Ep 34: How to Stop the Insanity and Lose Weight During the Holiday Season

Dr. Deb Butler: Welcome to Thinner Peace in Menopause and Beyond. I’m Dr. Deb Butler, master life and weight coach, and, of course, your coach. And today we’re going to be talking all about insanity. It’s going to be a good one. This is Episode 34.

Hey, everyone. Before I start today with Episode 34, I want to talk to you about my new class that I’m offering in a couple weeks during the holidays. It’s going to be December 14th, and all the information that you need on it will be at drdebbutler.com/easy. And the reason I have it like that is because it’s going to be easy. But I’m calling the class “Stop the Insanity.” And I want to teach you in this one hour class how to raise your MQ. Remember? Your mindfulness quotient around the holidays so that at least you don’t gain weight. And if you’re really mindful, you’ll actually start losing weight. But the purpose of this class is to help you learn what you’ve been thinking over the last 20 to 30 years that you’ve been repeating over and over and over again that leads you to yo-yo dieting. And I think the holidays contribute to that a lot. So I think we’re going to use the holidays as a way to become more mindful, raising your mindfulness quotient.

So come January, no big deal. You’re already where you want to be in your mind, which is everything. So we’re going to start during the holidays by changing how you think, which will affect why and how much you eat. I’m going to make it easy. I’m telling you, one hour to change that crazy mind of yours that’s been running around in a big cycle, eat and stop, eat and stop, overeat, overdrink, tomorrow I’ll start, stop the insanity. So go to drdebbutler.com/easy, and you can sign up for the class there. And remember, I’m going to help you get to wherever you want to get. I’ll be coaching you if you would like. And I’ll be teaching you some really easy tools. So go do it.

Hello all, my dear friends. This is Episode 34. I’m really excited about this because, number one, we’re edging into the holiday season and I know there’s a lot of excitement around it. But I also know there’s a lot of fear around it. And so in this episode, what I really want to talk with you about is what goes on in your mind during the holiday season, how are you approaching it. And I think that if you use this holiday season to do and think something differently, it can change the whole ball game for you. And that’s really what this episode is dedicated to. And I’m calling it “Stop the Insanity.” And listen, this is what insanity means: It means doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Now, this is how I see the holidays for how I used to be, how many of my clients are, and my guess is how many of you might be also.

So the holidays come and you give yourself a hall pass to eat anything you want. Like you poor, poor thing. You know if you had to be on a diet, it would just be so hard and you wouldn’t be able to eat all your delicious foods. So you just throw it all out the window and you tell yourself you can just do whatever you want, eat whatever you want, and then come January, we’re going to pull it all in, and we’re going to get really strict and do a really strict diet and take all this weight off once and for all.

Now, nothing wrong with that kind of thinking. Well, let’s put it this way. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of thinking if you only thought at once, one time. But my guess is—and this is where insanity comes in—you’ve been doing this kind of thinking for 30 years. Hmm. My question to you is, how is it working for you?

Because I can tell you for myself: I did it for about 30 years and I did the same thing over and over and over again. Got the same results, gained the same weight over the next year, went on the same diet or a different diet the next year over and over again—gaining and losing the same weight and using the holiday season. And you know when I say the holiday season, it doesn’t just mean that. You could just say any celebration, but holiday season just seems to be the longest time, you know, six weeks. So, what if you could look at the holiday season and every celebration in a totally different way?

To me, this is like instead of being insane, you become sane again about how you take care of yourself. So instead of the thinking of, oh, it’s the holidays, I’m going to do whatever I want, eat whatever I want, which really means overeating and overdrinking on a regular basis, thinking that you’re doing yourself a favor. And of course, that is mindless thinking, right? Mindless.

Mindful thinking is what we’re doing right now. I’m asking you to actually look at that thought with the most objective part of your mind, prefrontal cortex, and say, “Does that make sense?” And you know what? There’s no way it doesn’t. And the reason that doesn’t is because you’ve been doing the same thing over and over and over again, gaining and losing the same weight over and over again, yo-yo dieting over and over again, for so long. It doesn’t work.

And so today, we’re talking about what to do instead and why you don’t have to wait until the holidays are over to start now. What a concept. Now, really, my question is to you, why are you waiting? What are you waiting for? What do you want to do now that you think you wouldn’t be able to do if you started your new diet now? And really, whatever those answers are, is where you begin now. Because, my guess is you’re thinking, you’re going to be missing out on something. Right? And because you think you’re going to be missing out on something, what you do from that thought is, you overdo everything so you don’t miss out on anything. But what if you thought, you’re not missing out on anything? What if you thought that? Then you would treat yourself totally different. Because the truth is, if you think you are, you are missing out on something. And if you think you’re not, you’re not. It’s all up in your head anyway.

So let me explain. I used to use the holidays as a way to ignore my body, eat or drink way too much, call it celebrating and saying to myself, it’s the holidays, I deserve at least to be able to eat anything I want. I made it mean that ignoring my body in eating anything I wanted, regardless if I really wanted it or even if I was hungry, I put off all my guilt until after the holidays because I was going to rain it all in come January. So years spent on the cyclic roller coaster going up and down and weight as we’ve talked about before—this yo-yo dieting. And sometimes just because of the holidays, I usually added an extra five, ten pounds to the weight that I had to lose. I was as mindless as I could be, actually believing I was brilliant for ignoring myself. Like, hey, you can just have these extra weeks, you can do whatever you want, you can eat whatever you want. You deserve it. Like I’m giving myself some fantastic favor and thinking I’m brilliant because I could eat whatever I want as if it’s a privilege.

My darling people as I’m talking to you, this is no privilege. Ignoring yourself is not a privilege. It is not a reward. You tell me when you actually become mindful again, or wake up January 1st that you feel so fantastic about how you treated yourself. You never do. You never do. So hey, why don’t we just start with baby steps now and stop the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again, the same yo-yo dieting over and over again and getting the same results? Let’s do something and think something different. And if you’re going through menopause, and you’re doing this yo-yo dieting all the time and menopause comes around, it’s really not pretty because it’s even slower when you start again.

So what if you decided that this holiday season, you’re going to stop the whole shebang of thinking the way you’re thinking and decide on purpose to think differently, treat yourself differently, and enjoy the holidays more? What if this was the year you stopped the insanity of dieting by starting now to become much more mindful during the holidays? You know, instead of calling that insanity, which I believe some of you might be, at this point, insane. But listen, what if you could think you could eat whatever you want during the holidays and totally enjoy yourself by increasing only one thing? You know what that one thing is? We talked about it in the last two episodes, 32 and 33—your MQ. By increasing your mindfulness quotient, you can go through the holidays, not gain weight, maybe lose weight, and enjoy yourself more. And we’ve been talking a lot about this concept.

So you know that this mindfulness is all about just becoming aware of where you are now, what you’re thinking, that creates all the actions that you’re doing. So by increasing your MQ—what that means if you’re becoming more mindful—is that you become aware of everything you think and feel before you eat anything without judgment. And you stay in the present moment of wherever you are—be at a party, be it with somebody that you love, be it if you’re by yourself, be it if you’re in a bad mood, be it if you’re in a good mood. You just bring yourself into the present moment to see what you’re thinking. And being in the present moment can be so gratifying, especially during the holidays because there’s some really beautiful moments to savor. Not just the food, but of course, there are some moments that it’s really worth savoring the food and to enjoy the food because it is so delicious.

Now, all the things that we’ve been talking about—all these last few months—is all about this awareness and that you can feel a feeling without eating it, right? You don’t have to eat anger, you don’t have to eat boredom, you don’t have to eat guilt. You can feel a feeling all the way through without eating it. And I’m really hoping by this time, you’ve learned to do that because it will really help you during the holidays when these feelings come up, because the holidays also have a tendency to bring these feelings up more. That’s why I like working with the holiday so much because it kind of brings up all your soft spots, or your weak spots, or your mindless thinking thoughts. It brings it all up.

If you decided now to bring your mindfulness quotient up, all that means is that you become aware of what you’re thinking all the time. And you’ll see that many of these thoughts that cross your mind during the holidays, do it every single holiday season. Right? They’re just repetitive, automatic thoughts that you think, that you believe, that you don’t even—you have not been aware that you have a choice to think it! This is where you stop the insanity. You raise up your MQ, you become aware, and you stop the insanity of doing the same mindless things over and over and over again, thinking this is the time you’re going to get a different result. You’re not. Raise your MQ, think differently, the result changes. Let me show you.

You know try this as a way of higher-ing your MQ. Starting now, you decide on purpose to change your intention for this holiday season. You decide to become more mindful, period. Okay, how do you start? You start to become more mindful by every time—now when I say this to you, you know, I know you’ve heard this for me so many times—but it is never more pertinent than now. Every time you sit down to eat, you find out where you are emotionally—your emotional hunger scale, and where you are physically—your physical hunger scale. You just check in. Because if you’ve been thinking like you used to like an insane person—like me, I used to be pretty insane myself—you used to think I’m just going to be mindless for about six weeks, and then I’m going to come back and check in and pull it all in.

My dear, that is called insanity. Why in the world would you leave yourself for six weeks and mistreat yourself? I mean, would you do that to your kid? Would you do that to your grandkid? Would you do that to somebody that you loved? Oh, I’m just leaving for six weeks, you can do whatever the heck you want. Can you imagine leaving a teenager? For six weeks? And saying, oh, just do whatever you want, this is your reward for being a teenager—just mistreat yourself, you know, drink all you want, take all the drugs you want. It’s okay, when I come back, we’ll get it all together. That is insane. Insanity. That’s what you’re doing to yourself.

You know, I’ve been thinking, I think I’ve been a little too easy when I do these podcasts. I mean, I really am a nice, compassionate person. That is true. And I know I come off that way. But also, I don’t know if you realize that I’m pretty tough. I don’t know if you’ve seen that or not. But when I’m working with my clients, I don’t let them get away with B.S. that they tell themselves. I pull it in pretty fast, and I think that’s why my clients love working with me, is because I don’t let them get away with things that their tricky minds let them get away with. And you know that you can call me tough. Some people call me a little challenging sometimes.

But really what it is, is depending on how mean you are to yourself, is how tough I have to be on you. And when I’m talking to you now, I feel like I have to be really tough about the holidays because I think you’re so tricky about it. Like you think, oh, the holiday season is the season that you’re supposed to ignore yourself. And I’m saying you got to stop it. Now. Do I sound tough? I am tough. You got to stop it. It is not working. I want you to decide now to stop it. And now, what would you do to stop it? Alright.

You want to have foods that you love during the holidays? Great. Plan on eating them. You can do this mindfully. You don’t have to ignore yourself and leave yourself and overeat all these foods that you think you’re never going to have again come January 1st. Plan on eating them. Why do I say plan on eating them? Because you’re going to eat them anyway. But if you do it with mindfulness, then you can actually taste them. And you can enjoy them bite by bite, you could savor them. And your mind doesn’t get in the way of telling you, oh god eat all you want because you know, come January 1st, no more of this ever again. Your mind doesn’t go there because your MQ—your mindfulness—comes up. And you tell yourself, darling, you want this, enjoy it. But every bite of it, enjoy it, and please, the moment we’re through enjoying it, let’s stop. I don’t think that sounds insane. I think that sounds reasonable. And I want you to do that.

So starting now, whatever party you’re going to, whatever you’re cooking, whatever you do that you like to do, I want you to continue it. Every year, if you want. But I want you to do it with the mindset of how you’re going to treat your body with that food. You can either overeat it mindlessly, or eat it joyfully—like one of the tools that we use is joy eating. You pick a joy food, you eat it bite by bite, and you enjoy it and you savor it, and you stop the minute you’re done with anything.

Another example, what if you’re having a Christmas meal or a Hanukkah meal or any type of meal, and you realize that there are no fuel foods there? That they’re all your favorite foods you think, but there’s not a lot of fuel there? Now, if you’re mindless about it, and you tell yourself, oh gosh, I’m never going to be able to eat this again so you have five plates full, and I might be exaggerating. And then again, I might not. Because I think when you tell yourself something like that, it’s a very mindless thought, you eat so much more. You know, but if you tell yourself, hey, I want you to enjoy this whole meal. I just want you to enjoy it. So you enjoy it bite by bite, and you stop the minute you’re through enjoying it, and you stop the minute you’re at a plus two. What if you just ate when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full?

So if you’re going to a party—and we did this in one of our quizzes the last couple times—we talked about if you’re going somewhere, don’t go too hungry. Don’t go below a negative two. Take care of that body of yours and make sure that when you sit down to eat, you’re at a negative two. Why? When you’re in a negative two in hunger—remember the hunger scale goes from a negative ten to a plus ten? When you’re just at a negative two, it is so much easier to be mindful about what you want to eat. If you go and you’re at a negative five or a negative six, I would tell you it is very difficult to become mindful because your body will override everything and it becomes compulsive. I’ve talked to you a lot about that. 

When your body is compulsive, when it’s really hungry, it makes you go for all the foods that probably have no fuel value. Right? And if you’re in the holiday seasons, and you’re already thinking these thoughts, watch out. That’s why you got to raise your MQ during the holidays. And just think, if you started practicing your MQ now during the holidays, think how much stronger you would be, come January first. So much stronger.

And that is really the point, is how to treat every day with mindfulness regardless of what is going on. Regardless of what food is available to you. Because my clients—the way I work with them and the way I taught you—is that I don’t want you to get rid of what you call bad foods in your house just so you won’t eat them. I believe that you can have any food you want in your house, and you can choose to eat it or not to eat it. And I don’t know if you remember one of my clients that I talked about a long time ago, but when she first came to me, the food that she could not resist was gooey butter cake. And so every time she had it in her house, she had to eat the whole thing really quick to get rid of it. And after we started working, she realized she could keep the gooey butter cake in her house whenever she wanted and she didn’t have to eat it. And she used it as a joy food.

I will tell you, it was such a strong moment for her when she realized that gooey butter cake didn’t control her. And I am telling you, there is no food that controls you, unless you believe it does. And I can’t think of a better time than during the holidays to stop it, to test it, to stop it, to see that you are totally in control. Why? Look at your life. Look at what you’re doing. Look at all the things that you are in control of your mind, my darling. There is nobody else that is or could control your mind other than you. It’s only when you believe gooey butter cake controls your mind that it does. And I’m telling you, gooey butter cannot do that unless you give it the power. So what do I say? Stop it. Stop the insanity. I’m getting tougher.

And in fact, I’m going to start getting tougher and tougher with you because I want you to become mindful and I want you to get tough on yourself in a loving way. So like when I’m talking to you, I’m talking to you. I’m tough, but at the same time, I’m doing it with compassion because I know how hard it’s been. How do I know? Because I was there. But I know that when you’re tough on yourself and loving with yourself, compassionate with yourself, those two ingredients will allow you to lose all the weight that you want and also to enjoy all the food you want at the same time.

So I’m not saying you have to lose weight during the holidays, I’ll tell you what, you probably could. I’m just telling you that now is such a good time to use the holidays to help you strengthen your mind. Right? Your mind is like a muscle. And the more that you use it to help you, the more you use thoughts to help you, the stronger they get. The thoughts that have been running on automatic like oh, the holidays are coming I’m leaving, I’ll see you in six weeks—the more you think that? The stronger it gets. If you’ve been thinking that for 30 years, it’s a pretty strong thought, runs through your mind, you don’t even know that it’s running and you just do it, just mindless. What I’m telling you right now, don’t do that anymore. Let’s start thinking differently.

You know, and as you find yourself through the holidays, eating a lot of fuel food and also enjoying joy meals or joy foods, you realize that you’re becoming more moderate. And I believe moderation is the key. I think that when you say I’ll never do that again, or this is just, you know, I only eat this and I don’t eat that, leads to restriction and deprivation. And I think that when you say, of course I can eat both. I think you mindfully want to eat more fuel food, but especially during the holidays, I think you mindfully might want to enjoy some more joy foods or meals. You do it mindfully, it becomes moderate.

I want you to learn how to be moderate and that’s why I always tell you that when you’re working the tools that I’ve taught you, you’re probably going to be eating 80% fuel a day and 20% joy. Or even 70%, you know, if you’re, if you’re just not trying to lose weight, then you probably 70 to 80% fuel, 20 to 30% joy. That would be my guess. If you’re trying to lose weight, you’re probably at 90% fuel and 10% joy. But that means every day, you want that joy food, baby, you eat it, you’re not eating a lot of it, 10% isn’t a lot, but it’s enough to give you the taste of anything that you desire. And I’m telling you that when you mindfully eat these foods, it is amazing how little you really need if your mind doesn’t get in the way and tell you crazy things, right? If you stop the insanity, and you become mindful, everything changes.

So as we go in December, into December, I want you to write me and let me know how you’re doing and what your challenges are. And I’ll answer these on future podcasts because I guarantee you, whatever your challenges, there are a hundred more people just like you with the exact same issue. Be brave, help yourself, and help someone else at the same time. Let’s raise our MQs together during the holidays, one thought at a time. Until next week. Bye-bye.

Dr. Michael Butler: I hope you enjoyed this podcast with my wife, Dr. Deborah. I’ve enjoyed working with her and living with her. That’s right, we work and live together for 40 years, more than 40 years. It’s amazing how time flies. And it’s been, it’s been like a little tree growing in the yard. Now, it’s a big tree—our love. So I would like to invite you to correspond with Dr. Deborah, go to iTunes, drdebbutler.com/itunes. And you can review the show, and you can even give some helpful suggestions on what you would like to talk about in the future to accomplish your mindfulness and your journey into mindfulness. Thank you.