A year ago I posted 5 Tips for Weight Loss Motivation During a Holiday, which included tips on how to stay on track during the Memorial Day weekend, or any holiday for that matter. 😉

You can check out the full post here and briefly I’d like to focus on the #1 tip from that post today, the tip that in my opinion is the most important one to remember during any holiday – put the focus on the fun instead of the food.

This is so true and to the core of what I’m working on right now, something that was brought up in Shrink Yourself (my 12-week emotional eating experiment) – being afraid to let go of the food for fear that life won’t be meaningful without it. Doesn’t that sound sad, that I would place so much importance on food, a physical object, and that I could think that life would lose meaning without food?

Don’t You Have to Eat to Live?

Ok, now I realize that I need to eat to live – what I’m talking about here is making food, the food that is addictive (all the stuff that contains sugar, white flour, unhealthy fats, lots of salt, all that stuff that sucks you in and makes you want MORE) the focus – like food being exalted to the level of power that it can give my life meaning. That’s called living to eat instead of eating to live. 😉

Sounds funny when I describe it like that, doesn’t it? Well this is one of the things that Shrink Yourself taught me and I was thinking about it today with the holiday weekend being upon us. I felt the urge to go out and buy the foods that almost seemed to be programmed into us (or at least in me) to mean “Memorial Weekend” – hot dogs, ketchup, mayo, buns, sodas, burgers, marshmallow & sugar-filled fruit salads, you know, all of that stuff. I didn’t buy it but I sure felt like I should.

One Year Later

You know what’s really cool though? I’ve made a lot of progress in my emotional eating and specifically my emotional hunger (the thoughts to buy the holiday food would qualify as emotional hunger). I just thought I’d post about this because since I wrote last year’s post on the 5 holiday motivational tips I’ve really come a long way – doesn’t mean I’m perfect and totally healed, but I’m getting there.

Have a Fab Weekend!

I wish you a wonderful, fun-filled weekend with your family and loved ones and as for me, I’ll be keeping the focus on the fun instead of the food. 😉 Have a fab, fit, safe Memorial Day weekend!