One more week until Thanksgiving and one more important tip!

One more week until Thanksgiving! I am thrilled and can’t wait to decorate for Christmas. I may even decorate before Thanksgiving! Why not, the stores were decorated long before Halloween?

Have you been watching your portions, planning for Thanksgiving, and keeping active? If not this is a reminder, it’s never too late to start. If you have not read my other tips, you may want to look over the past couple of posts on Holiday tips.

Today’s tip to prepare you for the Holiday is to practice being mindful of what you eat on a daily basis. Often times we just shovel food into our mouths, because we have went to long without eating, it’s a scheduled meal time, so why not, or some of us emotionally eat. The Holidays create so many different types of emotions (ranging from joyous to depressing) as there are so many memories tied to the Holidays.  More often a food or foods are tied to our emotional memories of Holidays, leaving us helpless to overeat. But are we really helpless?

If you know you or your child is an emotional eater there is no better time than the present to start thinking about why and when you are eating. The more you practice being mindful or completely in the present, focused on the food, your hunger and why you are eating, the easier it will get.

This is a great tip to use year round, as many overweight adults and children use food to feed their emotions.

If you feel you or your child is emotionally eating year round, I highly suggest you talk to someone about your emotions and find other ways to deal with them. If your child is closed off you may need to seek additional support from a parenting coach and/or therapist. This is nothing to be ashamed of. We all have bad habits. If someone tells you they don’t, they are not being honest. It’s what we do to improve our families’ lives that show the true measure of who we are.