Feeling Fat?

If you are like most people, you ate too much on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is literally a food fest. It may be the largest eating event in the United States as measured by retail sales of food and beverages and by estimates of individual food intake. For people who struggle with weight and body image problems, this time of year can be stressful.

Have you heard that the average American gains seven to ten pounds between Halloween and New Year’s Day? I have heard it, believed it, and passed the information on to others. The problem is that it is not true. It is a myth. A study published in 2000 in the New England Journal of Medicine followed 195 adults and found they gained an average of one pound during the holiday season. And in 2017, a review of existing studies concluded that adults gain 0.88 to 2 pounds over the holidays.

True or not, many of us feel bloated after the holiday meal. We regret breaking from our normal routine of sensible eating. Or the excess throws us off our diets, making it difficult to get back on track. Do we give up and vow to resume our diets with a New Year’s resolution? Research shows that 95% of New Year’s resolutions are fitness-related, but research suggests that 80% of January gym-joiners quit within five months.

What will help get you back on track? Cognitive Behavioral Therapy identifies negative or irrational patterns of thinking. These negative thought patterns can play a role in diminishing your motivation, lowering your self-esteem, and contributing to problems like anxiety, depression, and substance use, as well as uncontrolled eating.

All-or-Nothing Thinking: Situations are always black or white, everything or nothing, good or bad, success or failure. For example, “I can’t eat sensibly during the holidays.”

Overgeneralization: The words “always” or “never” frequently appear in your thinking. If you eat more than your allotted calories per day, you assume that all future events will have the same outcome. “I will never lose weight.”

Mental Filters: Mental filters take one small event and focus on it obsessively. You may feel overwhelming guilt and self-loathing about your food intake.

Discounting the Positive: Discounting the positive is a cognitive distortion that involves ignoring or invalidating good things that have happened to you. You may disregard the times that you refused a second helping.

Jumping to Conclusions: This occurs in two ways – mind-reading and fortune-telling. You are just sure that you know what others are thinking and you know the outcome of an event. You may think that others are judging you and that you will lose their respect.

Magnification: This involves magnifying your negative qualities while minimizing your positive ones. When you stop counting calories, you see this as “proof” of your failure. But when you take a walk, you minimize its significance.

Emotional Reasoning: This type of reasoning assumes that because you are experiencing a negative emotion, it must be an accurate reflection of reality. “I feel bloated, therefore I must have gained five pounds. I won’t get on a scale because I don’t want to see the number.”

“Should” Statements: These statements involve always thinking about things that you think you “should” or “must” do. Because you always think you “should” be doing something, you end up feeling as if you are always failing. You may think you should exercise, you must count calories, you ought to get on a scale. And if you don’t, you feel like a failure.

Labeling: Labeling involves making a judgment about yourself that defines you, or about someone else that defines them. Example: “I am a failure,” rather than “I made a mistake.”

Personalization and Blame: Personalization and blame are cognitive distortions whereby you blame yourself, or someone else, for a complex situation that may not have been entirely in your control.

We all make cognitive distortions from time to time. When we are the most distressed, we are probably creating additional upset for ourselves by the way we think. If we can catch our distortions and alter our thoughts to something more reasonable, we will experience some relief.

Upon reflection, revise your distorted thinking to more reasonable thoughts. You may realize that Thanksgiving was just one day out of the year. You could make different choices. Thinking of your overall health is good for you, but obsessing over it is not healthy. You have made good choices at times. You are not psychic and don’t know what others think of you. Considering your positive and negative behaviors can help you plan ahead. Just because you feel bloated doesn’t mean that you gained five pounds. You may want to be health-conscious, but you can also choose to set that goal aside for a while. You are not a failure if you gain weight; you are a human with fluctuating weight. Holidays pose difficult food choices for most people.

Examining your thoughts can be freeing, and once freed, you will see more options as you plan for healthy nutrition. If you would like to read more about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I highly recommend you read The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns.

Happy holidays.