How to Stop Overeating This Holiday Season

As a child, the holidays probably made you think of presents and Santa Claus. Now that you are an adult, the first two things that come to mind are most likely to be ‘food’ and ‘stress’. Though the holidays are meant to be a joyous time, this particular combination of stress and food can, unfortunately, be quite disastrous for your mental and physical health.

During this Holiday Season, you might be wondering how to prevent Stress Eating. Today, let me walk you through some straightforward tips that will help you gain control over this destructive habit.

Know Your Signs of Stress

By first understanding how stress causes us to overeat, we can protect ourselves from binge eating during this demanding time of year. This understanding begins with knowing your signs of stress.

When things get hectic at work, do you start making more frequent trips to the coffeemaker or vending machine for some junk food or a fix of caffeine? If the answer is “yes”, then try to become aware of these signs that stress is beginning to take its toll on you.

Next, understand where such habits and cravings are coming from. Having low energy is a physical sign of stress, which explains why it’s so common to crave sugar when we are anxious. The good news is that by becoming aware of such stress habits, you are already on your way to overcoming them!

Learn Effective Stress Management

Once you have identified your stress habits, you can create an effective stress management plan. If your goal is to reduce stress eating (or drinking), think of a way to replace this bad habit with a good one.

One option is to plan ahead by having healthy, stress-relieving snacks on hand. That way, when you catch yourself reaching for a sugary snack to calm your frazzled nerves, you can go for something healthier instead. Snacking on a handful of nuts or a cup of yogurt will have a far better effect on your body and your mental state.

However, if you want to focus on cutting calories, you will need to decrease the overall amount you consume—something that takes quite a lot of willpower. Simply replacing an unhealthy snack with a healthy one isn’t going to stop you from overeating when anxiety kicks in.

Can you imagine yourself going for a run during the mid-day slump, instead of walking to the coffee shop for a Frappuccino to boost your energy levels? Perhaps this doesn’t seem possible now, but I’d like to tell you that you can actually achieve these goals. In fact, hypnosis is a wonderful way to help!

Are you ready for something new? With hypnosis, you can tap into your subconscious and rewire the way you think from the inside out. If you were never able to picture yourself as the type of person who stayed fit and active, well you can change that, and hypnosis might be your answer.

We offer a free screening to every client to ensure that hypnosis can work for them. Give us a call at (647) 210-8842 to find out what hypnosis can do for you!

Face Your Fears this Halloween

Halloween is more than just a day for costume parties: it heralds the start of what can be a very demanding holiday season. This time of year can be quite challenging for those who suffer from anxiety, particularly in social situations.

The good news is that fears of any kind can be faced and they don’t have to limit how you live your life. Having said that, the journey to overcoming fear begins with understanding.

What is anxiety?

This general term refers to several disorders, such as social anxiety, phobias, OCD, and PTSD. When you have anxiety, you feel nervous, afraid, or apprehensive and this constant feeling of worry affects how you behave.

Besides disturbing your emotional wellbeing, anxiety can manifest itself in significant ways through physical symptoms. Moreover, statistics have shown that one in four Canadians will have an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. Clearly, this is not a matter to be overlooked.

Phobias are among the most common forms of anxiety. It may be a crippling fear of heights, flying, public speaking, going to the doctor, or even daily tasks such as driving or using bathrooms, that makes it seem impossible to face these situations.

If you have such a disorder, you may have learned to live with it. However, the truth is that there is no reason to let fear control your life, no matter how powerful it may seem.

How Can you Start Overcoming Fear?

On Halloween, fear becomes entertainment: we make scary costumes and watch horror movies on tv. In a way, we are facing our fears and making light of them. When we watch a scary movie we may jump in our seats but, at the end of the night, we can sleep peacefully because we know that it would be irrational to fear such things as gremlins and zombies.

Part of overcoming your anxiety is understanding, not only that there is often nothing to be afraid of, but also that worrying won’t help. For example, it may be helpful to know that the chance of dying in a plane crash is one in eleven million. Car crashes, on the other hand, are much more likely. However, fear will not protect you from danger.

Instead, when it comes to safety while driving, you can make sure to be mindful of the road, never drink and drive, always wear a seatbelt, and follow the speed limit. Being aware of the actual risk and taking practical steps to protect yourself will prepare you to face these situations with confidence.

Hypnosis for Anxiety

Unfortunately, for those with anxiety disorders, it is not always as simple as knowing the facts and being properly prepared.

If you are ready to try a new approach to get over your fears, then hypnosis might be a good method to try. We offer a free 40-minute screening to assess your situation and provide thorough and forthright information on how hypnosis works, and whether or not it can work for you. Please call (647) 210-8842 and see if hypnosis is right for you!

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