Here Comes The Turkey

I used to dislike the holidays because I always gained weight.   I had a sinking feeling that all of my “hard work” would be lost in the span of a few days.

This diet mentality lived in me for 25 years.  I hope you believe me.  Really, I was the kind who counted calories, dieted all the time, lost weight, and then always gained it back.  I had skinny clothes and my fat clothes.  When I was going to see a family member I hadn’t seen in a while, I was either happy because I was thinner and feeling proud, or ashamed and apprehensive because I was heavier.

The holidays are completely different for me now.

Once  you put food pack into its proper place in your life by exiling your diet mentality in favor of a healthy thin mentality, everything is different.  Food is a joyful and normal part of life instead of a source of anxiety, guilt and shame.

In order to make this transition, you must rebuild your relationship with eating and food.  The only way to do this is to connect eating with hunger.  Eating for any other reason, for example to “treat” yourself, is going to sabotage your efforts.  Once you repair that relationship by making a habit of eating when you are hungry and stopping when hunger is gone, your body will stop fighting you.  You will surprise yourself by:

• Walking away from your favorite dessert because you aren’t hungry.
• Save portions of your dinner for later when you are hungry again.
• Look forward to being hungry, instead of being scared.
• Realizing that there is no joy in overeating.    This is huge.
• Feel sorry for dieters and want to help them leave the sad, frustrating world of dieting behind.

So this Thanksgiving I will enjoy dinner more than any time when I was a dieter.  I will eat what I love.  I will stop eating when I am not hungry any more.  And when I get hungry again, I will, without guilt or gluttony, eat more!

And I will not gain weight.  I have been a stable happy (thin) weight for 14 years as a non-dieter.

What will your Thanksgiving be like?

I hope that if you are worried that you will gain weight, you take a good hard look at the message I am trying to spread.  Free yourself.  Life is good, food is fantastic, and diets are fattening.