Hey Strong and Simple peeps!

Bringing you an episode after this long hiatus that is actually a recording from Michelle for her Countdown to 2024 Challenge folks last weekend. Thought this could help all of you too, so wanted to share!

If this episode is helpful to you, please share with your friends and family and on your social media! 

We have some amazing episodes loading for 2024, so if you've missed us, don't worry, we're coming back!

If you're interested in jumping into the challenge, we have 3 more weeks to go! 

Find out all the details ⁠HERE⁠

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From the Countdown to 2024 Challenge:

It's the first weekend of December and that means we are really ramping up to a solid month of quite likely nonstop holiday gatherings; with family, with friends, and even with co-workers.

I used spend the holidays (and most other days TBH) white knuckling my way around food. Starving before events or dinners to save up calorie for the big meals and then ending up feeling full of shame at my lack of "will power" around foods when I eventually overate and stuffed myself - because I was so damn hungry! I would eventually find myself mindlessly grazing or full on binging on foods I thought were off limit foods that I restricted from myself.

This would then lead back into a restriction cycle and so on until I just knew something had to give. And the thing that gave was letting go of dieting and a never ending pursuit of intentional weight loss. Shedding, unpacking, and unlearning years of diet messaging, disordered patterns of eating and binge eating tendencies is not an overnight task. It is an ongoing practice and learning experience to let go of perfectionism and treat yourself with compassion and care as opposed to punishment and shame.

So what if you are new to this? What if this holiday season is the first one or even the first time you are wanting to stop the cycle and shift to an intuitive, mindful and compassionate relationship with food? First, pat yourself on your back, because you’re here for the countdown to 2024 challenge - which is already a great step to supporting yourself not falling into the holiday diet cycle!

The most important thing is to be patient with yourself and remind yourself this is a practice and it is not about perfection. In fact, one of the reasons it is so hard to shift away from diets is because we have been so conditioned to follow a concrete set of rules that we can feel quite untethered and even dysregulated without the hard core structure of a diet.

We can find it hard to trust ourselves and our bodies. To help you with some structure and guidance, I have jotted down 8 tips to support you as you navigate the next few weeks (and beyond.). There is no stop date this - because it is a practice for life. And again, these are suggestions - there is no right or wrong!