How to Survive Easter Without Sabotaging your Weight Loss Journey: Your Complete Success Plan
If you're on a weight loss journey and you happen to be somebody who loves chocolate and those lovely warm buns that are filled with spices and dried fruit, we are coming up to probably one of the more challenging weekends of the year. But don't worry, I've got your back. And in this episode, I'm going to share an Easter success plan with you so you can get through the weekend, stay on track, and still be feeling really positive about your goal.
Welcome to the Why Wait podcast. I'm your host, Cheryl Takayama, qualified nutritionist, emotional eater and weight loss coach who walks the talk. I've maintained my 30 kilo weight loss for the past 23 years following a low carb plan, and now I coach other women online so they can do the same. It's my mission to help women get off this crazy diet wagon and find a way of eating and a way of thinking that works. So you too can lose your weight for life. Join me each week for lots of practical advice, tips and motivation so you can start now.
So today we're going to dive in and really talk about how you can get through Easter without ending up face first in the food. Now, I've been on my weight loss journey for 23 years, so I have been through 23 Easters, some successfully. Some were a disaster. So I definitely know that the worst thing that can happen is that on Good Friday morning, you get into that mindset of, "Oh, well, what's the point? It's too hard. I'm just going to do what I feel like and I'll start again after the weekend."
Now, I know I did that a few times and it did not end well because by Sunday I was feeling bloated. I was in a bit of a carb coma. Blood sugar crashes all over the place. But most importantly, I was just annoyed at myself for how quickly I succumbed into those habits and all of the effects that happened afterwards. Weight gain was just one of them.
So today's episode is going to help you go into Easter with a bit more strategies. So this doesn't happen. What I'm going to talk about today are some actions that you can take in the lead up to Easter, so things you can do right now. I'm going to talk about some good tactics to help you get through the weekend, and some little nutrition tips so that while you're going through Easter, you can make sure that you're really feeling great and in control, because this is what it's often about. It's not so much about the scales, it's about our actions and how we feel about what we're doing.
And if there's one thing that I know is so frustrating, it's when you get completely out of control. You've got your hand and other people's food. You're sneaking those little bits of Easter egg. And the problem with Easter is that there's so many opportunities to have those little bits, and that feeling of being out of control is not great.
Pre-Easter Preparation
Okay, so let's start with what you can do today and tomorrow so that you head into Easter feeling really great. And I think out of all of the actions I'm going to suggest today, this is the most important one, because if you go into Easter feeling strong, you've got a far better chance of ending the weekend in a great place.
The key thing I want you to do today is to think ahead and decide, how do you want to feel on Tuesday morning? What is your goal? This is the most important thing of all. Think ahead to Tuesday. Think ahead to that moment when you wake up and you think back over Easter weekend. How do you want to feel?
I'm absolutely certain you do not want to feel bloated, full, uncomfortable, and really pissed off with yourself. I can pretty much guarantee nobody is going to actually choose that. So think about how you want to feel and what your goal is. In this game, your goal is the most important thing in your corner. Because when your goal is important to you, you've got a far better chance of staying in track.
Now, once you've created your goal, then I want you to think back. So make that goal, then come back to where you're at right now and what's going to be taking place between now and when Good Friday hits. And then, of course, from Good Friday onwards, what is your plan of attack?
I want you to think through any moments where possibly you're eating out, where people are going to be coming to your house. Are you having a get together for Good Friday? Is there some sort of morning tea? Will there be hot cross buns? I just want you to mentally go through Easter weekend as it stands right now, and think through the difficult situations, the situations where you're going to be put in a place of making a decision. And what I want you to do is think through what food decision or maybe alcohol decision. Are you going to make at that time?
Now, let me say there is no right and wrong here because it all depends on what your goal is. If you decide that actually I love hot cross buns and I want to have a hot cross bun and I'm going to really enjoy it, look, that's totally fine. Make that part of your plan. But I want you to plan it out in advance. If you want to have chocolate with the Easter egg hunt, make that decision and then decide exactly how much chocolate you're going to have. It's so much easier to go through these occasions when you've already worked out what your plan is and what your boundary is.
Now I just have to interject here and say, this was the part that I always found very difficult because I'm really good at making the plan. I had it all mapped out, but there was something for me that made it very difficult to follow the plan, which was that I used to have a terrible sugar addiction. So I remember going through Easter when I was still eating sugar, and I would say, okay, I'm just going to have one hot cross bun and I'll have one Easter egg. But unfortunately for me, it was very difficult to stop once I had started.
It's probably a bit unfortunate for my kids too, who were probably wondering why their Easter eggs were vanishing at such a quick rate. Anyway, if you can relate to that and you know that it's very hard to stop once you get started, then it might be safer to just not eat those things because it's a very difficult and slippery slope. Once you break that seal and put that first bit of Easter egg chocolate in your mouth.
And what I do now is I make sure I have some sugar free chocolate around. I have some low carb hot cross buns. I set myself up for success that way by having the alternatives ready, because for me, that always works a lot better than going back to sugar.
During Easter Weekend
Okay, so once you've created your goal and then you've made your plan of attack. Next comes the very important phase of executing the plan. Getting through Easter one day at a time. One meal at a time. Staying focused on your goal and how you want to feel after Easter weekend.
Let me go through some key actions that you can take to really keep yourself on track as you navigate your way through the weekend:
1. Prioritize Protein: Make sure you're having protein with every single meal and snack, because you definitely want your blood sugars to be balanced and you want to feel full. There would be nothing worse than not planning your meals, not eating, and then all of a sudden getting really hungry. And there's a whole lot of Easter eggs in the fridge, so make it even more of a priority than usual, that you're keeping your blood sugars stable and you're not getting over hungry at any time over Easter, because that may not end well.
2. Stay Hydrated: The next thing I want you to focus on is water. Drink at least two liters. Water is always important, but particularly in the weekend, because I find that when people are out of routine, they tend to drink less water. And that's not great because you don't want to go getting dehydrated. Sometimes the body can mistake dehydration for hunger. It's going to be sending out hunger signals, and that's the last thing you need if you're going to be eating out. That's another really important reason to make sure you're getting enough water, because otherwise you might get fluid retention if the food has a lot of sodium in it. And of course, if you go out and drink alcohol, you definitely want to make sure you're getting all that water in to help your body process it as fast as possible. I always tell my clients to think of water like the oil for your fat burning engine, because it really does keep everything going. So if you want to be seeing results, you want to keep that engine humming.
3. Exercise Strategically: Over the long weekend, hopefully you're going to get a chance to get out and do some exercise, some walking a session at the gym. I want you to think of the exercise as having two really important benefits. Firstly, it's going to make you feel good. When we exercise, we have our head in the game. It's so much easier to be focused on your goal and feeling positive when you've had a workout. So really use exercise to keep your mindset in the best shape possible. The other good little exercise tip is to do a short walk after you eat, so within about an hour of eating. When you do that, it helps bring your blood sugars down faster. So use your exercise strategically and if you end up having a big meal, even if you do end up perhaps eating a bit more sugar than you would like to go for a walk, and that's going to help stabilize your blood sugars quickly.
4. Prioritize Sleep: The last thing I want you to focus on is sleep. Unless you have some sort of special occasion, please try and get to bed at your normal time because sleep has a huge impact on energy and your appetite. So if you have a late night and you're feeling really tired, it's just going to make you a lot more vulnerable to that sugar that's lying around. So a good night's sleep is going to keep your motivation muscle strong.
Additional Tips for Success
Here's a couple of extra tips that are going to help you set yourself up for success:
* Manage Your Environment: Really manage your environment. Store those Easter treats somewhere out of sight so you don't have to look at them too often. You might want to portion it out. Most importantly, what are you going to do with that leftover chocolate? Because even if you have to put it in the fridge, try and do it so you don't have to see it every single time you open up the fridge. The more effort you can do to keep that food out of your line of view, the easier it's going to be to avoid it.
* Avoid All-or-Nothing Thinking: The other thing I really want to encourage you with is to not fall into the all or nothing thinking, you know what I'm talking about. That old voice that says, "Oh well, I've just gone and had three buns. Stuff it. I may as well go to town and enjoy myself and start again next week." Please don't do that. If you do that over Easter, you're going to be in trouble because there's so many goodies around. If you do end up having a moment that doesn't quite go according to plan, oh well, just let it go and get on track with your next meal. If you go into the weekend having that in mind, you are going to come out of it feeling so much better.
Summary
So in summary, your Easter success plan starts now:
1. Think ahead to how you want to feel on Tuesday.
2. Work back from there and make your plan of attack.
3. Work out how you're going to get through any challenging situations and what decisions you are going to make.
4. Get those boundaries in place right now.
Then throughout the weekend, just do your best to stay on track with these key principles:
* Get your water
* Get your sleep
* Do some movement
* Do the best you can with your food, making sure you get protein with every meal
Easter is only a weekend. It doesn't have to be a month long sugar fest. It's one weekend, but it's important because a lot of damage can be done over three days if you completely fall off the wagon. And I'm not just talking about physical damage. This is not just about the scales going up. It's more about the mental side of the journey.
If you've got good momentum going now, you want to keep that going, and there is absolutely no need for you to lose that over the weekend. This is not about being perfect. It's about you creating a plan and then following the plan to the best of your ability. And when you do that in Easter, you're going to do it in every other weekend and you are going to nail your goal. Good luck and I wish you a wonderful weekend.
Thanks so much for listening. And if you want support on your weight loss journey, I would love to help. You'll see the links in the show notes for my socials, as well as my fab freebie, a five day low carb meal plan, and five delicious dinner recipes. You'll also see the link for my four week Foundations of Fat Loss program. This is the program I've designed specifically for the fat burning needs of women over 35. Remember, the only thing that's going to stop you reaching your goal is if you quit. Never, ever give up.
