Truth be told, the holidays can bring angst or remorse as well as happiness.

Changing a habit takes 66 days, but who has the time? Losing weight can take even longer. Over-indulging usually begins with mindless eating that spirals out of control. But where there is a will, there is a way to keep it all under control.

Thanksgiving is the beginning of fun times with family, friends, and significant others, but it is also the beginning of self-shaming, body-slamming, and beating up on ourselves. And this is just a start. There are holiday celebrations until New Year's Day or longer.

So what's a person to do between late November and mid January? How can we enjoy good food, family, friends, or celebrating on our own without breaking the bank or tipping the scales? Truth be told, the holidays can bring angst or remorse as well as happiness.  

Anticipating family visits comes with gratitude and excitement, but it can also come with the dread of possible family feuds.  Having an extra serving of Grandma's apple pie comes with pleasure and goodness but also threats of gaining a pound or two.  When it comes to good eating and merriment, there is no way we can not indulge because if people spent hours toiling over a meal, the least we can do is eat it--lots of it.  Afterwards, we can enjoy the guilt.

During the holidays, guilt is not the only possibility. In fact, if we take steps to balance our eating and our other behaviors, we can avoid the negative feelings that often result after over-indulging.  In a radio interview broadcast 11/28/15, Dr. Brian Wansink made suggestions that are included in his book, Mindless Eating, and he offered some good advice. Follow the link (below) for more information.

According to today's interview, there are several ways to condition ourselves toward eating less. Some of the suggestions include:

• Saying one thing you are grateful for before eating;

• Writing down what you eat;

• Plating two items at a time and returning for different items, two at a time;

• Taking a snack that equals 1/4 of what you usually eat and then distracting yourself by taking a walk, returning a phone call, or running an errand.

Before you start planning for the usual overeating, guilt and self-shaming that often follows the holiday season, think of ways to be proactive, planning for what and how you will eat, drink, and celebrate! Happy holidays!

For more on this topic, follow this link: "Beating Your Mindless Eating Habits" http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/outreach/mec.html

Sometimes, we don't want to overcome the setback, and we don't want to get beyond the pain.

In present day society, we only want to feel happy, so why should we plan for negative events or sadness? Because of "positive psychology," we don't want to think about "setbacks" or troubles that threaten our progress. When a setback happens, we often find it hard to adjust. We don't know that negative thinking is normal, so some of us fall into patterns of negative behavior or guilty feelings. We ask, "Why this? Why me? Why now?" Yet, to some extent, we made a mistake in judgment, so we have only ourselves to blame.

Negative thinking protects us from harm, and negative experiences provide opportunities to learn. The best we can do is go with the flow, learn from our mistakes, and try to overcome any setbacks. But sometimes, we don't want to overcome the setback, and we don't want to get beyond the pain. Instead, we want to hold on to our misery, replay it all in our heads, and watch the sadness build up. 

The brain tends to provide more of what we expect, so if negative thoughts are feeding the brain, the brain begins to feed the negativity. This becomes a cycle of sadness creating more sadness. This is how depression starts, how it grows, and how it continues to live until it becomes overwhelming. That's when negative thinking can lead to depression and increase the risk of suicide. 

Negative thinking is important if you want to take some time to determine what happened to cause your misery. That way, you can give yourself a "reality check" to determine which of your negative thoughts are exaggerated or which are just wrong. This allows you to adjust your thinking and exchange the negative self-assessments for more positive ones. As long as you don't spend too much time reliving negative events, some negative thinking can be helpful.

Negative thinking is normal (at least for a couple of weeks or so) but incessant, overwhelming negative thinking creates sadness. If negative thinking controls your thinking during the day for weeks at a time, this might be a sign of depression, which requires a doctor's opinion and possible intervention.

"Jabberwocky": Sometimes words don't mean a thing.

Sometimes, words don't mean a thing and how could they when 93% of what we know about others or what they know about us is learned through nonverbal communication? According to studies, people watch what you do, how you carry yourself, your facial expressions, and listen to your tone of voice to determine what you mean. Only 7% of what you learn about others is based on words, so when you hear or read a nonsensical statement, phrase or poem, you must rely on what you already know about language, context, tone of voice, facial expressions, or anything other than words to determine its true meaning.

Understanding words and meanings is a balancing act which also requires knowledge of denotation (dictionary meaning of a word) and connotation (meaning that has become associated with a word). For example, the dictionary definition of the word, pretty, means "pleasing or attractive in a delicate way" whereas the word alluring means "very attractive or tempting, enticing or seductive" and suggests much more than passive attractiveness. The word, alluring, is richer in connotation because it is suggestive, rather than specific. It suggests deliberate intention and indicates emotional input which intensifies meaning. 

Understanding what we hear and read requires emotional input based on what we already know, but what if the words totally don't make sense? That's when we must rely on contextual clues which allow us to "feel" the meaning. For example, author, Lewis Carol wrote the following verse which seems to suggest meaning, but the words are nonsensical. Based on what you know about language and context, what do you think the poem is saying? In other words, how would you translate the following verse using standard traditional English, but not slang? 

(This can be written in your personal writing journal, but if you post a translation via this blog site, please indicate whether you'd like it published and if you make a grammatical error, don't worry; I'll edit before I post.) 

Note: Only original ideas can be posted. 

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Negative thinking can develop a life of its own, so don't let it boss you around.

Because there is a strong interest in what is called, "positive psychology," people don't want to hear about someones negative thoughts, especially if they last more than a moment or two, but if you're thinking negative thoughts on a daily basis, something is amiss, so keep track of how many times negative thoughts are controlling how you feel. A record of these thoughts might prove useful if you need to see your family doctor or if you are referred to a mental health professional. By all means, take control of your negative thoughts; don't let them boss you around!

Negative thinking is what our brain does naturally in order to keep us aware of possible danger, but it doesn't need to control our mood or our behavior. At the same time, negative thoughts don't need to be hidden or concealed. When we deny our negative thoughts, we are suppressing our emotions, and one way or another, emotions will be expressed--in constructive or in destructive ways.

As a society, we are most focused on happiness, often expecting but never planning for unhappiness, never planning how to overcome a setback, or never expecting to lose, but when it happens and we lose something, many of us find it hard to adjust. Some of us fall into patterns of self-sabotage or self-pity, crying the blues and lamenting, "Poor little old me," when at some point, we made an incorrect assessment about ourselves or about someone else and to some extent are partly to blame for the loss. 

Reflecting on what happened is not a bad thing.  If you want to take a moment and relive the misery so as to process its impact on your reality, on your life, or on your negative behavior, you do so at your own risk. Negative thinking is normal (at least for a moment or two), but incessant negative thoughts create more negative thoughts if allowed to persist for too long.  Ruminating over negative circumstances or unfortunate outcomes is an exercise in futility, but this is the way negative thinking lives, grows, and wreaks havoc.

If you experience negative thinking daily for two weeks or more, it might be time to consult your family doctor or a mental health professional.  Not every mental process is a major problem, especially if you catch it in time. However, you are the guardian of your emotional state, so if you see something, say something to someone who has the ability to help. Take control of your emotions, and don't let negative thinking boss you around!