food
and food anxiety over the holidays.
I used to really dread the holidays because of the food,
and at the same time I also used to
use the season as an excuse eat whatever I wanted.
Last year was really the first time
that I didn't feel totally controlled by the holidays
and regarding food.
So either through the resistance of trying to,
you know, maintain control over food and my body,
or by completely submitting like
the pendulum swings the other way, yo-yo dieting to
you know the, I've blown it mentality
and giving up completely and saying,
"Well, I'll just start again on January 1st."
So what changed?
I'm gonna talk about this in January.
So I actually have an entire, it's a series,
but it's gonna be a free course
where all the videos are posted on YouTube.
So if you're subscribed, you'll get the videos,
but the series is called Food Freedom
and it's gonna talk about how I shifted my relationship
with food.
It's a free course.
You can sign up at mindovermunch.com/foodfreedom
if you want the emails,
because even though the videos are on YouTube,
all of the additional downloads and content
will be in the emails every single day.
And it's completely free.
You don't have to pay anything.
It's just gonna be easier
to distribute the information that way
than like in all of the description boxes of every video,
because it is a daily series.
So Monday through Friday in January,
I'm gonna be talking about relationships with food.
So today I wanted to talk about a few perspectives
and concepts that have helped me stay grounded
and relaxed with food.
I think for the last couple of years it's been growing,
but especially this year amidst,
you know, the Coronavirus craziness.
So the first thing is taking it one day at a time.
Getting connected with the present
helps me ground here and now
so that I can decide what I want today,
one day at a time, and one meal at a time.
Sometimes if I'm really present,
I can even take it one bite at a time.
So I have to remind myself of this
because it's really hard when,
if you struggle with a fear of food,
if you have anxiety around food,
and you're worried about gaining weight
or trying to lose weight all the time,
or you're stuck in kind of the dieting culture mentality
as I was for a lot of years,
I forget that one meal,
or one day isn't what makes the difference.
You're not going to lose weight
if you eat healthy for one day
and you're not gonna gain weight
if you eat a bite or a meal or a day or a week of food.
You know, you're not gonna get fat or lose muscle
or get heart disease
from just these individual small choices.
It's an overall accumulation
and kind of when these instances become habits
that we can't break, that's when it's really a problem.
But what I've realized is the more I can tune in now,
the more I can make choices that serve me now,
and the more I can do that each time,
then it becomes an overall thing rather than an individual.
And the fear kind of dissipates.
I used to go through the holidays being so far from present.
I was tuning out all the time, not in,
and because I was always so stressed over the holidays,
not just about food,
but you know about family and finances
and work and everything,
I was eating to fill an emotional hunger
rather than a physiological one.
When I tune in here and now I actually eat what I need now.
And more importantly,
I enjoy it because I'm paying attention.
So when I'm tuning out,
it's like I can eat all this food and stuff in my face
until my stomach is bulging,
and I didn't even taste a single bite.
Now, when I'm paying attention,
I can enjoy the process more.
So I personally practice being present
by meditating every single day.
And I try to bring mindfulness to my daily life
as much as possible.
One of the main mindfulness teachers of the West,
Joseph Goldstein says,
"The hard part isn't being mindful, but remembering to be."
So if I ask you one of the main cues
and definitions I love from mindfulness,
if I ask, what's happening now,
and I ask myself this all the time,
then you can kind of get a sense
for what's happening right now in this moment.
You know, not what's a thought about yesterday
or in the future or whatever, but what's happening now.
It's not hard to do, but it's hard to remember to do it.
Okay, so the second concept that really helped me
is what I've called permission.
So a turning point and healing my relationship with food
came when I decided to stop resisting.
So instead of telling myself,
I couldn't have this or that,
or by abiding by arbitrary food rules,
so rules like, how much can I eat?
What kinds of foods I can eat or not eat?
What times I'm allowed to eat.
I decided to give myself permission to engage with foods
that I had previously decided were unhealthy or unallowed.
I started paying attention to my fear foods,
which I talked about in a video a couple of months ago.
I named this, foods with emotional attachment or rules.
And this framework really helped me notice
how much fear I had around food.
How food started to control me because of all these rules,
by setting up these arbitrary rules.
No one else set them,
I mean, maybe the diets were setting them up,
whatever arbitrary diet I was following was setting them up.
But the only reason that I would feel so much resistance
and stress was that I was too afraid to break the rule
when what's gonna happen?
Nothing, right?
Noticing this, seeing the fear
and seeing how much the rules kind of owned me,
helped me start to disidentify from the food.
And it helped me take the morality out of food.
So I wasn't, I mean, before I used to think,
if I'm eating something that's healthy or unhealthy
then I'm good or I'm bad.
But we're not good or bad because of what we eat, right?
And it makes sense intellectually,
but I didn't have a felt sense of it.
Eventually though, once I started
to notice these rules more and more
and how much they were owning me,
I was able to step back and just watch more objectively.
Most of us who've ever been on a diet before,
know about food rules.
And probably we have a few right now
that we may not even be aware of.
So this season, I encourage you
if this is resonating, this food rules concept,
see if you can just notice the impulse to set a food rule
or abide by them.
I mean, they could be really sneaky.
So it could be something like, don't eat lunch today,
so I can eat more at the holiday party tonight.
Or if I work out today,
then I can eat an extra cookie
or I can eat two cookies if they're gluten-free.
All of these rules are from personal experience obviously.
And there are loads more because I love rules.
Now, I'm not asking you
to take any different action regarding these rules,
but I'm simply encouraging you to notice if they come up.
Because what I found is just noticing it, the action will,
it'll start to change on its own.
The problem is when we're not tuning in,
we don't even notice that these rules own us.
Then they have the potential to own us.
But when we start to notice it, it loses its grip,
it loses its power.
Okay, so comment below, what are the food rules
that you know you tend to rely on?
Just bringing some awareness to this.
So the next concept that I wanna talk about today,
this is so relevant especially during holiday eating,
is being realistic.
I mean, where are my pragmatists at?
I lean toward what makes sense.
But when I'm stressing out about food or health,
I can't really, you know, see or think clearly enough
to know what's practical.
When we judge ourselves, we're not seeing clearly.
So judgment becomes like an obstacle to seeing clearly.
When I'm judging someone else or when I'm judging myself,
I'm seeing it through a biased lens.
So we need to kind of remove that judgment,
to be able to see clearly and see the truth of it.
The truth of the holidays is
with the holidays comes a lot of delicious foods,
whether I want them there or not.
The temptations may be there year round,
Like, yeah, I could go to the store
and get a bunch of baked goods year round,
but it doesn't feel impossible to manage
like it can over the holidays where,
you know, I walk into any house
and there's cookies lying out
and people are sharing their love for me through their food
and I feel pressured to eat it and all of these things.
So what makes sense is I say,
don't try so hard to manage them over the holidays.
I'm not saying to submit, you know, to holiday binge eating
and blow it by giving yourself permission to eat mindlessly
and then start over on January 1st.
I am suggesting that maybe
the last couple of months of the year
are probably not the time to start a new diet program
for instance.
Really I would argue that dieting isn't worth it at all,
but we'll talk more about that in the January course.
The fact is the hardest part of a diet and of life
is the mental aspect of it.
It's mind over munch, right?
(light melodic music)
If we try to loose weight over the holidays,
we are likely to be filled not only with cookies
when we eat emotionally because of our failing diets,
but we're also left with the judgment and the shame.
So instead of setting unrealistic goals to lose weight,
consider making efforts to do something productive
that also aids health.
So instead of focusing on less and restriction
and telling yourself you can't have this or that,
what can you have more of?
Focus on the abundance rather than the scarcity.
Can you eat more fruits and vegetables
throughout the season?
A simple goal like that rather than focusing on weight loss
is gonna do more good for you long-term anyway.
So the last thing to touch on is self-compassion.
Self-compassion is the antidote to that judgment.
Remember that judgment keeps us from seeing clearly.
What is self-compassion?
So you would never say,
"Stop eating so many cookies and work out you fat slob,"
to me or to your friend, because you're a good human being.
But so many of us speak to ourselves that way.
Self-compassion is just taking the tone with yourself
that you would take with a friend.
So notice the tone that you take,
you know, the internal tone
when you talk to yourself this holiday season.
Are you judging yourself or you're telling yourself
it shouldn't be that way?
The word should is a great alarm for judgment.
See if you can shift the tone
to be slightly more understanding and kind,
I think people often get confused
thinking that self-compassion is like weak,
but it's actually really neutral.
Self-compassion is really like seeing clearly as they are,
instead of telling yourself a story that,
you know, you're bad, you're bad, or you deserve judgment.
The holidays are stressful, finances, family,
on top of it all of the,
you know, tough COVID filled 2020 stuff.
Food and health can really compound that anxiety
and the stress isn't gonna help our health.
In January, so much of what I wanna talk about in the course
is how the stress that we're under trying to be healthy
is actually making us less healthy.
Based on some of the science that I've been reading lately,
I'm really tempted to argue
that we would be better off eating
pie daily over the holidays,
rather than eating no pie at all
and being perpetually stressed.
We're gonna talk about this more in January.
So you can sign up
if you wanna be a part of this free course
at mindovermunch.com/foodfreedom.
This season as you go through the holidays,
I encourage you to get curious.
Can you step back and watch your experience unfold?
Just notice, are there food rules or exercise rules?
Are you compensating for food with exercise?
Are there attachments to,
you know, certain food rituals or routines,
or are there judgements?
Just notice the tone that you take with yourself.
I'm not asking you to do anything differently,
but rather to just watch like an observer
and become aware of the way things are right now.
After all, if we want things to be different,
the first step is awareness and seeing clearly,
because if we can't see what's happening clearly,
then we don't know what to change.
So if you want more content like this,
subscribe and hit the bell.
The free course goes up in January
at mindovermunch.com/foodfreedom.
Comment below and let me know,
what are you most worried about this holiday season?
What are your food rules?
And or where do you feel stuck with health and feeling good
about your relationship with food the most?
Okay, there will be no video this Thursday.
I wanted to get it up now before Thanksgiving,
but we will be back next Thursday with a brand new video.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family
and loved ones.
Please be safe.
And remember it really is all a matter of mind over munch.