We also talk about how to overcome guilt around eating and how to deal with general holiday stress.

Don’t forget, I’m on iTunes! You can be one of my kick-ass subscribers. Also, I would be SO GRATEFUL if you took 2 minutes to leave a review. Go here -> click “Reviews and Ratings” and then “Click to Rate”.

Summer:

This episode of eat the rules is brought to you by you on fire you on fire is the online group coaching program that I run that gives you a step by step way of building up your self worth beyond your appearance. With personalized coaching from me incredible community support and lifetime access to the program so that you can get free from body shame and live life on your own terms. Get details on what’s included and sign up for the next cycle at summer innanen.com forward slash you on fire. I’d love to have you in that group. This is eat the rules, a podcast about body image self worth, anti dieting, and intersectional feminism. I am your host summer Innanen. a professionally trained coach specializing in body image self worth and confidence and the best selling author of body image remix. If you’re ready to break free of societal standards and stop living behind the number on your scale, then you have come to the right place.

Welcome to the show. This is episode 248. And I am revisiting an episode from 2019 about how to manage holiday, quote unquote overeating and concerns about your weight. I’m giving you specific ways to manage over eating guilt around eating certain foods, holiday weight gain and general feelings of stress. And I’m also talking about why I don’t like the word overeating. You can find all the links and resources mentioned at summer innanen.com forward slash 248. I want to give a shout out to Blondie with an ATG. For leaving this review. I have started listening to these to help me understand why I think and feel the way I do these have been on point and I have listened to the first three episodes more than five times each. Just so I can repeat what summer has said in my head or make a mental note to research the idea a little bit further. between summer and my fitness coach, I feel like I can conquer my mental health and feel better. Thank you so much for leaving that review. I appreciate that you listen to the episodes so much. That’s cool. If you enjoy it. Don’t become obsessed, though, but or maybe do so good. No, I really appreciate that.

You can leave a review, please go to Apple podcast search for eat the rules and then click ratings and reviews and click to leave a review. You can also grab the free 10 Day body confidence makeover at summer innanen.com. Forward slash freebies with 10 steps to take right now to feel better in your body. Oh, and you can also subscribe to this podcast via whatever platform you use, I always appreciate that. And if you are a professional who works with people who may also have body image struggles, then don’t forget to grab the free body image coaching roadmap at summer innanen.com forward slash roadmap, I wanted to re air this episode because it’s the holidays. And I know that if you struggle with your body or you struggle with your relationship with food, then the holidays can be a little bit of a triggering time. Because we’re exposed to a lot more food a lot more social events. And you might be struggling with, you know, just feelings like feeling like you are eating too much or feeling guilt around foods or feeling your body change, and all that other stuff. And it’s all interconnected with the way that we feel about our body. And so I wanted to reshare this episode, because it’s been three years since I created it. And I feel like it’s super relevant, especially now that we’re probably having a lot more social events this December than we have in the last two years. So there’s some stuff referenced in here, like some really old episodes and things like that. I feel like some of those are updated now. So what I’ll do is I’m going to try and update the show notes with like, the newer version of what I’ve referenced. So for example, I believe that I reference, one of the episodes that I did called why diets don’t work. And I think that there’s like a revised version of that episode that I did a year or two ago. So if you go to the show notes, that’s where you’re gonna find like the most up to date links that I’m referencing in this particular episode. And that’s it. I hope you enjoy it. Let’s get started with the show.

So today’s episode is a bit of a follow up from last week’s and yet it’s on a completely different topic. But the what I had asked in my Instagram Stories a few weeks ago was what are some of the things that you’re most worried about or stressed about over the holidays? And so many of you said, over eating and guilt associated with food and holiday weight gain and so I created this episode as a separate sort of follow up although different topics to the one that I did last week on setting boundaries and dealing with stuff Got fulvic family members and things like that. So I’m going to cover in this episode, the diet cycle and how overeating fits into that why I really hate the word overeating. So every time you hear me say it, imagine it in quotation marks. And I prefer to just refer to it as you know, eating to a point of physical discomfort, or I love how Carolyn Jr. calls it a feast, or eating in response to restriction, you know, there’s a lot of other ways that we that we can refer to it. That’s not I’m using the language of diet culture. And I’ll talk a little bit about that more. But yeah, I’ll review the diet cycle, how overeating fits in there, talk about what to do to, again, I’m putting this in quotations avoid overeating, because I don’t really want you to avoid it. But why you might be eating to physical discomfort, some reason, there are some things that you can do to eat more normally, and what it even means to eat more normally. Again, we’re not demonizing eating past fullness, it’s a totally normal thing that people do, what to do, if you feel guilty about it. And then a few other little follow up questions to that, that people ask me, such as, What if I eat without favoring the food? Or what if I feel like I have to earn or burn off the extra food. And then we’re going to talk a little bit about how to manage weight gain around the holidays, and just overall, how to deal with the social events and the eating and the drinking is associated with those. So let’s get started and get into this. If you’re newer to this work, I highly recommend listening to Episode 83. Why diets don’t work? That’s a really comprehensive guide on the diet mentality, the diet cycle, why dieting doesn’t work. And it might be a good refresher for you this time of year. But if you’re newer to this work, or this podcast, like definitely listen to that one, because I really go into the biological stuff, the physiological stuff, the reason why diets don’t work with evidence says what the research says, and how to start to recover from that. But let’s just briefly cover the diet cycle. Because if you are newer to this work, it’s important to understand and even if you’re not new, it’s still a good refresher. And so the diet cycle really goes like this. So it starts with a desire to lose weight, which is stemming from our existence. In a fat phobic culture, it’s often just coming from this place of wanting to feel better about ourselves, because we don’t feel good enough because our culture makes us feel like we’re not good enough. It’s really trying to escape the internalized fat phobia that we have, although all it does is really contribute more to that. And so it can also be from this desire to be like healthy, which I’m putting in quotation marks, which is often based on misinformation we have about the relationship between weight and health. So all you need to really take away from that is, the diet cycle starts with a desire to lose weight, and that dire desire to lose weight is a little more complex. But in order to really heal the diet cycle, we have to get not necessarily get rid of that desire to lose weight, but really get into the nitty gritty and help you to just feel really neutral in your body in order to not have that desire anymore. And so as soon as we have that desire to lose weight, that diet mentality is triggered in that, that what we eat, and how we move is now intertwined with our weight. And our decisions around those things are intertwined with our weight. And generally, when people go on diets, there’s some form of restriction. They’re usually physically always mentally, and perhaps your diet really works short term, often it does the first few times. And then we start to kind of build up a resistance to it. But we always sort of remember that first time, kind of like what they say about heroin, right, like people who are addicts, they’re always kind of trying to chase that first high. And I think that’s what it’s like, we’re always trying to chase like that first result that we got from the first time that we dieted, but it doesn’t work, we’re not physiologically set up to really respond to restriction in that way, at least the vast majority of people, there’s a very small percentage of people that that can do. But most of us can’t. So what happens when we were stair strict, both physically and mentally. And we’ll talk a little bit more about mental restriction as it relates to overeating in this podcast, but our body starts to fight back. So we begin to fixate on food, we have cravings, they’re often intense. So anytime I’m working with clients, and they’re like, I’m just like craving sugar so bad. Usually it’s because they’ve been depriving themselves or they’re restricting. And so when we begin to have that kind of fixation on food, eventually our willpower wears thin because our body is is smarter than us and our body fights back and so our It tries to restore our energy balance. And that leads us to quote unquote, overeat, binge break our diet sabotage. And notice that all of those words have connotations to not doing something, right. They’re all like kind of falling under that bad bucket. Like I did something bad. I overeat. I benched, I broke my diet I sabotaged. And that’s the stuff. That’s why I don’t use the word overeat, except in the context of when I’m talking about it as it relates to like, the way that diet culture talks about it, because it implies that we’re doing something wrong. And then we feel guilty, and we feel like a failure. And we think why can other people do this? Why can I What’s wrong with me, and then we end up gaining weight, and often more than when we started, and we blame ourselves, even though this is the result of our body’s compensatory mechanisms that are set up to protect us from famine, and to keep us surviving and thriving. So the only reason that we you know, binge, or overeat, you know, not the only reason I shouldn’t say that, because binge eating disorder and things like that are often more complex. And there’s definitely some emotional stuff involved there, too. However, for the vast majority of dieters, that sabotage, we’ll call it is really just our body fighting back and trying to get us back into balance, because it’s like, you’re starving me, Hey, what’s up. And so it’s important to review this. Because, you know, often we think that the only way to fix this is to try again. So we repeat the cycle. And this was my life for years, this was my clients. This is generally my clients lives for years and years. And it took me a really long time to realize that it wasn’t that I lacked willpower, or that I was broken, it was just that all of these things I had learned were untrue, and the system was broken, the system is broken. And so you know, you can keep this in mind, like really keep this in mind around this time of year. Because with all the diet messages that are coming out, it can be really tempting. And it can kind of bring you back to that place of like, oh, well, maybe,

maybe if I just try one more time, or like, if I do this one thing differently, then this time, it’s going to work. And let me tell you, that is not true, it is not going to work, you are so much better off putting your effort into healing your relationship with food, focusing on living your life, focusing on self care from a place of nourishment, and doing what’s best for you mentally and physically. That’s how you are going to feel better about yourself. And doing body image work, obviously is integral to feeling better about yourself. But you know, just keep this in mind that diet cycle is set up for people to fail. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be such a huge industry. You know, we’re not just all willpower failures, like, it’s just that it’s set up to keep us constantly going back, it plays on the dopamine in our brain gives us that sense of hope. And then it just smashes our self worth. And we think the only way to get about that back is to repeat the cycle. And that is not true. So hopefully, you know this already. And if not, then this is why you are here. And I’m so glad that you’ve joined me. Welcome to the dark side. So we want to get to a place where we eat normally. And I’ll just like briefly talk about this because this can sometimes blow people’s minds. But you know, where food is no longer connected to weight, where we eat the things we want to eat where that our body wants. And it’s not dictated by whether something’s going to make us gain or lose weight we’re eating is just effortless and easy, where we don’t really think about it anymore. It’s just not that interesting. And maybe we eat pancakes for breakfast, and we just move on with our lives. There’s no judgment or guilt associated with it. There’s no like, oh, I should be eating this. I shouldn’t be eating that. You just eat what you feel like eating. And you’re trusting and honoring your body’s signals. You’re mostly eating to hunger and fullness, but also not sometimes because you’re human. And we don’t want to turn it into a hunger and fullness diet, but you’re really honoring your desires and preferences. And it means that sometimes you do eat to physical discomfort. And sometimes you do soothe your emotions with food and that’s okay. And the good news is is that like we’re all born as normal eaters, but we lose that ability to be intuitive with our food when we become exposed to diet culture and exposed to all those rules and moral associations with food. But it is possible to get that back by really committing to leaving dieting behind. And when you do that your body’s gonna find the weight that it’s meant to be at and that might be AB it might be down it might be the same. But ultimately anytime you’re food or fitness choices are tied to a desire to lose weight. You are essentially dieting and so you know when people ask me about overeating or you know of The guilt around eating like, quote unquote bad food, like, that’s all diet culture language. And that just tells me that like, there’s still some diet mentality there. And so don’t beat yourself up if you have that, like, I think what I really want to make clear with all of this is that it’s a process, it takes time, it takes conscious effort, it takes really working on the stuff that’s underneath, like where this desire comes from. So if it’s tied to the way that you feel about yourself and your body image, like doing that deeper work there, because that’s going to then really help to fully heal the diet mentality. So this isn’t to say, like, I just want you to switch that off, you know, start eating like a normal person. It’s not like that it’s a long process, you’re undoing decades of conditioning, and it can take some time. So those specific questions that people asked me were about, like, I feel guilty if I overeat or eat bad food, or like, how do I deal with all the overeating? Or how do I avoid overeating. So, you know, I’m just kind of all just combined them into one bucket about overeating. And let’s just talk about why I really dislike the term overeating, because it implies there’s a magical amount of food that we need to be eating too. And even if we do eat past physical comfort, sometimes that can give us information to help us heal our relationship with food. So we never want to look at that as like a bad thing it can we can just be curious with it and ask ourselves like, I wonder what was going on there, you know, was I restricting going into this was I looking at the food thinking like, I shouldn’t eat that. And then we just, you know, kind of work on some stuff around that. So it’s not a big deal. And when I say I hate the term overeating, like, I don’t say this to diminish or dismiss someone if they’re binging or if you do eat to discomfort. It’s more about the language and how it’s loaded with shame and moralization. And I encourage people to use different language. So instead of saying I over ate, just say, eight to physical discomfort, because sometimes we think we’re overeating. But really, it’s just based on like this imaginary quota of food that we think we should be eating, too. And so only if you are really eating to like physical discomfort, what I encourage you to then say I ate to physical discomfort. And sometimes it’s reactionary eating, like, sometimes a binge would be something like a reaction to restriction. And so you can refer to it as such, instead of using words that are really loaded with shame, there’s nothing wrong with occasionally eating past physical fullness. And when you can break free of the diet mentality, you can do that and move on with your life. So you have occasions like Thanksgiving or birthday parties where you enjoy a lot of food. And there’s nothing wrong with that, you can do that and just move on. And it’s not a big deal. So the goal of eating intuitively or not dieting isn’t to always just honor hunger and wholeness and get fullness to a certain amount. It’s to be able to have flexibility in your life and know that you’re not a static being and that your needs change or desires change. And that if you eat more, one day, it’s not a big deal. And just putting trust in your body that your body is able to figure out the proper energy balance for you. So let’s just talk about why we might have a reactionary response to restriction or in other words, why mental and physical restriction may result in you eating past a certain comfort level. So first, you know, when I talk about restriction, there’s meant physical restriction, and then mental restriction. So physical is depriving yourself of certain calories or macronutrients. So for example, if you’ve dieted in the days leading up to a particular event, we know there’s going to be a lot of food that is totally to cause you to eat past physical comfort, because your body is just naturally responding to restriction. So I know back in my dieting days, I always would like try to eat quote, unquote good in the days leading up or do excessive exercise. And then I would beat myself up for like, eating tons of food the day off, and it’s like, Well, no wonder your body is just responding. And so if that’s the case, like, you got to give yourself a pass your body is just trying to keep you alive and responding to the famine signals that you gave it. And so you want to in order to really like overcome over eating quote, unquote, we have to make sure that we are like eating like a grown ass adult every day, like eat the things you want to eat when you want to eat them, and don’t go through periods of Like restricting, or like denying yourself certain macronutrients, like Oh, I’m just gonna eat lower carb, or like, I’m just gonna eat a lighter lunch because I know dinner is going to be heavy. You know, with all that stuff, you’re potentially setting yourself up to be really hungry and therefore eat past fullness when you have that meal. So when we’re overly hungry, or animal brain goes into high alert, and we just need to eat and often that can feel like we’re out of control. And it looks like a binge or what we would consider like, quote, unquote, over eating, but it’s just your body responding to a famine signal, and it’s trying to protect you. So the best thing that you can do is to eat like you normally would nourish yourself, eat to fullness, then eat your holiday meal, like it’s any other meal and just move on. And with mental restriction, it’s a little more complicated. This is the stuff that takes a bit more time to rewire. You know, mental restriction is when we are looking at foods through the lens of good or bad, or we’re looking at food behaviors through the lens of good or bad, anytime we’re sitting there and thinking, Oh, I should be eating, this shouldn’t be eating this, or I should be eating this. All of that is mental restriction. If we have plans to diet afterwards, we’re sending our brain signals that we are restricting. And that can trigger us to have a binge or eat past fullness. So any of those things are going to be considered mental restriction. And I talked to a lot of clients who tell me that they’re not restricting, they haven’t been dieting, but when we really start to dig into it, they are restricting, they still have off limit foods or rules, or, Oh, I can’t eat this with this food or this before this time, or this, if I’m doing this later. And those are all rules, we’re not giving themselves full permission to eat what they want, is only eating what they want in the confines of what feels safe or familiar. And so if we are living within those confines, then we are still we still have mental restriction. And that’s going to cause us to overcompensate to have those moments where our body kicks in the compensatory measures to help us get the adequate calories that we need. And so mental restriction is really governed by a fear of gaining weight or becoming unhealthy. So that’s why again, like it goes back to that diet cycle, it’s so important to like, overcome that fear of weight changing, will undo beliefs about what it means to have a larger body, what it means to be unhealthy, and all of those things, blowing up that bullshit all around that in order to overcome that mental restriction. So if you still have guilt or judgment around food, or if there’s any rules at play, then that is that could be contributing to why you feel like you are quote, unquote, over eating. And I would just say with that, like, you really have to go gentle on yourself there. This stuff doesn’t just change overnight. For a lot of people, it can take months years to really undo that way of thinking. And so you have to just be conscious of whether your diet mentality is coming with you to the table and try to resist those thoughts. And I really encourage people to really listen for the shoulds. The shoulds are the diet mentality in your brain telling you what you need to do. And instead, ask yourself, what do I feel like eating? What do I want right now? And don’t worry so much about like hunger and fullness, because I think that can get really complicated as well. People start like thinking like, oh, was I hungry enough Was I too far, like, just try to eat like a grown a saddle, like, which I know, you know, is more nuanced than the way it sounds. But you can just eat and eat the things you want, then trust that over time your body is going to figure this out for you. And one of the things that I love to give people as it relates to overcoming mental restriction is just repeating yourself like food is just food, I can have it anytime I want. I can have this anytime I want. It’s just reinforcing that permission. Because in order to heal, you have to give yourself that permission to give your brain the memo that that food is coming consistently. Because once your body knows that it’s going to have food consistently, then you’re not going to have those reactions so much anymore. Dieting conditions us to think that those famines are going to happen. So it takes a while to build up that trust. But when your body knows that the famine is really over and you give yourself permission to eat what you want, your natural signals will kick in and your organic you’ll organically find it’s easier to to stop and stop isn’t a word I hesitate to use because it seems very intentional, like I’m going to stop eating but I guess it becomes easier for you to get to a spot where you feel like you’ve just had enough like you’re like that’s it like I’m done eating and you can’t force that process. A lot of people I work with are type a very achievement focused and they want to rush that process but you really have to surrender and have patience. But I’ve never had a client not get to a point where they’re been treated. Choice didn’t become neutral and not that interesting. But I may have used too many negatives and not. So let me rephrase that. So every client that I’ve worked with has gotten to a point where that past binge food is now just neutral and not that interesting. So it’s definitely 100% possible. But you have to be gentle with yourself and expect that you’re going to eat to discomfort sometimes, and that’s okay. And if you do eat to physical discomfort, just treat the next day like it’s a normal day. Again, if you’re sending your brain signals that like, Oh, I’m gonna do better tomorrow, are you gonna exercise, that’s all implying mental restriction. And so you want to just move on, eat the things you want to eat the next day, eat what you feel like, and that’s it. And so if you’re newer to this work, and it’s your first holiday meal, then go easy on yourself. And even if you’re not new, or go easy on yourself, you’re still healing. And it’s natural to have moments where you feel that diet mentality pop up. If you’re feeling guilt, like you did not do anything bad. The only reason why we think it’s bad is because we have the diet mentality telling us that it’s bad. But you didn’t do anything bad. Please do not repent. There’s nothing to repent here. All you can do is move on, respond compassionately to yourself, you know, and and by that I mean, like, what do you want to say to yourself specifically, that’s really kind and compassionate right now, to just accept that this is what happened. And to move on and give yourself the encouragement, you need to just keep eating like a grown ass adult the next day. So someone asked me about, they had concerns over eating things without savoring. And my response to that would be like, what’s wrong with that? I think, again, like this idea that we have to savor our food can become a bit of a moralization. So I’m not saying that we it’s not like more enjoyable to savor food, I think that there is some value to savoring our food. But this is where things like some of the practices in mindful eating, I sort of cringe my face out a bit because it becomes a bit of a rule. And I don’t think it always fits in with our life. Like I know for me, now I have a toddler, not really sitting there, savoring my food, I’m shoveling it in as fast as possible, because he’s going to be starting to throw stuff on the floor when he’s done, which is at a very rapid pace, and then I have to take them out. And that’s it. So I’m not really savoring my food much these days. The odd time, I’ll try to when I’m eating alone, but that’s so rare that it just doesn’t happen that much. So you can eat without savoring you’re going to be okay. So just don’t look at us as a bad thing.

If you want to, you can try to just take a deep breath, try to just pay attention to at least one bite. But if you don’t, that’s okay. Like just eat and then move on with your life. And maybe some people won’t agree with me with that. Maybe some people really do see value in like sitting there and savoring food. But I just especially with my life right now, I just know that this does not fit into everyone’s lives. And that is okay. I used to always eat watching TV before I had a child. And I would say that I like semi savored, but it was just like I was just eating. And I think that’s the great thing about not dieting is that food is just not that interesting anymore. So it’s really quite rare that I eat something that I’m like, Oh, wow, this is so good. Like, you know, it just doesn’t happen. Because I’ve given myself full permission. It’s just not that interesting. And that’s okay. And if you really enjoy food like that all the time, that’s totally fine, too. Although, sometimes we do that when we’ve been restricting. I know, when I in my dieting days, I used to just like, have like orgasmic food experiences all the time, because I was depriving myself so much. So anytime I actually did give myself permission to eat something I wanted. It was like the most glorious thing in the world. Whereas now because I do that all the time, I’m like, well, pizza, yeah, fine. Sure. But it’s just like not that interesting. Like, sometimes I want it and a lot of times I don’t and that’s okay. Someone else asked about just having that feeling like you have to earn your food or burden off. So this is really again, diet mentality, you want to be aware of that give yourself permission, but know that you can’t outsmart your body. So your body has a really great way of balancing your needs input and output. So if you go to try to like exercise excessively before, like, all you’re going to do is just eat more food because your body is going to be more hungry and starving and have that kind of restriction signal. So you’re not really doing yourself any favors. Like if you just if you go in if you had ate like a normal person didn’t movement like you normally do, and then go in and eat. Like if you if you’ve truly kind of healed the diet mentality, your body is going to just eat what you want to eat. And even if you do eat extra, again, your body is going to have a really great way of balancing your needs. And it’s not necessarily on like a daily basis but it’s over a longer term that like we go through these phases where we maybe move less and eat more and then sometimes where we move more and sometimes where we just kind of organically eat less and because we’re we’re not static beings we are really dynamic and our our needs change on a daily basis. And so the best thing you can do is just focus on like, what do I need right now, you know what, what’s gonna feel good for me and treat any holiday, like it’s just another day of the week and it’s not a big deal. Okay, let’s let’s touch on weight gain around the holidays, this is so normal, like, you probably aren’t doing the self care like you normally do, which I’m going to talk about as being an important piece of just getting through the holidays. But it’s normal for your body to change. For some people, it’s at different times of the year. But a lot of people do like their body naturally pulls more, more fat in the winter. And there’s nothing wrong with this, you know, we’re we’re often more sedentary and that’s fine. If we just trust like, everything’s good, our body is really smart. And it’s going to keep us in a place that’s healthy and healthiest for us. So long as we are focusing on our self care from the perspective of actually caring for ourselves and not punishing ourselves, then our body is going to do the best that it can for us. And a lot of this, like some stuff is just not in our control. So, you know, a lot of times, like our weight is not in our control or health. And again, like go back to Episode 83, where I talk about why diets don’t work because I go into the nuances of those things. But know that your body’s just doing the best it can for you. Whatever you do, do not think about dieting, do not think about dieting, because if you think about dieting, if you think like oh, in January, I’m just going to do like a sugar detox or whatever, that’s just going to cause you to have that mental restriction. And that’s going to cause you to like eat all the foods, more than you probably need. Because you’ve kind of got this like the famine looming. So do not think about dieting. And when it comes to actually dealing with the stress around weight gain, that’s like a lot to do with doing some body acceptance work. If you haven’t done so definitely do the 10 day body confidence makeover that’s on my site. Also check out Episode 96, which is called how to work through body shame. There’s a lot of good stuff in that episode, to help you work through those moments of body shame. And then if you need additional support, I’ve got some programs that can help you there. So definitely just head to my website, check out you on fire, or there’s also the body image remix program if you’re newer to doing body image work. Okay, the last thing I want to touch on is just talking about self care. So I wrote a blog post a couple years ago that look that is my way of looking at self care. And it’s really just looking at things in your life that are recharging you versus draining you and making sure that you are creating a bit more balanced towards including things that are recharging you and saying no to things that are draining you. And we want to look at this from a physical perspective, an emotional perspective and a mental perspective. And so keep that in mind through the holidays, it’s a really simple question to ask yourself, like, is this recharging me? Or is this draining me? What can I do to add more things that are going to recharge me? What can I do to eliminate some of these things that are draining me, and making sure you have that balance. And that might mean saying no to some social events, it might mean like cutting out a social event early, so that you can get more sleep, it might mean forgoing Christmas cards this year, because you just don’t have time. Or it might mean asking for some additional help with some of the things on your to do list. So I encourage you to just check in with yourself every day. Like just check in how am I feeling physically? How am I feeling emotionally? How am I feeling mentally, what’s draining me today, what’s going to recharge me and make more time for the things that are going to recharge you. And that’s really going to help like with some of the stress around food, some of the stress around weight, you know, just taking care of ourselves and doing the best we can with that, given our resources and our situation. So that I have written about in a couple of different spots. I will link to those blog posts in the show notes. But simple question about just recharging and draining. And I like to look at it, use the kind of visual of like a battery, you know, you don’t want to be on low power mode all the time. Because that’s a horrible place to be. You’re about to just burn out anytime when you’re in low power mode. So you want to be making sure that you’re plugging yourself in to recharge. And I know I’m using the analogy of a phone but being on your phone and like Mindlessly scrolling on social media, I don’t find to be the most recharging although I often do it to just kind of like numb out on life when I need to do it. And that’s okay, too. So the last thing I just quickly want to squeeze in here. Somebody asked about having pictures taken and just being stressed about that. So I do a lot of work around pictures in the you ON FIRE program that I run but definitely check out episode 142 of the podcast with Vivian McMaster that’s her entire practice is around helping people see themselves more compassionately through the lens and doing body image work with photos, which I’m a huge fan of and find so effective. But the more pictures that you take, the more pictures that you’re in, the more pictures that you see yourself in. And the more that you can use that as a tool to help yourself heal by speaking to yourself compassionately, then the better that you’re going to feel when you have those pictures taken. So I can, you know, do a whole other episode on that completely. But I will refer you to Vivian’s for now, and just know that if you need more support around that, that that is something that I do in my work with clients. Okay, so definitely check out the show notes for this episode, they’re going to be at summer innanen.com, forward slash 155. Because there’s a lot of links to other episodes, and helpful things, helpful blog posts that I’ve written in the past that you can refer to, but really just enjoy this time of year if you can, although for some people, it’s shitty. And so just try to endure it and get through it. I know for me, this year is going to be pretty hard. My dad passed away two months ago, I’m not really looking forward to it. But because I have a child I’m really trying to focus on creating some new traditions with him and taking him to like different events. So going to see Santa going to see the lights and really trying to see the holidays through his perspective and the the wonder and excitement that he has, although he has no idea what’s going on. He just thinks it’s really cool that there’s like these colored lights all around. But just go easy on yourself. Make sure that you have some people who do love you and support you around. If you aren’t feeling so great. And know that it’s just a few weeks and we’ll we’ll get through this together. And I’ve got some other good episodes that are going to be dropping over the month of December. So stay tuned for that. And listen to last week’s episode if you haven’t already watched episode 154 on setting boundaries because I talked about creating an emotional support kit there which I think can be super helpful, especially when we talk about this food stuff too. Okay, thank you so much for listening to this one. Thanks for sending these questions in through my Instagram stories and I will talk to you soon rock on

I hope you took away some good stuff from that episode. You can find all the links and resources mentioned at summer innanen.com forward slash 248 Thank you so much for listening today. I’ll talk to you soon rock on.

I’m Summer Innanen. And I want to thank you for listening today. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at summer Innanen. And if you haven’t yet, go to Apple podcasts search eat the rules and subscribe rate and review this show. I would be so grateful. Until next time rock on