58. Mindful Eating During the Holidays—Savoring Joy Without Overindulgence

In this special holiday episode of Weight Loss Made Simple, Dr. Stacy Heimburger shares practical strategies for enjoying your favorite festive treats without derailing your weight loss goals. Discover the art of mindful eating as Stacy guides you through a step-by-step exercise to enhance your awareness and appreciation of food. Learn how to navigate emotional triggers during family gatherings and social obligations, ensuring you celebrate without the burden of guilt or regret.

Join us as we explore:

• The principles of mindful eating
• Techniques to savor every bite while managing portions
• Strategies to combat holiday overeating and emotional eating

Whether you’re looking to maintain your weight, indulge mindfully, or simply enjoy the holiday season with balance, this episode is packed with insights to empower your journey. Tune in now and transform your holiday meals into joyful, guilt-free experiences!

The guided mindfulness exercise begins at 3:34.

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.

Transcript

Hey guys! Welcome to this week's episode. As we are in this holiday season full swing, we’re starting right—it is upon us. I want to talk about how to enjoy some of these meals without derailing our goals. So, I want to do a mindfulness episode. This is not going to be a very long episode, but I wanted to do this so that I can give you an audio script. Basically, you can save this and replay it when you want to do a mindfulness exercise, either on a trigger food or just your favorite holiday indulgence. I want you to be able to enjoy it and celebrate without overindulging and feeling guilty or bad afterward. I don’t want there to be overindulgence and regret; we just want celebration.

So, I want to talk about mindful eating, the idea of awareness, and then I want to just walk you through a script so that you can replay this when you want to indulge. Food scripted mindfulness exercise for you. So, mindful eating—again, we’re just bringing awareness to the eating experience. What it does is it really forces us to slow down, truly taste the food, and then listen to our bodies. So, it’s not just about the food; it’s about our thoughts, feelings, and emotions that are connected to the food and connected to eating. When we eat mindfully, research shows we’re less likely to overeat, and we’re more likely to enjoy it. So, isn’t that what we want? We want to really enjoy the food, and we don’t want to overeat it. So, mindfulness is kind of how we do that—body awareness and satisfaction from smaller portions.

Okay, so during the holidays, emotions can run high. We’ve already talked about family gatherings; we’ve got social obligations, all of the celebrating, and pattern behavior can trigger old behaviors—especially around food. If you guys have been with me for a little while, and we’ve been rocking and rolling and making new habits and being mindful, we don’t want all of that to unwind just because of these trigger memories or pattern behaviors around the holidays. Some of that is like, “Oh, I eat cookies even if I’m not hungry,” or “I eat all the desserts even if I’m full.”

Okay, so I’m going to walk you through the exercise, so mark it at whatever minute it is so you can come back to it later. Look on your audio player and see what time it is, and I’m going to walk you through this mindfulness exercise.

Look at your treat—whatever you’re eating. What are its colors and textures? What stands out to you? Really take a minute and admire it for what it is. Now I want you to close your eyes and take three deep breaths. I want you to feel your body relax with each exhale and breathe out. Relax in and out. I want you to ground yourself in this present moment; be super present.

Now I want you to bring that treat or bite close to your nose. Inhale really deeply. What aromas do you notice? How are they making you feel? A little different breath smell.

All right, now I want you to take a small piece of that treat and put it in your mouth. Don’t chew it—just hold it there and notice the sensation. Is it hard, melting, swirling around? Where is it hitting on your taste buds? Do you taste it in the front? Do you taste it in the back? What thoughts or feelings are arising as you’re doing this? Is it changing? Like, was it a little bit hard and now it’s soft? Was it a little bit sweeter and now it’s getting a little more savory?

Chew a little bit to close the flavors and how they’re changing. Pay attention to the texture—how it’s changing. Allow yourself to be fully present in this experience.

All right, now swallow it, and I want you to pause for a minute. How do you feel? What emotions come up? What are some of the thoughts and feelings you’re having about it?

Now, do I want more? Maybe take a sip of water. If you do proceed mindfully—that means we’re gonna go right back up to the beginning. We’re gonna look at it; we’re gonna see if it looks any different. We’re gonna take our breaths, relax down, smell the second bite of the treat, and take a second bite of the treat.

Feel it in your mouth—what sensations do you notice? What are you thinking or feeling? Chew it slowly. Is the texture different this time? Is it hitting different points in your mouth, different taste buds than last time?

Swallow and take a sip of water. Do we want another bite? If so, go back, and let’s do it again—okay, very mindfully, specifically noticing how it changes from bite to bite until you feel like you’ve had enough.

What I have found doing this exercise is that at some point, the bite doesn’t taste as good as the first bite. The first bite tastes the best; the second bite was okay, but by the fourth or fifth bite, it doesn’t taste as good, so that’s when I stop.

Okay, I told you I just wanted to walk you through this mindfulness episode. I ran you through this exercise on this wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving day. So, this is mindfulness on Thanksgiving.

I hope that was helpful. If it was helpful, and you’ve done this exercise and want to tell me about it, I would love to hear it. Make sure you’re in the Facebook group. If you’re not, I hope you enjoy this exercise, and I will talk to you next week. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!