If your family stresses you out during the holidays, you’re a lot like everyone else. You love your family, but let’s face it—they know how to push your buttons. If you start to feel stressed or emotional during the holiday season, you might automatically reach for something to eat. The holidays are filled with treats and food, and it’s easy to overeat without even realizing it. Avoid stress eating this holiday season, and you can avoid putting on a bunch of extra weight by the time New Year’s rolls around.
Stick to Your Schedule
Holidays have a way of throwing everything off-kilter. Dinner might be scheduled at 1 pm, you might have the day off work, you could even be in a totally different time zone than usual. Do your best to stick to your normal eating and snacking schedule. If you skip normal meal times and snack times, you could wind up getting extremely hungry. That leads to overeating.
Stay Busy
Can’t stop thinking about that pile of cookies? Get your mind active on something, and stop thinking about food. Play a game that requires skill, do a word puzzle that makes you think, read something engaging or go clean something somewhere. Do some busywork to find some way to distract your brain.
Slow Down
Instead of reaching for three cookies, get yourself a glass of water. Having something to hold onto is a nice stress-reducer when you’re surrounded by people, and that’s one of the things that makes the food so tempting. But you can also hold your water and slowly sip to stave off all those food cravings.
Stress Eating
The holidays have a way of making people anxious, and often surrounded by food, too. With a bit of persistence and mindfulness, you can avoid stress eating as well as all those bad feelings that come after doing so this holiday season.