Dealing with holiday weight gain

It is the beginning of November.  We made it through the Halloween candy debacle and now the dreaded holidays are upon us.  Not that I noticed, but rather my social media feeds are full of pre-planning to avoid the holiday weight gain.

Can you hear me rolling my eyes?

That is mean, I know.  The truth is I am sympathetic – I have been there, many MANY times.  The panic attacks from the scale going up over the winter was a daily occurrence for most of my life.  So, I get it.

And not being in that space anymore – just eating normally all the time – has given me different perspective, peace and honesty with my own body.  

I just want to say here and now – the ones posting their weights publicly to be “accountable”, the ones vowing to workout every single night and eat “better”, the ones buying a smaller sized holiday outfit so they lose weight to fit into it – I have something major to say to you.

You are enough.

Just as you are.  

And, you are also enough with any holiday weight gain, and you are enough if the stresses cause you to lose weight.  You are enough 5, 10 or whatever pounds heavier.  You are enough.  Holiday weight gain doesn’t cause you to lose your friends or family.  It does not cause you to do better at your job, or worse.  It doesn’t make any bit of difference in the grand scheme of your life.

It is SO easy to deflect holiday pain and craziness on surface-level things.  I’m talking shopping, excessive decorating and yes, a focus on a changing (or not changing) body.  It’s easier and more acceptable to stress over the pounds than your critical mother or father over a carved turkey.  It’s numbing to exercise for hours on end because you don’t have to think about not living up to expectations.  It’s comforting to go back to the same schemes every year because everything else is just too hard, or too busy or too… something. Humans escape pain for survival reasons, and we have some great ways to mask what is really going on.

Remember, you are enough.  Your body, your crooked Christmas tree or the feeling of a debilitating loss of loved ones that haunt you around the holidays.  You are enough, and you don’t have to do anything to you to change that.

If you experience a weight change for whatever reason – stress, a decline in exercise, or eating more treats than usual, accept that your body has a reason for this.  Or maybe your body doesn’t have a reason, and it just is.  Accept the change without the “good” or “bad” labels.  Because you are enough, and the world still turns no matter what size you may be wearing.