How Do You Handle Holiday Temptations?

By , SparkPeople Blogger
For many of us, the next 5 weeks are going to be filled with many opportunities to overeat and skip exercise sessions. And when you combine all these temptations with the emotional stress of the holiday season, it can take an almost heroic effort to keep your healthy lifestyle on track.

What’s the best way to handle this situation? Do you identify the specific temptations that you think might cause problems for you, and try to figure out strategies for resisting them?

Not according to experts who study this problem. They suggest you do the exact opposite...



There’s a ton of research showing that, the more you focus on what you don’t want to do, the more likely it is you’ll actually do it. Thinking about how to control your impulses during the parties, get-togethers, and special holiday meals on your schedule, or about all those Christmas cookies and treats you’ll have to pass up, will probably cause more problems than it solves.

The problem here is that thinking about problem foods and situations, or about your own weaknesses and impulses, just gives them more power to influence your behavior. You create a self-fulfilling prophecy: you’re expecting to have problems, so you will. In fact, that’s how you create “temptations” in the first place. There’s really no such thing as a food that tempts you–the food’s just sitting there, doing nothing. It’s your expectation that you’ll want to eat it and have trouble resisting this desire that makes it “tempting.” And the more you think about it, the more tempting it becomes.

So, the secret to staying on track during the holidays is to expect yourself to do what you choose to do, so that this becomes your self-fulfilling prophecy.

There are lots of ways you can help yourself get into this mindset. Here are a few general ideas:

  • Set your goals in positive terms, not negative ones. Don’t tell yourself what you don’t want to eat, tell yourself what you do want to eat (or how much of it you want to eat), and if necessary, set up some special plans in advance that will help you accomplish that on days where you might have conflicts or problems.

  • Predict your way to success. Start every day by estimating your chances of accomplishing what you want to do that day. Consider all the things you have to do, and figure out if there are any special challenges that could make it harder for you to stick to your eating and exercise goals. Think about what you can do in advance to increase your odds of handling these challenges successfully. Is there someone you can talk to for support if the going gets tough? Can you put together a Plan B for handling predictable problems, and shift to it if things start going wrong?

  • Monitor your self-talk and keep it positive.The worst thing you can do is to start getting down on yourself and focusing on what’s “wrong” with you when you don’t stick to your goals perfectly. That's a virtual guarantee you'll stay stuck in the problem. Instead, remind yourself that no one’s perfect, and no single decision you make means the next one has to be the same. Every situation and every decision is it’s own opportunity, and you’re free to decide what you want to do in this moment, no matter what’s happened in the past. It all comes down to how you think about it, and where you focus your attention.

  • Keep the big picture in mind. The holiday season is a very small chunk of time in the larger scheme of things. It can be a great opportunity to enjoy yourself with family, friends, co-workers, and others, and if being very strict about your eating and exercise gets in the way of doing that, it’s perfectly OK to cut yourself some slack. What’s the worst that can happen? You gain a little weight and it takes you an extra couple of weeks to lose it again. Right? How big a deal does that need to be?


    Obviously, the ball’s in your court when it comes to translating general ideas like these into practical things you can do yourself.

    So, what are you planning to do to make the best of your holiday season? Got any tips you can share with the rest of us that have worked well for you?

    One thing I plan to do is to burn any extra calories I want to eat with extra activity or exercise--before I eat them.


    • See more: motivation