The greatest gift

The greatest gift you can give yourself is plenty of ME time.

Christmas isn't meant to be a feeding frenzy, although it's fast becoming one.  Just as we cram too much busy busy activity into the big festive build up, we cram just as much into our mouths to keep us going, losing our enjoyment of food and eating for all the wrong reasons! Life is meant to be savoured, and so is food.

The greatest gift you can give yourself, especially at this time of the year is plenty, and I do mean plenty of ME time. Especially at Christmas where food stares out at you from every available corner - tempting, ever tempting.  

Everyone wants to look their best for Christmas, and I am certainly no exception, so I have embarked on what I think is a really healthy 'diet' and am doing rather well at the moment even if I do say so myself.

Yesterday I had a bit of a hiccup.  You could say too much on my plate, and you would be right!!!

Now I am not talking about loading all those tempting naughty but nice foods, I'm talking about being snowed under by all the bits and pieces fighting for my attention as the Big Day draws ever closer. 

I found my thoughts and taste buds gasping for something sweet to satisfy those constant cravings and take some of the pressure off my shoulders.  Luckily I stopped myself in time, thanks to my SW friends who told me, and quite rightly that I would only regret it.... 

So I'm a comfort eater, using food not to nourish me, but to deaden my worries about getting it all done in time, trying to be perfect. So I started to pick mindless at my food, although eating in this way gives me no satisfaction or pleasure.  I was struck that something which is delicious, tempting and nourishing can be turned into something which is completely destructive, if we just keep ramming it down our throats.  Its a compulsion.

So where does the ME time come in?  I have made a pact with myself to be more observant, to watch out for the signs of overload which could ruin my diet leaving me wanting to kick myself.

I am making the effort to factor in some down-time, rather than keep pushing forward in ever decreasing circle, to develop a positive rather than a negative relationship with food.  Appreciate what I am eating, every morsel....and stopping when I've had enough. I really want to dispense with that awful bloated feeling that leaves me shattered and feeling very very guilty.

 I think we are all guilty of mindless, and potentially destructive eating when we slip into overdrive.  And Christmas is certainly the season when most of us do it. It's like we a heave a collective sigh of relieve, when we sit down to Christmas dinner, and then just go into mindless feeding frenzy mode.  How much do we actually enjoy and how much do we actually taste when this happens.

Food is meant to energise.  When eaten consciously and sensibly, its the fuel we need to embrace and enjoy life fully. Mindless eating does just the reverse. It is not so much what you do, it is truthfully the way that you do it.  Life just like food is meant to be savoured.

Gillian Holland 2014