Holiday Weight Gain
Hi Karin.
As health and fitness professionals, we know that the holidays can be very challenging for our clients. The problem isn’t that they don’t know how to make healthy (eating) choices. Rather, the issue lies in emotional eating. Holidays present a number of potential emotional triggers including: eating for comfort, eating because of stress, eating because of depression, eating because of anxiety. The key is to address and deal with the underlying emotional cause of overeating.
Getting your clients to uncover the deeper emotional triggers and to face them will get them not only through the holidays but through the weeks, months and years to come with lasting success.
There is an excellent article in the latest (Nov. ’11) Idea Fitness Journal “It’s All in The Brain: Unlocking the Secrets of Overeating with Neuroscience”. In that article on page 45, there is a sidebar that gives a simple inquiry tool called ‘The Work’ of Byron Katie that can be used with your clients. I have used ‘The Work’ of Byron Katie for many years, very successfully with my clients.
Instead of giving your clients the typical tips and tricks for how to avoid packing on the pounds I suggest that you help them to make lasting changes by dealing with deeper causes of emotional eating.