Even with all the festivities, the Holiday Season can be one of the most stressful times of the year. With all that stress, what can you do to make sure you have a healthy and happy holiday? In this episode, Bob Gilpatrick and Rollie Culp sit down with Lucy Forsting, author of The Adventures of Miss Twiggs and Company, as she visits and shares some great tips that you can use to help keep your holiday season full of love and joy instead of stress and anxiety. Learn how to avoid holiday weight gain and how to avoid conflicts with your loved ones and strengthen relationships during the family holiday parties. So sit back relax and get ready to live forever young!

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Tips For A Healthy And Happy Holiday With Lucy Forsting

Destress The Holidays

Even with all the festivities, the holiday season could be one of the most stressful times of the year. On the show, Lucy Forsting, author of The Adventures of Miss Twiggs & Company, visits and shares some great tips that you can use to help keep your holiday season full of love and joy instead of stress and anxiety. Learn how to avoid holiday weight gain and conflicts with loved ones and help strengthen relationships. Sit back, relax, and get ready to live forever young.

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I’m here with two people. Lucy Forsting and Rollie, who you normally see on camera, is here with us as well.

How are you doing?

I’m good. How are you, Lucy?

I’m doing great. Thank you.

How are you doing?

It’s nice to see you again.

It’s around the 1st of November 2021 now, so we’re going to talk about the holidays and give some tips for people that they can use to thrive during the holidays, so they don’t look back after Christmas time and say, “I gained 15 pounds and it was stressful. I’m glad it’s over with. I need to take January off.”

One of the big things that a lot of doctors are reporting is it’s not the Freshman 15 that they used to talk about. It’s the COVID-30 and the average person has gained 30 pounds. As we move into the holidays, you don’t want to be adding additional pounds to what you’ve already picked up out of stress.

One of the things about the holidays is, traditionally, you get together, and you’re eating all these rich and decadent foods to celebrate. We were talking about it on another show, sugar addiction and the willpower thing and how you have to restore it. That’s something that, psychologically, a lot of people probably want to do is figure out how to restore willpower.

People knew in the past if they were moving towards the holidays to put in maybe less sugar or a sugar substitute instead of traditional sugary recipes that our grandparents were used to making. You can look at a recipe and lighten it up. That’s not that difficult to do. I think one of the big keys to the holidays is stress and stress plays a role in almost everything, including COVID-19 since 2020.

How do you reduce stress as you approach the holidays? Many people are still working and then they’re trying to cram in the different parties that they’re going to, and shopping. In fact, I dropped off a package at UPS and we’re being told that you need to get your packages in the mail as soon as possible to guarantee that your package is going to get there.

The one thing too is if there’s a lot of stress during normal life and then you have the holidays where it’s even more hustle and bustle. It’s time to prepare yourself for that.

One of the things that I do recommend to a lot of people is to get back out in nature. Start using this attitude of gratitude. I don’t know whether people are going to be doing biofeedback, but they can do mindfulness exercises, meditation, or anything to bring down the stress level on an internal level so that you can breathe.

I got the new iWatch and they have a Mindfulness app. Every day, it reminds me to take a moment to be mindful.

To drink more water.

I do drink more water on this thing. Every day it says, “Drink more water,” so I’ve been well-hydrated and mindful at the same.

It probably tells you to get up and move around.

It does. It tells me to get up and start moving. There are lots of things that you could do, especially with the advent of technology with smartphones and iWatches.

It’s monitoring your body and it’s letting you know like, “You’re a little off here. You need to do something here.”

Healthy Holiday: Get back out in nature, start using this attitude of gratitude.

A lot of people think that the first of the year is a time for resolutions and new starts. It seems like maybe November 1st would be a better time for a new start. A commitment for the next couple of months so that your COVID-30 doesn’t become 40.

A lot of the studies show that people who try to really quickly and January 1st turn over a new leaf doesn’t last because they don’t have a cognitive commitment and they’re not prepared for it, but if you start it on November 1st, give yourself a couple of months to roll or ease into it, it could make it easier.

Let’s say that the average person has picked up 15 to 30 pounds. If you’re approaching 30 pounds and trying to lose it, that is much more difficult than having 10 pounds that you’re trying to lose, so you’re going to give up. That’s what a lot of people end up doing. They make the commitment to go to the gym and they sign up for a gym membership. The average gym membership lasts two months and yet, you’re paying for it for at least that full-year if you’ve budgeted it.

I think this is a good time of the year to take a retrospective look at your life and think, “Where do I want to be in 2022?” As you approach the holidays, there are things you can do. This was cool as far as I was concerned because a lot of people are diabetic or pre-diabetic. They can look at how they eat throughout the day as they’re getting ready to go to a party and maybe have a bunch of little healthy snacks, so they’re not starved by the time they get there. They can also dilute their alcoholic drinks.

I drink wine. I don’t drink any hard alcohol, but if I was going to a party rather than just having wine straight, maybe I might put ice cubes in it and dilute it a little bit so that I’m going to be safer driving home, and there are less calories. One of the other things that I thought was cool that I had read was learning to move away from the table. A lot of people hang out by the serving table if it’s a party and they’re having their conversations there, so put something on a little plate, walk away, and have a conversation away from the table.

I was also listening to some information from a weight loss and holistic health coach. Her name is Terha Watterson and she was talking about the importance of self-image. When you mentioned about people between 15 and 30 pounds and they might give up, what she was saying is if people can make a self-image of themselves, which is how they wish to be and write down exactly their characteristics where they want to be at their ideal body weight, a particular energy level, things they’re going to be doing or places they’re going to go, that all relates to health, enthusiasm, and being free to be who they want to be.

She was saying that the people that are most successful at releasing weight are the ones that take the time to create this future self-image and practice it every day, because as you practice it by saying, “I feel this way. I look this way. I am this way,” over time, it becomes you. It becomes your preferred neuropathways, and that image that you envisioned, you become it over time.

This is a far-out thought, maybe, but I’m not so sure since we are 50 trillion cells that vibrate. If we are vibrating at a frequency that says, “I’m overweight,” then the cells hold onto the weight because that’s who we think we are. We have a person here at Boomers that refers to himself as the lean dancing machine. He is vibrating at that frequency, and so it’s energy.

A person that is significantly overweight typically doesn’t have a higher energy level so they’re not burning calories, so again, stretching maybe the imagination a little bit. If I’m saying that, “I’m lean, I’m active, I’m energetic,” then my cells are going to be burning more calories than the person who is going, “I’m overweight, I’m tired. I don’t have any energy,” then those cells are going to slow down.

A lot of people, especially in medicine and in America, focus on the physical part of losing weight which is they’re not eating as much, working out, getting up and moving, which is to lose weight, you have to do that, but nobody thinks about the psychological pathway. I’ve heard a new one called Noom. It’s a weight loss thing.

One of the biggest things they talk about is how you have to look at it from a psychological perspective and then you can start understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing, and by understanding why you’re doing what you’re doing, you can finally figure out how to not do it. That’s the psychological part that most people don’t even think about.

The word diet has the word Diana. That’s been out for a long time, helping people understand that concept. When you reduce calories to the degree that sometimes it’s suggested to do, your body goes into an automatic stop-gap situation where, “I can’t burn any calories because I don’t have very many coming in,” so you don’t lose the weight.

I know one person who had been starving herself all week long with low calories but had not lost a pound and decided to heck with it, “I’m going to have a dessert,” and lost 4 pounds the next day. It was almost like her body said, “Thank you. You fed me something that I like. Maybe not good for me, but I like, therefore I will release the weight I was holding onto.”

That’s one thing Bob said a lot. If you release something, it’s a lot easier to let it go, but if you lose something like your keys, you’re like, “I got to find my keys.” That’s what the body is like, “We quickly lost all this weight. We’re going to have to get it back for you,” but if you release it, that’s something better.

Healthy Holiday: A person that is significantly overweight typically doesn’t have a higher energy level, you know, so they’re not burning calories.

I got that from Sue Stebbins, who wrote the book, Mind Your Head. She’s a neuroscience researcher. That was her contribution to releasing weight. The other thing that people have trouble with within the holidays is typically this time when we go to visit. Sometimes, people will have a person or two in their family that they don’t get along with very well and they’re dreading going to the Thanksgiving dinner or the Christmas day.

One of the things I like showing people how to do is a soul scanning technique where people can envision this person that they haven’t gotten along with over the holidays. Close your eyes, look up to the left a little bit, imagine that person’s face and look right into their eyes with your listening self. You’re observing with no judgment and see what that person wants to say to you and hear what they say. You can have a dialogue back and forth and then close that picture down and look to the right.

Imagine that person’s face again, but this time just their soul essence without any of their mind stuff. Look into their eyes at this point with no judgment, just observing, and see how the message is different. You now also can send messages to that part of the person to their soul with your voice, thought or a feeling of love and send this communication right across the quantum field, and then close that down again and watch and see what happens at the Thanksgiving gathering.

I’ve mentioned this before on other shows and we received phone calls at Boomers Forever Young saying, “That technique worked because I did it. When I went to Thanksgiving, my cousin came up to me and gave me a big hug. He wanted to talk all about how we could start anew and be friends for the future.”

I think that’s amazing because you’ve predetermined how the relationship is going to go down.

That’s the vibration that you were talking about. If we don’t vibrate that we’re healthy, we’re not going to be healthy.

You’re going in with anxiety. You’re going in with this idea that, “I’m going to get into this conflict again.” I know some people who make the decision, “I’m not going to bite,” but I think if they can take the time and they’re willing to do this imaging, it’s beautiful. Even in the book that I wrote, I end it with the concept that love is all there is. This is why we’re here. To learn how to love each other. We forget that along the way.

What’s the name of that book again?

The Adventures of Miss Twiggs & Company.

Check it out.

I think that the holidays bring with them this Currier and Ives of, “I want everything to be perfect,” that makes us stress more relationships. As you said, doing the soul scan would make a huge difference. Understanding that we are who we think we are. Getting healthy physically and emotionally before the holidays all go a long way into making the holidays what we want them to be and then taking time for yourself. Take that bubble bath or walk in the woods if you live in an area where there are woods to go walking in. If you’ve got a fresh snow, that would be beautiful. Down here, walk on the beach.

One of the things you were saying about the Currier and Ives having to be perfect, I think a lot of the things that make the holidays memorable are the imperfect things, like the year the Christmas tree fell over and hit Uncle Stu in the head. Everybody remembers that. That’s the laugh. Hopefully, nobody got injured, but that imperfection to embrace them and make them part of that year’s story is something that people should be more open to instead of thinking, “It’s ruined because the Christmas tree fell over.”

Rollie, before we sign off, what was the name of the episode we did many months ago with Lucy?

Finding A New Perspective With Lucy Forsting.

In that episode, we talked about Lucy’s book, and we talked about the lessons from the book. We had a conversation with Lucy back then that goes more in-depth into some of these things.

Healthy Holiday: One of the big keys to the holidays is stress. Stress plays a role in almost everything including COVID.

There are some really good concepts that a lot of people don’t think about it. It’s defining a new perspective, the vibrating to be what you want to be and thinking to vibrate. That’s what Lucy is all about. We talked a little bit about that in the other episode so check it out.

As you approach Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve, go out there and make it a really special time of the year with your family and your friends but keep in mind your own personal health emotionally and physically.

Lucy, thanks for joining us again. It’s great to see you here at the Boomers Forever Young Studio, where we make Live Forever Young Radio. You always make it extra special when you’re here, so thank you again for coming all the way down from home to join us.

My pleasure.

Rollie, thank you.

Always. You know it, Bob.

Thank you, everybody. We’ll see you on the next show.

Important Links:

• The Adventures of Miss Twiggs & Company
• Lucy Forsting
• Terha Watterson
• Noom
• Mind Your Head
• Finding A New Perspective With Lucy Forsting – Previous episode