The Four C's Of Holiday Weight Management

By Anne M. Rensberger, LICSW

The average American consumes approximately 4,500 calories and 229 grams of fat from eating a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Moreover, that doesn't include breakfast, lunch, or late-night snacking on leftovers.

It is no wonder that emergency rooms know to be on the lookout for coronary holiday victims. Plus for those of us with chronic weight problems, we can feel so discouraged after such a day of eating that we may give up for the rest of the holiday season and wait till New Year's day to start again.

Does it have to be this way? So much of weight management is our mental readiness. Despite the fact that most of us who fight obesity are not professional athletes, I find it helpful to adopt a world-class athlete's mentality during the holidays.

We can borrow from sports psychology to attack the holiday eating season. We have all seen athletes poise to take a dive, or make a free throw obviously taking a second to visualize their movement. If the dive is crooked or the free throw misses the hoop, do they quit? No, because they have mentally prepared to move on. The four C's have become ingrained in their training program. They are as follows

Concentration maintain focus

Confidence believe in one's abilities

Control maintain emotional control regardless of distraction

Commitment be resilient, keep working towards goals

Athletes have to deal with all sorts of impediments to reach their highest level of performance. Injuries, stalled improvement, poor performance, the tedium of training, and personal life issues are possible interferences with athletic success. The same is true for those of us managing our weight.

Injury can upset our exercise routine, we can experience a plateau, we can overeat at an event, and life issues can throw us for a loop. Yet, both athletes and successful weight managers can take a deep breath and go back to the four C's. Resilience matters.