Ahhh, it’s that time of year, ladies and gentlemen. The “most wonderful time of the year,” or the “most food traumatizing time of the year.” Both views are accurate. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. Holiday party after party. Holiday meal after meal, and meals before meals. Indulgence with friends, family and coworkers, or simply by yourself. There is an excess of alcohol, cheese, bread, chocolate, or to sum up, an excess of the works. Translation of all of the above into an excess of stress.
How does one survive?
I was wandering through the drugstore this past weekend and interestingly enough the vast and fabulous display of chocolate was set up directly beside supplements for weight control. A sign of impending things to come perhaps. Impending promises for January and the New Year, but, why wait? Why not get started with change now.
Many of us will strive to get through the month of December with promises to ourselves:
“I will be better in January.”
“I will pay for this later.”
“I have no choice in this, I have to eat it.”
“I cannot find my self control.”
Food is associated with love, and love is associated with food. This becomes an even bigger problem around the holiday table as there are a vast amount of items from Mom/Grandparents/Dad/Traditional Family recipes. Many feel obligated to consume, an obligation or allegiance to someone else’s time, effort and cooking. Yet, in the grand scheme of life, your eating selectively does not mean a rejection of this love, but instead, it means that you are loving yourself first.
Many believe that overeating is simply a habit they cannot break. Many believe that the food controls them and they do not have control over food. Many willpower’s break at the sight and smell of delicious food, especially when it stirs your emotional mind and memories. It’s a destructive, circular pattern of indulgence and happiness leading directly to submission into a puddle of defeat and guilt, as many watch their waistlines expand from the choices they falsely feel they had no control over making.
How does one get that control back?
Individuals need to be able to make new choices at the source. This is not dieting, this is a lifestyle change. A life changed that will see the benefits both physically and mentally. Control CAN be gained over these choices and we CAN begin to crave different foods. Food our body will benefit from by using the energy for fuel and not for our winter fat stores. The days of need are long gone and we need to learn to function in excess. To look at hypnotherapy as a form of dieting would be incorrect. Hypnotherapy is used to change the original imprinted source of emotional eating. Hypnotherapy can be used to change the automatic reach out, meaning, what item of food you are automatically reaching out for. When dieting, a dieter wears what I call the ‘diet face’ when at a party. Sadness, stress, anxiety and definitely hunger.
What if it was stated that there is a different way from dieting and wearing the ‘diet face’. What if there were a different path, one on which you can get to the ‘source’ of your emotional eating and change the choices you make before you even have to think about it. What would your world be like if you looked at a buffet and automatically craved the things your body needed as compared to craving the things your mind wants? No body needs what the mind tells it that it does. No body needs the amount of food that individuals put in themselves when feeding their emotions as compared to their true and real hunger.
Hypnotherapy can help balance the mind vs. body battle.
Its time to try a different way this holiday season. Try to stem your cravings for overeating from the source. Hypnotherapy can help you get to this ‘source.’ It truly is not about that box of Christmas chocolate or the buffet table so full you can practically hear it groan. You do have a choice. It is about changing the way your thoughts are processed so you stop eating when you are full. You choose what your body is craving. You change your life with food by changing your choices regarding food. You look and feel things differently. This isn’t the next diet craze, because this is not dieting. This is about changing YOU and all the benefits that go with it become YOURS.
May the end of your 2016 be filled with love and happiness and may you find these things not on your plate but instead in your heart.
Happy Holidays, everyone!
One of our Client Care Coordinators published this post.