It is not too late to join us for Peace with Food over the Holidays. You gt easy ideas to reexamine your holiday AND food.
I mentioned in the podcast this super affordable option ($29) for me to support you over this holiday season. It starts soon and you do not want to miss out on the support and strategies to have a peaceful experience this holiday season.
We love talking about food satisfaction and all the ways to better take care of yourself. BUT do you need more?
Emotional Eating Solutions is Kim’s signature self-paced course to look at food differently. This course is the way to get into action and make changes in your food AND in your life!
Kim McLaughlin is a psychotherapist. coach, speaker, and author. She helps people who feel frustrated overwhelmed and overloaded, and it shows up in overeating. She has a Master of Arts Degree in Clinical Psychology. Kim is a certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, and she assists people to gain peace with food.
We would love to get your feedback on this show and let us know what you would like to hear in upcoming shows. Email us at info@FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com
It is not too late to join us for Peace with Food over the Holidays. You gt easy ideas to reexamine your holiday AND food.
I mentioned in the podcast this super affordable option ($29) for me to support you over this holiday season. It starts soon and you do not want to miss out on the support and strategies to have a peaceful experience this holiday season.
We love talking about food satisfaction and all the ways to better take care of yourself. BUT do you need more?
Emotional Eating Solutions is Kim’s signature self-paced course to look at food differently. This course is the way to get into action and make changes in your food AND in your life!
Kim McLaughlin is a psychotherapist. coach, speaker, and author. She helps people who feel frustrated overwhelmed and overloaded, and it shows up in overeating. She has a Master of Arts Degree in Clinical Psychology. Kim is a certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, and she assists people to gain peace with food.
We would love to get your feedback on this show and let us know what you would like to hear in upcoming shows. Email us at info@FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com
We would love it if you would leave us a 5 star review on your favorite platform.
Thanks for listening to the Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast.
Kim McLaughlin:
Welcome to the feed your soul with Kim podcast. I am Kim McLaughlin your host, I help people when they're feeling frustrated, overwhelmed and overloaded, and it shows up in over eating. And man, this is the time where that is occurring. Today we're talking about thriving over the holidays, we're going to talk about my personal path to thriving this holiday. Rather than feeling overwhelmed and stress, we're going to learn some simple ways to increase thriving. And as always, you'll come away with at least one doable to get you started. Let's get started. It's not too late to get into my special program peace with food over the holidays. This is a super supportive program to give you tools to help you move out of the struggle with food over eating, and feeling really overwhelmed this holiday season. It's super affordable at only$29. This program is designed to give you tools, tips and tricks to get out of overeating and get into peace with food. Check it out in the show notes below. Today, we're going to talk about a plan to thrive over the holiday, I was actually thinking of this talk and I was thinking about, you know, a plan to cope with the strategies a plan to not have stress over the holidays, a plan to not have overwhelm over the holidays. And I realized that what really if we're going to be affirmative plan to thrive. I plan to thrive over this holiday season. And I just want to encourage you to embrace that idea that we can thrive over this holiday. How can that start is first noticing the stress and overwhelm that showing up for you what is really going on? What are you thinking about? How are you feeling? Where are you feeling that stress and overwhelm? And then how is it showing up in your body? Is it showing up as sickness I got? I've been sick for weeks. You can hear it in my voice and I'm drinking hot lemon water. And I have a little lesions in my mouth so that I don't start coughing. But I think the stress showed up for me as sickness. And I'll talk about that a little bit more today about what I think that means. But how is that showing up for you? The stress overwhelm? Is it in getting angry at people feeling frustrated with people seeing you don't have enough time to do things? overstretched with having to do this and this and this and this and this. And and how does that showing up? I was listening to a podcast this morning. And what they were talking about is that over the holidays, we think either we don't have enough time, or we don't have enough money. And we tend to go I can't afford that. Or I don't have enough time. I can't I don't I can't I don't. And this is really off could putting it stops the conversation. And there are limited resources for for most of us, there's limited resources around resource around time. How much time do you really have 24 hours in the day, I cannot make time more. I can't hack my way into having more than 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The other thing that we have limited resources on most of us do is money. We don't have an unlimited amount of money. And that can feel stressful because we might want to buy something or want to get something for somebody and think that we should, but there's that limited resource of money. So that stress might be showing up for you in not thinking you have enough time or not thinking you have enough money. And there are things to do about that when you think you don't have enough time or don't have enough money then kind of we have to reimagine what we're going to do. The other thing is stress might be showing up and overwhelmed might be showing up is others expectations. Others expectations about what you should do and what you shouldn't do or where you should be or where you shouldn't be. We've always done it this way. A this is our tradition, you have to do that you have to bring this. And it becomes these expectations that are really overwhelming. And once again, leave us stuck, because they might not resonate anymore for you. And they might be things that you want to move out of, and that you want to do differently. And I just want to put that out there that others expectations can cause you stress. And we'll talk later about what you might do with that. The other thing that might show up that causes stress and overwhelm is around food. How much food is going to be there? What kind of food? Is it food I'm going to binge on? Is it food that I'll over eat? Am I going to eat in secret? Those are those are scary things about food. And I just want to acknowledge that that that can be really tough. The other thing that can show up is feeling scared about alcohol. I know some some of you don't drink are sober, or don't want to drink that much, or find that you drink too much over the holidays or other people drink too much. And then bad behavior can happen. And people acting the fool when are you doing it yourself because drinking too much alcohol. And and that's just something to consider about what what is your if that's causing you stress, then what might be a way to manage that over this holiday. Another thing that shows up that I've been thinking about is feeling bad about our bodies. I've had some one on one clients talk to me about how they feel bad in their body and how they don't like how they look and don't want to go to a party or don't like how their clothes fit. And they're afraid that others will notice them and their size. And they might comment or disapprove of their size. And that can feel very, off putting an end just then not wanting to be a part of a conversation or part of a group. There's also this feeling of feeling uncomfortable in your own skin. That's been the other thing I've heard people talk about is really kind of wanting to unzip out of this skin that they don't feel comfortable in. And so being embodied and being fully present in your body can be really difficult. And so what do we do is we kind of dissociate while we're eating or dissociate while we're drinking. And then, in the end not feel good about ourselves because of our behavior, or what we've put into our bodies. So if that's all showing up for you, you're in the right spot, because we're going to talk about how to thrive. And one of the things I think of is first identifying what we just talked about as identifying what's causing that stress and overwhelm. That can be something you can do through journaling through meditation, through really looking at what are the things that are really stressing me, and really get clear on that. And then I want to think about how to thrive during this. And it becomes looking at what is this stress and overwhelm trying to tell you what is the message in it? What is the message in it? Is it telling you that you should do something like, it's interesting that over the Thanksgiving holiday, my family and I decided to take a trip, we decided not to do the same old Thanksgiving. We've been doing it for years and years. And nothing bad. Nobody didn't has done anything wrong. It's just we wanted to really change it up and have an adventure. So we traveled throughout California on an adventure and had on Thanksgiving, we stopped in a grocery store in near Joshua Tree, National Forest and we got potato salad and lettuce, we had spare ribs. Because that's what they had in the store. I would have been fine if they had Turkey and things and we would have gotten that but we didn't want to cook and we didn't want to do too much. And so it ended up being really so positive because it it took us well out of our comfort zone of what we always do. And it was really nice to do something different. And that's what happened for me is like this idea of what could we do differently was really, for me a way of managing stress so so we did some different things. And what's interesting to me is that then later on in in thinking about thriving is my body got sick, my body I got oh you can still hear it. In my voice, but I coughed and I was really, really tired. And what I've learned over the past few years with COVID, and during that COVID time is how much I've really enjoyed sleeping in and not having as many expectations. And through getting sick, it just reminded me that, okay, Kim, let's have less expectations, and let's have less busyness. So it became a time it, this has become a holiday of a lot of rest. And I've actually really enjoyed it. And what I'd like to do is not have to get sick to rest, like I just want to rest. And that has been my goal is doing that. And for me, that is a way to manage the stress. It, it came clear to me that that I have less expectations on myself, if I'm resting I actually I've lost expectations if I'm sick, so maybe I could be well, and not have these expectations on myself and just rest anyway. So think about what this stress and overwhelm is meaning to you, and what is it trying to tell you? The other thing that I think of is for how to thrive over the holiday is how are you going to incorporate food? When we have food issues, food triggers, food overwhelm, feeling uncomfortable in our bodies, that creates this difficulty around food and should we or shouldn't we eat? But people have asked me some of the questions people have asked me as, you know, how do I say no to sugary treats? How do I say no to foods that I shouldn't have? Should I buy things? That are these special foods? Or should I not buy these things? Can I have trigger foods in my house? Man, those are big, big, big questions. And I wonder what those foods mean to you and and really going deep into? What are the foods that are really fun foods and like I really enjoy them. And I'd like to have them? Or what are the foods that I'm obsessing about and I'm overwhelmed with and just really dig into journaling and meditation are two good ways to really go. What is this about? And what are these trying to tell me. Also, knowing that restriction makes us wanted even more. We've talked about this a lot about the idea of diet binge shame cycle, when we restrict is that idea of dieting, and we shouldn't have it, we can't have it. What happens is, is then we end up having even more we end up binging. And then we end up feeling shame and feeling bad about ourselves. And then the only thing we know how to do is to restrict again, it can be super freeing to allow yourself to have foods that you want. Here that again, it's super freeing to allow you yourself to have foods that you want, most especially at this holiday time because there's a lot of foods that are associated with love and warmth and caring. And they have this great positive positive feeling in them and they taste super yummy. It's there's nothing wrong with eating sugary treats, or even over eating them. And I would challenge you that when you're over eating them it's probably because you've denied yourself so much. And when we deny ourselves we wanted even more and then when we feel low and upset and overwhelmed. We then go in and eat a heck of a lot of them. I talked before at Thanksgiving about over eating and that Thanksgiving that holiday that day is one meal right it's one meal this is one holiday it's not like you're going to do this for forever. Okay, so you over ate on cake or sweets, whatever it is. Okay, let's move on. Let's let's let that one go and not go through that diet binge shame cycle. Because when we then make ourselves bad and feel ashamed, make ourselves feel ashamed. We then the only thing we know how to do is restrict which leads us to binge again. There are fun foods that are holiday foods that will go away January one they will go away January one there won't be any more eggnog there won't be any more things because it's the season's over with it. So really wonder if it's something that maybe you can allow yourself to have, and what would that mean to you to allow yourself to have something that you really want, if it's a food that you really want, have it. So think about that and think about whether there's an opportunity to allow yourself to have something that you really want. It's one day it's one meal, it's one event, and then we move on. And then we move on and go, That was yummy. I'm glad I had that. Now I get to move on. This is a way of taking food out of that. That center stage of feeling in battle, in battle with food, when we take out the struggle and take out the battle, it just becomes food. I I do think that it's important that during this holiday that you not under eat, we talked about this at Thanksgiving time. But it's the same at any holiday is that eat three meals a day, if that's what you normally eat, eat three meals a day. And then if you want something extra house something extra, what we'll tend to do is to not eat, to save up the calories to save up the macros to save up for the meal later on in the day. And that's really the worst thing you can do. That's, that's restricting. And what do we do when we restrict we binge stop that allow yourself to eat foods. This was a huge win for me when I learned about intuitive eating, and I learned about my body needs fuel throughout the day, just because it's Thanksgiving or Christmas or whatever holiday doesn't mean I shouldn't eat, that I can't eat. Because my body needs the food, my body needs the energy. So let's eat food. And then move on. And if you want to incorporate a treat into your food, incorporate a trade into your food, but don't not eat in order so you can eat whatever it is later on. That is that restriction binge shame cycle. Okay, so I hope you can really think about that and really look at how that could work for you. Another thing you can do for thriving is set limits on yourself and others. It's funny, I thought a lot about myself and how I've been overwhelmed over the holidays. And a lot of times it's the things I put on my own shoulders, that I think I should do these things. A lot of times it was about going and buying lots of presents. In my family when I was a kid, my mom would buy lots of presents, it would take a very long time to open all the presents because there were so many she really bought, she gifted us with a lot. And I've found that that I have those things thoughts. And I don't want to be that way where it's about having lots and lots of presents, it can be a well thought out present, and then we move on. So I've had to set limits on myself around that it's also I've set my limits around. So that money and and how much I spend and how much I think there should be under the tree. The other thing is around food. And what I would do is I would bake a lot, and I would bake it to give it away, I really wanted to show my nurturing through food. And when there's this time limit of only so many hours in the day, it would be hard to bake as much as I wanted to. So I would have these long lists of what I wanted to bake. And I couldn't get to it all or I would end up doing it on Christmas Eve where everybody's sitting around and there I am baking furiously. Nobody expected it. I expected it. And then the other thing I would do is on Christmas morning, after we're done with the presidents before we go to our family's house. I wouldn't be baking some more. Because I didn't get it all done or I would wake up early to do it. These were expectations I put on myself and I have really worked a lot to not have those expectations of of i Thinking i have unlimited time because I don't have unlimited time. So that is one thing I've been thinking about this year is is doing some baking but doing it very strategically. And only a certain amount can be done because I have a limited amount of time. The other thing is expectations around other people expectations around family members and what they expect of you. And really thinking about where are your nose? Where do you need to say no, no, that's not something I'm going to do. No, I think it's often a time of more nose than yeses more time saying no. There have been things this year that I've said no to that I normally say yes to. And it's felt really good. I've had to really talk to myself about, it's okay to say no, and to not do this normal tradition, the way we've always done it, because it overwhelms me, and I don't want to do it. And so then I imagine doing it in a different way that's less stressful with less time spent on it. And that's been a win for me, is saying no to these expectations of what we always do. And that's been really good. So setting limits on others, but more importantly, setting limits on myself about what I really can and can't do. Okay? When you're doing all of this, there is this piece that can happen for you around the holidays, and there's this opportunity to thrive. Right? So what does that mean for you? Focus on you. What is it you want? What is it you want to connect with? What do you want to have happen? And really breathe into it. Breathe into what is it? What is right for me, that's been something I've been thinking about this holiday, in terms of rest and activities. I've been very limited in activities, commitments, activities. Because I don't want to do more than then a little bit. And that is how I'm going to thrive because there are other things that I want to do. I want to have more rest and more peace more time. For me. It's like I love the time in front of the tree with the lights on with the Christmas lights on. I love it. I love sitting there. I love reading I love journaling with those lights on those are they give me such joy. And that for me is what I really want to have. That's what I really want to be more of is that rest and that quiet and being in the light? Those little twinkly lights, I love them. That's mine. That's me. So think about that for you is how do you focus on yourself? And and really what you need? What coping strategies do you need to use? Thriving strategies? Right? What thriving strategies do you need? Is there a place you need to say no, is there a place you need to say yes? Do you want to say no alcohol at the function this time? Do you want to say we get? We get to do these fun things? What are your coping strategies, so you can thrive? This is personal. I like to do this also, with my family about what is it they want to do? What are their strategies that they need? How can we work together to make sure that our needs are being met. It's not a way of being it's not about being codependent it's more about being thoughtful, and making sure that everybody can have some needs met. And then lastly, one of the big things for me is that idea of the reason for the season. What do you want to be do have after this holiday? What do you want to come away with? I think about peace, light, love feeling centered, feeling connected. Those are things for me. I told you like a lot of it's just rest and being in the light. Those were really important to me this holiday. So how am I gonna make that happen? Turn off the TV sit in front of the the Christmas lights. That's That to me is important. So what do you want to be do have after the holiday and really focus on then on making that happen? A lot of times we go into the holidays very unconscious. We think we have unlimited time, unlimited money, and that's just not true. So what is it you want to come away with? And it is not necessarily about anything religious or spiritual. It's just kind of what do you want to be do have within yourself and do that? Do more of that. I think if there's more of a focus on how do we thrive over this holiday. There's so much more of a win, we're all going to have because everybody's going to feel light and airy and love and enthusiastic. And when we feel that way, foods less of an issue, you guys, foods less of an issue. When we have those emotions, taking care of feeling peaceful, feeling light, feeling joy, love centered, when we have those, we don't need food as we food just doesn't become as much of an issue. Overeating doesn't come as much of an issue because we're so centered within ourselves. So I really hope for you peace, love and light over this holiday. I really want for you thriving. And I look forward to talking to you guys. Again, this has been really a joy to talk about thriving over this holiday. And I encourage you to go on Facebook in my Facebook group and share what you're going to do. Find me on Instagram, feed your soul unlimited. And let me know what you're going to do because I really want to know what's going on and what you're going to do to thrive this holiday. Bye, you guys. I'll talk to you later. Thank you for joining us on the feed your soul with Kim podcast. We come to you every Monday with fresh new ideas to help you and emotional eating and put food in its proper place as nourishment. Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and review it and let us know what you think. Thank you for joining us