3 Ways to Avoid Over-indulging This Christmas (without relying on willpower)

Do you find it impossible to resist having just one more mince pie? Do you always feel totally bloated and over-full? Do you end Christmas feeling shameful and guilty? Do you promise you'll 'get back on the bandwagon' in January?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of those questions then I want to start by saying – it's not your fault that you find it so hard to stick to eating just one mince pie, or can't resist eating half a box of Celebrations when you only meant to have just one.

Billions of dollars are poured into advertising, marketing and finding the exact sweet spot between fat, sugar and texture that forces you to keep coming back for more. You literally don't stand a chance if you rely on willpower alone!

It's no accident that mince pies arrive in our shops in September, even though their best before date is WELL before Christmas. Their very appearance suggests to you that you should really start eating those mince pies now.

We live in a world that is designed to make us fail to resist the food by relying on willpower alone. Which is why the idea of relying on willpower gets thrown out the window straight away in my upcoming workshop on having a guilt-free Christmas.

In this article I suggest 3 ways to avoid over-indulging without relying on willpower; for each one I’ve added a takeaway task for you to take action straight away!

1. Just don't buy the food.

Or at least don't get them until much closer to Christmas Day. There is so much hype around Christmas and this year I was shocked to see Christmas stuff appearing in shops in August. Summer wasn't even over yet!

There's a lot of amazing things about Christmas traditions and rituals - but it doesn't have to all be about food and over-eating, especially not in the weeks before Christmas week proper!

In fact, I think it de-sensitises us to the 'specialness' of Christmas food if we eat too much of it too early on.

If having them around in the house makes it hard to resist, then perhaps aim to just have them available in the week before Christmas.

Do this right now: Get your diary out and mark a date when you'll start buying the mince-pies and Christmas chocolates. 

2. Identify any mindless habits and put barriers up in place.

A lot of what we do day to day is done without thinking or because of an association we've unknowingly put in place If you always have a biscuit with your cup of tea and you keep the biscuit tin next to the kettle then reaching into the tin as your tea brews is going to become second nature. Changing out the routine, putting a barrier in place, confusing our muscle memory will all help to break that mindless habit.

Likewise with Christmas 'treats'. If you always reach for a Celebration because the box is next to your favourite chair, then keep the box on a table on the opposite side of the room - or even better in another room. Often we make things convenient for ourselves so it's less effort - but that's what gets us into a mindless habit in the first place!

Do this right now: Move your biscuit tin or sweet treat jar to a different place in the kitchen that's harder to access.

3. Make as many of your own Christmas treats as possible.

Yes it is more effort, yes it puts one more thing on your to do list - but that's the point! If it's more effort, you're less likely to over-indulge.

Say you've made a batch of biscuits - it'll take you a couple of hours. Say you eat that entire batch between you and your kids while watching a Christmas movie. Fine, what a lovely thing to do together. But are you going to immediately get up and bake another batch of cookies? Probably not. On the flip side, say you eat a whole packet of bought gingerbread cookies. Once it's finished, you know you've got another one in the cupboard. Or you know you can go and get some more. It's too easy!

If the cookies really are THAT good that you make them again – great! But it's unlikely that you're going to do that for 25 days throughout December. In my upcoming workshop I talk about creating a ritual around making Christmas food, something I learned the importance of from my enormous Catholic family – even though we're several continents away from each other, I feel close to them through the ritual of making our family's special recipes.

A lot of Christmas baking seems complicated, but I bet once you actually read the recipes you’ll be surprised that it’s not so tricky after all (for example, did you know that to make mincemeat for mince pies all you do is bung all the ingredients in a pan, heat to melt the butter and then jar them up!).

Do this right now: Have a search online for recipes of your favourite Christmas goodies and bookmark a few to try this year. I love Felicity Cloak on the Guardian as a starting point!

Christmas is full of rituals and traditions that we do just because it's how things have been done. But if you're like me, you now have your own relatively new nuclear family. And this gives you the opportunity to create rituals and traditions mindfully - with purpose and vision that fulfils your own family's set of values. And one of the things you can have a strong sense of value on is food and the ritual of it.

We can put in place meaning and purpose behind the food we eat and cook. Let Christmas be your opportunity to create a positive meaning around food for you and your family. Let it be an opportunity to teach your children the value of enjoying the food we eat. Let it not be an opportunity to pass on feelings of guilt and shame to your children.

Role modelling a healthy attitude to food and eating to is really important to me and inform a lot of my motherhood. I am really excited to share my workshop on having a guilt-free Christmas on Tuesday 12 December because I offer a fresh perspective on over-indulging, bingeing and cravings so you can end the month free of guilt and excited for a new year ahead. It breaks my heart when I see mums beating themselves up for all the delicious food they've eaten or because of what they see in the mirror, and so in my workshop I'm on a mission to help flip the mindset of shame. To learn more and sign up for the workshop, click here.