How to stop overeating during festivals

Dec 06, 2021

 

Hello ladies, for today's podcast, I am going to share the audio of a recent Instagram live that I did. I think that some of you are not on my social media, so if you would like to add me my handle on Instagram is @amrtui.coaching and on Facebook, I am Amruti Choudhry, so if you do want to connect with me on social media, that would be super fun!

 

So I did an Instagram live on Tuesday, and I just wanted to share it with you because it was about how to stop overeating during the Christmas period. Now, if you are not aware, I have a new free PDF that has the seven steps to stop overeating during Christmas. So if that's something that you would like to use, then please go to my website, www.amruticoaching.com to get your hands on that.

 

Now, if you are listening to this on the day that it airs, I normally release the podcast on a Tuesday, but this week I'm releasing it on a Monday because tomorrow on Tuesday, the 7th of December at 12:00 PM GMT I am doing a webinar, my last free webinar of the year, which is how to lose weight permanently for South Asian women professionals.

 

I've done this webinar before and it's gone down really, really well. So I'll be teaching you the three main things that most diet attempts don't include and how to start doing these three main things from today, so you can start losing weight today. So if you would like to attend this free webinar, then please go onto my website, www.amruticoaching.com and sign up for it. I look forward to seeing you there. 

 

Okay. Let's get started. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this Instagram live on how to stop overeating at Christmas.  I'm just going to introduce myself to people who don't know who I am.

 

So my name is Dr. Amruti Choudhry. I am a certified life and weight loss coach, and I'm a retired Physician. So I'm a retired general practitioner and I say retired because I was a full-time doctor before and now I have become a full-time life coach. And the reason I did this is because I got coached myself and I got so much tremendous value from coaching that I decided that south Asian women need to be taught the tools to start learning how to lose weight and do it in a way that's sustainable. To do it in a way where they don't have to deprive themselves, they get to eat the food that they actually want to eat. They get to eat with their family. They don't have to be overly hungry. They get to do it in a way where they're managing their mind. So they are doing it in a sustainable way, that is something that they never ever have to worry about for the rest of their life. So that is the reason why I decided to become a life coach. And I teach my clients these tools in the coaching that I offer, and I also teach them on my podcast. 

 

Okay.  Let's get started. What are the main problems that you notice with regards to your eating over Christmas. So I want you to type a few of them in, but I'm going to talk about some of the things that come up for a lot of my clients and the things that I see.

 

So most of the time people struggle around Christmas because they're thinking things like, oh, I've struggled so hard to lose weight during this whole time, and now over Christmas I just want to enjoy myself. I just want to relax and I just want to be able to enjoy time with my family. 

 

So most people, they equate that, okay, if Christmas is coming, then they associate that with a lot of food, with a lot of overeating. Now that doesn't have to be the case, but because that's the way you have always done it, your brain doesn't know any different. So that's what it thinks is the norm. 

 

So if you've tuned into any of my lives before or my podcast or anything, you'd know that we have two parts of our brain. So we have our habit brain, which I call the primitive brain because it wants us to do one of three things. It's our survival brain, and it wants us to always seek pleasure, avoid pain and stay how we are. So what tends to happen is it thinks that if we do what we've always done, which is overeat and overindulge and things like that, then we are safe because we're not doing anything new. And even if it sounds weird, that's what your brain will always default to - doing what you have always done. 

 

Which is why when people come on consults with me and they say, oh, I don't know if this is going to be possible for me, because I've tried everything under the sun and it hasn't worked for me, this is why I can completely understand that they're coming from, because all that's happening is that their primitive brain is acting and saying, no, no, no, don't do anything that's going to threaten your survival. 

 

So it's very scary to overcome that and do something new, but it's completely possible. And when you are able to do that, that's when you will be able to see what you're actually capable of and not just repeat your past, because when you're doing what you've already done, you just create the results that you've already created. So if you wanted to do something new, like stop overeating at Christmas, then what you would need to do is learn to adopt new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things so that you can actually achieve that new thing. Right? 

 

So the other part of our brain is the prefrontal cortex. So that is the part of our brain that can think of our greater goals. The one that can be like, okay, I can delay gratification in the moment so I can delay feeling good in the moment, so I get this long-term goal that I've always wanted to get.

 

What I teach my clients what to do and what I would teach you how to do is how can you start using that prefrontal cortex of yours? The one that is the higher brain, how can you start using that to actually follow through with the decisions that you've made beforehand?

 

So how can you start doing that? One of the main ways that you can do that I'll go into a little bit later is planning. So that's one of the steps and I will be talking about that a little bit later on. So I'm talking about these steps because I have created a free guide for you that you can access on my website, www.amruticoaching.com and if you sign up for it, you will not only get the guide, but you would also get an email every day for the next seven days where you will learn about each of the steps in depth. So you can go there and have a look at the guide while I talk about this. But firstly, what I'm going to do is just talk about some of the problems that we encounter and then go into the steps.

 

Another thing is they want to celebrate around Christmas. They're kind of like, you know, I’ve had a tough year and you're probably thinking, oh gosh, it's been really hard, I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year. You may not have been able to, you know, spend time with your loved ones at Christmas last year.

 

So how can you enjoy it without food? Your brain may be thinking no, no. The only way to enjoy ourselves is with food and because that's what you've always done, that's what you're always going to do. So that's another thing that tends to happen. 

 

Now, another thing is a lot of all or nothing thinking. So what is that all or nothing thinking? It’s when you are thinking, oh, well I've already eaten off plan, so let me just eat it all. This often shows up when you are, say, going out for a meal with family around Christmas time and you're thinking, okay I'm just going to plan to eat X, Y, and Z, and then someone orders something else and they're like, oh, do you want to try it? And you're like, oh, that's not really on my plan, but that's okay. Let me just have it. And then you feel guilty and you're like, okay, I've already eaten off plan so let me just eat X, Y and Z as well, because I've already failed. 

 

So with the all or nothing thinking it's very much like you're either winning or you're failing. So you're doing well at something or you're failing at something. When you're in that all or nothing thinking, you're always going to think, okay, well I've already eaten off protocol. So let me just  eat all the things and that tends to lead to a binge or some overeating. And then what tends to happen is you tend to feel very guilty and bad afterwards.

 

So a way of dealing with that is basically thinking, okay, how can I manage my thinking in a way that's actually not going to make me go into the all or nothing thinking? What other things could I think instead, instead of I failed, what things did I actually win at? How is it actually that it's not either black or white, but there's lots of shades of grey in between?

 

So it could be okay, I ate this one thing off protocol that’s not a big deal. I still ate 90% of my meal on protocol and that's fine, okay, let's go. So can you see that when you start changing the way you're thinking about it, you are much more likely to follow through and carry on with it. Most of the things that I see is that you start doing well, and then you're like, oh, well, I've already given up because it's too hard or it's to unmanageable, but in the seven step process that I've laid out in the PDF, it makes it much more manageable because all you're doing is these seven steps and they're all quite simple and quite self-explanatory. You may have known about a lot of them as well, and be like, oh, okay weight loss is not about learning all these new things.

 

The mind management you may not know about, which I will definitely teach you, but a lot of the other stuff you already know, but the reason why a lot of people are not losing weight or not stopping their overeating is because they are not doing what they already know. They are not doing what they know works. So it's not really about the knowledge, but our brain will always be like, no, no, no, instead of doing it, let me go and research the next diet thing or the next fad diet. Or let me go and try something else. Because when you're in that, let me just give it a go kind of mentality then you're not all in, you're not committed. You're not wanting to go through the ups and the downs of it. And you're just being like, okay, well, I'll just see how this turns out, right? So that isn't going to work. 

 

When you're gonna want to do this long-term, you want to find the reasons why this is important to you, because just imagine if this Christmas you are able to stop overeating, just imagine how amazing it's going to be for every Christmas. You never need to worry about it again. Right? So  there may be a bit of discomfort there, which is one of the steps as well. But what if there's discomfort either way. There's the discomfort of staying where you are right now and then overeating and then feeling guilty. And then being in that cycle the whole time. 

 

Or there's the discomfort of growth. There's this discomfort of knowing that, okay, I'm doing something here and it may be uncomfortable, but actually I'm willing to go through it all the way till the end. Right? Which discomfort do you choose? That's the question to ask yourself.

 

Another thing that I often see is that a lot of people feel that they want to people-please the person that they're out with. So it may be you've gone to a party and it may be that the host is making all of these lovely things that you don't normally eat, and you're thinking, oh gosh, you’re dreading it beforehand, possibly, but also excited to see them.

 

And you may be thinking, oh gosh, it's too rude to say no, so I can't say no. So you’re thinking, okay, well I'll just probably just overeat and I'll just make do with it. And that is something where, when you're wanting to please someone else and doing it at the detriment of yourself, that's called people pleasing.

 

Sometimes, what you want to do is you want to just be able to think, okay, what obstacles are going to come up for me and how can I actually solve for those obstacles beforehand? So some of those obstacles may be someone is offering you some dessert and you're actually full. So what are you going to do in that situation?

 

What I want you to do is write down a list of all of those things and then think about, okay, when all of these things happen, what am I going to do in that second? What am I going to say, how am I going to react? What is my behaviour going to be? The reason being is because if we are doing this in our brains ahead of time, then what tends to happen is that when you are in the moment, your brain is much more likely to follow through with those solutions that you'd already thought about beforehand.

 

So when that happens, then in the moment when you're following through, you're showing yourself that when I plan on these things, when I think about these things beforehand, when I change my thinking about it, then I am able to follow through and create solutions to things that I thought were completely impossible before.

 

So I urge you to make a list of all of those obstacles and think. What three ways can I actually solve for this without overeating? What are the other options? And when you ask yourself those powerful questions, you will get those powerful answers. Okay. 

 

Another thing is I just want to enjoy myself. I don't want to be thinking about losing weight and everything over Christmas. This is the time, I get to just chill out and enjoy myself with my family. So what I want you to think about is what other ways can you enjoy yourself?

 

Are there any other ways of enjoying yourself that don't revolve around food? It doesn't mean that food can't be present, but how do you actually want to feel when you're with your people? Probably you want to feel connected, you want to feel loved, you want to feel happy? So how else can you do that when it's not revolving around food, that may be something that you can ask yourself.

 

And another thing is when you're thinking about that future self of yours, that person who is in January and is like, oh, I overate, I overindulged over Christmas. I wish I didn't do that. When you're thinking about her, what would she have wanted you to do at that moment? She'd probably have wanted you to be like, it's okay, we can eat to fullness and then we're gonna stop. We're gonna, you know, make sure that we are satisfied and then we're going to stop. So, how can you ensure that you're doing that, and you are honouring that future self of yours, it would be really useful to think about how do you want to show up over this Christmas?

 

How do you want it to go? What is that ideal case scenario for you? So, for me, my ideal case scenario is to maintain my weight over Christmas. So I don't actually want to lose any weight, but I want to maintain my weight over Christmas. And when I think about, okay, how can I actually do that? Like, what would I need to think? What do I need to feel, what I need to do to actually follow through with that and create that result for me. 

 

So I know I need to think something along the lines of, I have the tools and I am able to plan my food without any difficulty - that may be one. Another one may be, I'm the type of person who eats when I'm hungry and stops when I'm full, which then makes me feel in control and when I'm feeling in control I'm more likely to stick to my plan, plan my food, you know, look at if I'm actually full and if someone's offering me something, just be like, you know what? I'm really full, but thank you so much. And then when they offer it again and they're like, oh, come on and just keep having more, why are you doing this? Why are you being like that? That happens a lot for me, because I was always the overeater in the family. I was always the one who had seconds and thirds of dessert.

 

And especially my cousin brothers, they used to always be like, okay, here let's give her more food because she's always the one who would always have more food. And then when I was on this journey and I was actually saying no, because I was actually full, it was very uncomfortable for them because they thought that I was restricting myself. So if you have family members who are in the same kind of situation who are offering you all of these things, it's not because they're trying to sabotage your weight loss attempts. It's often because they just care about you. And the way they show their love is through food. Especially for a lot of our south Asians that is a way we are sharing our love. So it's okay when people offer this, but that doesn't mean you have to eat if you don't want to. Learning how to just eat when you're hungry and then stop when you're full. So that may mean you may be eating things that you don't normally eat and that's okay.

 

But as long as you're eating when you're actually hungry and stopping when you're full. 

 

Right. So this guide is on my website, which is www.amruticoaching.com. So make sure you get it and make sure you sign up for it so that you receive the emails that I will be sending you afterwards as well, which will really help with this.

 

But just very briefly these are the steps. So the first step is to plan with love. What does that mean? So it means making a realistic, doable plan for yourself, including foods that you actually do want to eat, that you may not normally eat. So it may be things like chocolate. It may be things like eating part of the gingerbread house when you're making it, it may be having a mince pie, whatever it may be for you.

 

I want you to add it onto your plan, but when you were planning, what tends to happen is you're using that higher part of your brain, that prefrontal cortex, right? So when you're doing that, then you're less likely to let that primitive brain run wild and be like, okay, let me eat all the things now, because remember that primitive brain only wants you to seek pleasure, avoid pain, stay how you are.

 

So adding those things into your plan that you actually wouldn't normally eat, but eating it in a very controlled way. And if you say I planned one mince pie, then when you've actually eaten that one mince pie feeling that urge all the way. Feeling that feeling of over desire that you want to eat more and more of it. And actually just allowing yourself to have those feelings of discomfort and being okay with that. So that's the first step. 

 

The second step is anticipating obstacles and creating solutions in advance. So I briefly went over this, but it's about thinking, okay, what things could come up for me? Could it be that I tend to overeat at restaurants? What could you do beforehand? So it may be looking at the menu beforehand and planning what you're going to have. It may be when this particular cousin of mine says, oh, come and have more, have more, have more, you know what you're going to say to that cousin. It may be learning how to anticipate like, okay. I tend to want to overeat dessert so how can I make sure that I'm full with my starters and my mains so that actually for dessert, it doesn't have to be something that I have to have all the time. 

 

So you get to decide how you are going to solve for those solutions, but when you anticipate those obstacles and solve them in advance, then it makes it much easier.

 

The next one is eating only when you're hungry. So everyone would get to goal weight if they only ate when they were hungry and stopped when they were full. But the reason why so many of us are overweight is because we are eating when we are emotionally hungry. So we are eating in response to emotions. And it doesn't have to be full-on stress or anything like that. It could be things like boredom. So I know I'm a boredom eater. I tend to, when I'm feeling bored, I'm like, ooh, let me go and rummage in the fridge. It may be when I'm feeling happy. So when I'm on date night with Rick, I'm like, oh, what can we have? Because I think that that food will add to the happiness of the occasion. Right? 

 

So it doesn't just have to be a negative emotion it could be a positive emotion as well, but whenever you're eating when you're not physically hungry and in response to an emotion that is emotional overeating.

 

Okay. So what I want you to do is every time you put something in your mouth, I want you to ask yourself, are you physically hungry? Right? Or is it something that you're trying to run away from? That's normally an emotion, or it may be something you want to run towards. So that may be an emotion as well.

 

So normally we want to run away from negative emotions, some positive emotions as well. A lot of my clients are very high achievers and they'd run away from success, which is something that you may not have thought of, but it often happens. So if you are like, for example, doing really well with your weight loss, and then you - what a lot of people say - self-sabotage where you end up eating off protocol and giving it to urges and, you know, eating past hunger and things like that, then it may be because you've got a bit of success intolerance where you're not wanting to feel that positive emotion.

 

So then your work would be learning how to feel that so that you don't need to escape it and have food to escape it. Okay. 

 

So the next one is sleep. Now, this sounds like a really obvious one, but over Christmas, there's gonna be lots of parties going on, lots of gatherings and stuff like that and sleep may be lower on your priority list. So what I want you to think about is, I know that I'm going to have a lot of temptation and I'm going to be, you know, doing some new things, but how can I in that moment, ensure that I've got the best mental energy, ensure that I've got the best concentration and show that I've actually fuelled myself the best?

 

And one of the best ways of doing that is ensuring that you're getting some sleep. Now you may not be getting eight hours a night, but how can you maximise the amount of sleep that you are getting? That is definitely something to ask yourself. And you may want to have a nap or something during the day to actually replenish yourself, because a lot of the reasons why we overeat is because we are tired, we are physically tired. That is a trigger for a lot of my clients. So if that is a trigger for you, your brain doesn't need more food to give you energy. It needs to just rest and go to sleep and replenish that way. 

 

Another thing is water. So if you haven't listened to my podcast on water intake, go and listen to it on www.amruticoaching.com and you will find it in the podcasts. You can also listen to it on iTunes and Spotify. And if you do enjoy it, then please share it with someone who will benefit as well. 

So water is so important because it is the building block of all of the cells in our body. It is the thing that is the most essential in our body and it is the thing that most of us forget to have enough of. What you want to do is you want to make sure that you're drinking enough because the main reason in weight loss is because when you are actually thirsty, it often presents as extreme hunger.

 

So you may think that you're hungry and you may eat something and then the hunger doesn't go away. So then you eat more and that is often because you're actually thirsty. So I would  ensure you do, especially if the Christmas period, is making sure that you're drinking enough water.

 

So two to three liters, some people need a little bit more, but what you want to do is aim to make sure that your urine has just got a tinge of yellow in it. So that normally ensures that you're well-hydrated - now this obviously is not for people who have health conditions that affect their fluid intake, but it's for people who don't have any of those health conditions.

 

Okay.  The main thing that will really help you stop overeating over the Christmas period is becoming aware of your thinking. Now you may be thinking, what's that got to do with my eating? But if you are aware of the self coaching model, we have facts in the world. And then we have thoughts about those facts, which makes us feel a certain way.

 

And when we feel a certain way, we take certain actions. And when we take certain actions, we create our results. So in essence, the only thing that we can't control in that model is the fact line of the model, the circumstance line of the model. They're the things that happen outside of us. It may be something that someone has said, it may be the temperature outside, it may be something that someone else has done in a very factual way, but then we have thoughts about it. So if ever that fact seems painful, I just want you to question it. It's probably a thought and when we are responsible for our own thinking, then a lot of my clients initially think, oh gosh, well, am I bringing all of this on myself

 

But I urge you to think of it in a slightly different way. If it's something that you are responsible for, then you can also change that thinking very easily by just choosing to think of it in a slightly different way. So becoming aware of your thinking, the best way to do this is to do something called a thought download.

 

So a thought download is where you write down all of the contents of your brain. It's like a brain dump where you're just offloading everything onto some paper. And what that allows you to do is to look at, okay, what's really going on for me in my brain, what is happening that I can start doing?

 

Am I thinking a lot of negative thoughts or are those really helping me, because if we know that our thoughts create our results, then do we like the results that we're creating? If we're overeating at Christmas time or during the festivals, do we actually like that result or do we want to change it so that we are living the lives that we actually want to?

 

Imagine when you're not overeating and not feeling guilty about it, and you're not constantly thinking about food. What would you do with all of that mental energy? I know when I lost my 42 kilos, when I wasn't thinking about food all day, I was like, okay, like, what do I do with all of this time? This is really strange. And that's when I was able to focus on starting up my business, improving my relationship with my kids and my husband and those around me. It was when I was able to develop that relationship with myself and actually focus on these things. So when you don't have all of that space cluttered up in your brain, thinking about food all the time, then you can focus on all these other things that you want to do that you want to actually end up doing with your life.

 

So I urge you to think about that. Okay. 

 

And the last one is to embrace discomfort. So I briefly talked about this anyway. But this is where you think about - there's going to be discomfort either way. I've either got the discomfort of staying where I am overeating over Christmas, feeling guilty when January comes, feeling really bad that I've overeaten and things like that.

 

Or you have the discomfort of growth, which is where you choose to make a change about this and know that, yeah, it will be uncomfortable because you've never done it before. And your primitive brain is going to want to fight against it. But how can I still stick with it, knowing that this is actually what I really want. I want to actually lose that weight that I've accumulated. I want to make sure that I'm not overeating over Christmas. I want to actually do something that's actually fuelling me. So I'm going to embrace the discomfort of planning my food, of saying no, of you know, just having the one mince pie instead of the 10, you know, and consciously going through that discomfort because you know, at the other end is a lot of growth.

 

So make sure you go into the website, www.amruticoaching.com to get the freebie. And I know that so many of you are struggling, so I am offering some more support as well. I am doing my free webinar - how to lose weight permanently for south Asian women professionals. And I've done it a couple of times before, I've got really good feedback from it. So I've tweaked it a little bit so that it is even more useful for you. That is happening on Tuesday, the 7th of December at 12:00 PM, GMT, which is 6:00 AM CST and 7:00 AM EST. So make sure you go onto the website to sign up for that. 

 

This will be the start of the enrolment for my January group coaching program. So January’s group coaching program, it's going to be an intimate group of 10 to 12 ladies. And we are all going to be on the same path to losing weight. Finally, for the last time, so that we are able to never have to worry about food or our weights ever again, and we're going to be doing it using mind management tools.

 

So we don't have to exercise in this program. We don't have to count our macros or count our points or any of that stuff. All we are going to be doing is we are going to learn how to manage our brains. And we're going to learn how to, and eat foods that actually fuel that. So, what I do is I combine my 10 years experience as a doctor and understanding all of the science behind that to create a plan that is flexible for you. So it's something that you will be able to change around, and you will be able to stick to for the rest of your life. So it's not like I tell you, you must eat this and you must eat that. I give you guidelines and then you get to choose. So that it fits in with your family life, it fits in with your routine, it fits in with all of those things.

 

So if you would like to find out more, then you can go onto my website and get onto the wait list for that. But also if you sign up for the webinar, you will automatically be given information about that, if you would like to sign up.

 

I hope you found that useful. If you have any questions, you can message me and I will be happy to answer them.

 

But anyway, thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you again soon. Bye!

 

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