Ep #307: How to Approach Food-Centric Holidays

Welcome to the Weight Loss for Busy Physicians podcast. I'm your host, master certified life and Weight Loss coach Katrina Ubel, M.D. This is the podcast where busy doctors like you come to learn how to lose weight for the last time by harnessing the power of your mind. If you're looking to overcome your stress, eating and exhaustion and move into freedom around food, you're in the right place. Well, hello there, my friend. How are you today? I am so glad you're here with me. I am having an interesting day. I am finally getting my first colonoscopy tomorrow, which, you know, we're doctors here. It's okay. I can share that with you. I found out, as many of you know, is probably most of you know that you're supposed to get your first screening colonoscopy when you're 45. And I'm 46, so I'm already a year behind. So finally I got myself together. My clients know I've talked about this before because they would talk about it. And I think, Oh, man, I got to do this. I got to.

 

Do this.

 

So I'm getting it tomorrow. So I am on all fluids today. So that's a fun day. Actually, I'm getting a ton of work done. It's, you know, it was so funny as last night when I was sleeping, I kept having all these dreams where I ate by accident, you know, like today, like I'm not supposed to be eating, but I forgot that I was only on.

 

Clears and.

 

I ate food and screwed it all up. It was kind of funny. Your brains are like, Don't mess this up. I'm going to make sure that you don't forget. So, so far, so good. It is. You know, it's fine. A friend of mine told me yesterday. She goes, Look, people make such a big deal out of the prep. It's not that bad. But I have not started my go lightly yet. That starts in a couple of hours. So to be continued to be determined.

 

I won't let you know how it went. I'll save you that.

 

Well, I wanted to also just mention that this is my first episode that I'm recording after we had our big extravaganza event for all of our clients, active and inactive. And it was Oh.

 

So, so, so good.

 

I cannot even tell you, man. It was our biggest event yet. We just had a magnificent time. Everyone who attended had such a great time. I got to meet everybody and sign books and take selfies and give hugs and oh man, we just had such a great time. So we had a party on Friday night that we ended up being able to have in the lobby of the hotel. They had this beautiful, beautiful bar and they kind.

 

Of.

 

Shielded it all off. So it felt like it was our own space with lots of comfy seating for groups and in DJ and dancing. And then I was signing books in this special little like speakeasy type room that was like hidden. The door was hidden in the wall. So it gave us a little quieter place to take pictures and sign books. And so it was just so fun. We had such a great time. Then on Saturday, we had our Master's live event, which was awesome. We talked about personal leadership and oh, so, so, so good. And then on Sunday morning we had just some another meet and greet, more book signing. And then also we had some other amazing events. We had meditation, we had breathwork we had going outside for a walk. And also while we were there, the Houston Astros won the World Series. So Saturday night we're in Houston.

 

And we're like, Well, I guess the.

 

World Series is here. And if they win, that's the end of it. So Saturday night was going to sleep with the loudest sound machine I could find on my phone because people were partying outside and honking their horns and revving their engines. And I can't blame them. They were excited. That was good. Good for them. Right. So anyway, it was such an amazing, amazing event. And I'm actually really looking forward to creating a whole weekend event like that again sometime in the future for all of our current and inactive clients, because it's just it's so fun to get everybody back together. And even when things are going really great, sometimes it's awesome to just get back together with your people and rejuvenate and re-energize and just move forward in the best way possible. So that was awesome. Such a fun, not really like end cap to the book coming out and being released, but this was kind of the the last big thing that we really had planned. And so, man, we did it. We really did it and it was awesome. So thank you to all of our program members who came and those who came virtually as well. It was such a just a great, great time and I just loved being there with you and I love seeing you all together. Even better, even better. Even new people, new friends made. They're like, we're totally good friends now. We just met. We sat next to each other yesterday.

 

It was like, so good.

 

All right. So I want to talk to you today about how to approach food centric holidays. This episode is coming out after Thanksgiving, just a few days after Thanksgiving and in the US, US Thanksgiving. And I thought this was such a good time to discuss this because if you're in the US and just celebrated Thanksgiving, you might have found where you have some maybe gaps in your skill set, some areas where there's some room for improvement or you might have gone, you know what? That was actually really easy and awesome. And you can see how what I offer you to you today coincides and aligns with what you did to make Thanksgiving work for you. But. Also, there are a lot of holidays coming up here and really just throughout the year, there are so many food centric holidays. I wanted to put a dedicated episode out to help you in dealing with this now. The way I'm approaching this one is thinking about sort of the holidays end quotes, which I don't even know exactly what people consider the holidays, but at least in the US here, I would say that it's pretty much the two months of November and December, maybe starting in Halloween for some people, but definitely by Thanksgiving and then all the way through into the new year. So when you have a 6 to 8 week long period of time where you're being inundated with food options, it's a little bit different than, say, another holiday that is one day or a weekend and it doesn't feel so all consuming.

 

But the good news is, is that everything that I talked to you about today, you're going to be able to basically scaled down to a smaller holiday as well. This will take care of what's arguably the hardest and biggest period of time for most people, for a lot of people, and will also help you with any other holidays or events that you have moving forward as well. So I put together five main points, five steps on how to approach the holidays. I would suggest that if you have any concern about the holidays at all, that you sit down today and or whenever you listen to this and when you have a moment and and actually think about this, answer these questions, because I think it's going to make a really big difference for you. It's going to help you to see how much more control you have over your experience of these holidays than you might otherwise think that you do. So let's dig into these five steps. So the first step is a little cheeky, but the first step is to take your own pulse. So have you read the book House of God? Samuel Shem. If you haven't, it's a classic. And what they say in there is the first thing you do in any code situation is to take your own pulse.

 

Right.

 

And of course, this book is satire and it's very funny and also has a lot of some serious accuracies as well as great satire often does. But really, what you want to do in a situation like this where you're worried about what's to come, is to first take your own pulse. So what that means is you need to take a note of what your anxieties are. What are you worried about? We don't want to be freaking out, Right? What is the point of taking your own pulse and a code situation? Well, if you're freaking out, you're certainly not helping the patient who's coding, Right? So in this kind of a situation, if your brain is a mess, if you're freaking out and so anxious about what's to come in terms of food in the holidays, then you're not going to have any hope of coming up with anything that's going to work just right. You're going to be super anxious, super overwhelmed. And what do we do when we feel that way? Often we eat, so we want to take our own pulse. And what I mean by that is we want to get centered. We want to get grounded. We want to get to a place where we feel at least with some certainty, that we can do this. You don't have to feel like 100% I've got this. But if we had a scale of certainty from, say, 0 to 10 zero being your your certainty, I can't do it right. Like absolutely no certainty. They can do it ten being 100% in full belief and certain that you can do it. It would be nice if you were an eight, nine or a ten. Right. So let's get to that place where you work through those anxieties. You understand what the anxiety really is about and get yourself feeling grounded. Often I find what helps so much in order to do this is just to dump out all those thoughts in your brain.

 

All the.

 

The mess that's bouncing around in there. Like I always say, it's like when you think about the lottery and the lottery balls, like they have all those little numbered balls all blowing around and they're like, crazy, right? And then they hit the button and one of them sucks up and it's like, Oh, here's our thought. We have so much in there. We need to get that all out. So however you like to do that, a lot of people really like to just journal. It doesn't even need to be legible. You are just getting it out. What are all the things you're anxious about? What are all the things that you're worried about? What are all the reasons why you think that this is going to be really hard for you? And if you're kind of like, I don't know, I don't think it's going to be that hard, then write out all the reasons why you think you've got this. Because here's the other thing. Sometimes we get a little overly confident and then we get a little surprise. So it would be good either way. What do you currently think and feel about these situations where food is going to be present in a holiday type of situation? Coming up, Let's. Actually find out what's going on and bring down that anxiety level to a manageable place where we realize, you know what, I'm a smart and capable human being. I can figure this out. Right. That's the energy we want to bring. I may not know how to do it right now, but I do know that I can learn things.

 

And I do know that I can figure things out. That's the energy we want to bring to this. So, number one, we took our own pulse. Number two, we want to establish our goals. What do you even want to get done throughout this period of holidays? Right. Often people say, well, I just want to maintain and I have no problem with that. Please do not take this as me judging that. I just find that when people say I just want to maintain, they often end up gaining weight. So if you don't say anything, you end up gaining usually more weight. If you say you want to maintain, you'll probably gain less weight. If you say you want to lose weight during that time, you know, worst case scenario, hopefully you maintain I just say this just from from experience. So if you really want to maintain and you're going to do what it takes to maintain, I have no problem with that at all. I think maintaining is amazing. You just have to understand what maintenance actually is. And it's not gaining £5, right? Not because gaining £5 is a bad thing or a problem, but because it's not what you had wanted to have happen. So what I think can be very helpful and this is just a suggestion, just a different way to encourage you to think about it is considering what it might be like to go through the holidays with the goal of losing weight. Now, it could be that you want to keep trying to lose maybe one or £2 a week throughout the whole season.

 

That would be okay if that's what you want to do or if you don't want to go to that level, you could decide that you just want to lose one or £2 per month, right? If that's more realistic, like one or £2 in November, 1 to £2 in December. Or however you want to work it out. I mean, that would be completely fine. The difference is when you are in the mindset of I am losing weight, you are thinking about everything differently. The reason why so many of us have struggled with maintenance, me included, for so many years, you know, back when I was losing weight and trying to maintain it and couldn't do it is because I did not understand what I needed to do to actually maintain. Often we think we're doing what we need to do to maintain, but that is actually weight gaining behavior. So if you're not super, super, super solid on how to maintain, I don't know that that would be the best way to approach it, or at least the way that I would recommend. Of course you get to do it however you want. Please feel free to prove me wrong. I just think that when you go, you know what I want to end this year less than where I stand right now, then I think that it just changes the way you approach things. Everything that you do is from a different lens, right? It's a different filter that you're looking at it through and thinking about it through.

 

So regardless of what you decide, you could even decide I'm going to gain weight, but it's only going to be £2 this year and not 15 like last. That could be okay too. But establish your goal. What is your goal? So, number one, take your own pulse number to establish your goal. What are you actually trying to accomplish during this time? Number three, What will support you in reaching your goal? This is really, really important because we often approach this in a way that doesn't help us. So let me explain. We often look at this like we need to do all the things every single day, all of the time, or we're doing nothing right. We're doing none of them. So when we think about all the ways that we could support ourselves in reaching whatever this goal is that we created or decided for ourselves, you know, we go, okay, there's all I know. All of these things are so helpful. They all are so great for me. And that's amazing, except we got to get really realistic. I know for myself, so many years, gosh, when I was in practice, I remember so many years it being Halloween or, you know, getting close to Thanksgiving and just thinking to myself, I'm barely hanging on by a thread as it is. How am I now supposed to do all the holiday stuff on top of it? All the gifts, the decorations, the this, that and the other thing? Like literally feeling just like, I don't know, it's like getting blood from a stone.

 

Like literally, where is this going to come from? How am I going to do this? Right? So we have to really think for ourselves what is realistic and how we can support ourselves. So ultimately, these are self care activities. But I want you to boil it down to the most important actions, the ones that you find really move the needle for you. So this is going to be different for each person. Then I want you to choose just that one thing, right? What is the one thing that you go, You know what? When I do this, it really makes a difference. And when I don't do it, I really notice. Maybe not immediately, but it doesn't take long and I see the consequences of not doing it. So you're going to be like, No, but there's five things now. I understand, but let's just boil it down to the most important thing, the thing that really moves the needle, the thing that you are willing to commit to on a regular basis. I'm not going to say daily because sometimes daily makes us do nothing. I know it does for me. If I have to do it every day, then I'll just never do it. So we're just going to say on a regular basis. Then only if you want to. You can add one or two more things. If you feel like you have the capacity and if you really strongly know deep within you that you can definitely do all two or three of those things on a regular basis during this time.

 

So please do not commit to anything unless you know for sure you can do it regularly. So let's just talk about what some of the stuff can be, because it really can be very quick, easy things and some things can be a little bit more involved, but also extremely impactful. So simple things could be taking 2 minutes just to stretch. Your body could be meditating, it could be journaling, it could be doing exercise, it could be getting outside and getting some fresh air. It could be yoga or something else. That really is an activity that makes your body feel really good. It could be for my program members getting coached weekly, watching one of the program videos, listening to a call recording. Right. These are all things that help you to just stay connected to what you're trying to do so you can reach your goal. There's so many other things. I mean, any way that you process emotions is so good to do. Making sure you're getting enough sleep, drinking enough water. I mean, you name it, right? But what is the one thing that you're like, Yeah, done. Like, if it's like, it depends which way you want to approach this, but if you knew that, I'd give you, you know, $10,000 for doing that, would you do it? Or you're like, Done? No problem. I don't want to think about it. Yes. If there was a negative consequence. Right.

 

We won't go there. We won't go there.

 

So what is going to support you in reaching your goal? What? Self care activity? Emotional processing. What are planning your food or whatever it is? What is the one thing that you can commit to doing that's going to support you in reaching that goal that you've established? If you want to add one or two more things, you can, you can always do more. That's just not part of your commitment throughout the entire holiday period. We want to set ourselves up for success. Okay. Number four, you with me? Remember, it's just food. It really is just food. We need to identify and then remove the thoughts that we have that create scarcity around food. Like, it's literally a digestible substance that you chew up in your mouth and swallow, and it tastes good. Okay, that's.

 

Cool.

 

But that's not something that is so, so, so, so, so important. Right? Often in the holidays, so much of what we really enjoy is related to the food. And that's part of the problem for us, those of us who struggle with overeating. Right. So what I want to suggest that you do is to work on finding other traditions or even just other fun things that you can do that you could get really excited about so that it's not the food or mostly the food that you're super excited about. There's the food and then there's the things that you're really excited about. Then there's the traditions that you get to be really excited about that aren't food focused that can make a really big difference. So ultimately, when your brain is freaking out and telling, you know, you have to and this is so important and this is your chance, and you've had this every year since you were a baby and whatever it is, right? It's just food. And maybe that means you have one small bite and you just taste the heck out of it and really enjoy it. Maybe you have a little more than that, or maybe you just decide, you know what? It's really just better for me when I just don't have any of it. But remember, it is just food.

 

We don't have to feel super sad, find a lot of pity for ourselves. It is just food. And there's always more where that came from, right? I mean, in a hot second, we're going to have the next food centric holiday and all the amazing food that comes with that, right? We are going to be okay. There's always going to be plenty of amazing things to eat. So if you don't eat this one today, you're going to be okay. It's going to be okay. All right. So to review, first, we take our own pulse. Then we establish our goals. Then we figure out what will support us in reaching our goals. Then we remember it's just food. It really is just food. And finally, number five, you want to be in the mindset of you're either winning or you're learning. I actually talk about this in my book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time. It's a quote from Dan Sullivan. And it's so important. If you're winning, things are going great. Amazing. Enjoy it when you're not winning. That doesn't mean you have to be losing. That doesn't mean that you're failing and doesn't mean that you'll never figure this out or something's broken within you, or you're just weak, or you've always been this way. So you can never change. It doesn't mean any of that.

 

If you're not winning, there's something to be learned. There's something you don't know yet. And you just have now the opportunity to learn it. So if when something comes up where you're not winning during this period of time, make sure you learn to do better next time. Give yourself the gift of not shaming yourself or blaming yourself for others. Learn and move on to the next thing. Do better next time with the information you now have. Make sure you give yourself the gift of getting the help you need, getting the support that you need. Put yourself into a situation where you are set up for success. That's why I always love it when I have clients who are in the weight loss for doctors only program during the holidays. I just think that that's the best time to get support because who are we kidding? This is the easiest time to gain weight, right? Make sure you're giving yourself the support that you need. You are worth it. You are deserving of it. And it makes all the difference. If you want this pattern to change. These are the things that we need to do. So one final review. Number one, take your own pulse number to establish your goal. What are you trying to accomplish? Number three, how will you support yourself in accomplishing that? Number four, remember, it is just food.

 

It's not the end of the world. And number five, if you're not winning, you're learning one way or the other. You're winning or you're learning. So if you're not winning, make sure you learn and do better next time. All right, my friend, you have totally got this. And remember, we are here to support you. So if you're going, yeah, this all sounds great, but I know me and I know I need help with this. We will be giving you more information soon about how you can join us in the weight loss for doctors only program. We can get you all the help that you need. Well, I look forward to you having an amazing end of the year if there are holidays that you're celebrating coming up here, I wish you very pleasant holidays. And I am just mostly so excited for you to learn how to get through the holidays where it's kind of ain't no thing, you know what I mean? Like, you just it's like this is you just do this and you know how and it's really not a big deal. It's just really okay. Like the food will taste good and you will not overeat it. It's really possible, I promise you. And I'm as astounded as anybody.

 

But it really is true.

 

All right. I hope you have a great rest of your week and I will talk to you next time. Take care. Bye bye. Ready to start making progress on your weight loss goals for lots of free health. Go to Katrina, UBL, IMDB.com, and click on Free Resources.