In the United States today we are celebrating Thanksgiving, the holiday known to hold the dubious honor of being the biggest overeating day of the year.

Culturally, Thanksgiving has evolved to be a day when it’s not only socially acceptable, it’s socially expected to overstuff yourself with food and drink, to the point of a food coma.

If you are entering this holiday with the personal intention to lose weight, it’s clear that you have a challenge ahead of you.

You may be thinking what’s the point of even trying. You might want to throw in the towel from the outset and surrender to the inevitable.

However it doesn’t have to be that way. You can emerge from Thanksgiving feeling vital and refreshed, and here’s how:

Best of all, the way to accomplish this is by having more enjoyment, not less.

I know it’s a busy time so I’ve refined my suggestions for how to do this into 2 Pleasure Practices to help you navigate the Thanksgiving holiday (and the rest of the season) while feeling light, vibrant and joyous, and completely free of the lethargy of the food coma.

Pleasure Practice #1: Make a Pact to Get Through Thanksgiving *With* Your Female Body, Not *Against* Her

The most powerful way to change your relationship with food, and therefore with your weight, is to first change your relationship with your body. If you think of your body as a possession that you own, that is under your control to restrict or deny, then from the outset you will be in opposition with it…or as I prefer to say, with her.

I recommend appreciating that your body is a female animal. She is a “she,” not an “it.” She is wise creature with intact primal instincts. She knows how to nourish and sustain life, including with the right food.

When you make this shift in perspective, how you experience your body, and subsequently how you experience food, becomes a completely different dynamic.

When you grant your female body the dignity of having an intelligence of her own, as distinct from the mind, you can can start to actively listen for her voice.

And you can go about getting through any situation, including Thanksgiving, with her, rather than against her.

The way to do this is to check in with her throughout the day. Imagine she is a wise, yet naive little girl. Or an indigenous person visiting the city from the rainforest for the first time ever. Be sensitive to the fact that she may not immediately know exactly what she wants or needs, and be curious to her impressions of things.

Ask her is she thirsty for water. When food is offered, ask her what she would enjoy. And continue to check in with her as the day passes, making a point to pause and allow her wisdom to be heard. Ask her if she wants fresh air, to move around, to take a 20 min nap. Remain open to fulfilling her needs, not just the expectations of your mind as to how this day is supposed to go.

Because although it may feel like it’s your body that is stimulating you to overeat, when you listen to her at her depths, you’ll discover that what she wants most of all is to feel light and energized, fresh and free. Follow that deeper voice, and there will be no food coma in sight.

Pleasure Practice #2: Set the Intention to Feel Great

Life has a tendency to conform to our expectations, meaning if you walk into your Thanksgiving meal imagining that you’re going to overeat, feel awful, and feel guilty about it afterwards, then you surely will. However, if you can envision a different outcome, that alternate future becomes immanently available to you.

Set a personal intention that you want to feel really great throughout the entirety of the event, not just during the moments that food is passing your lips. Remind yourself that you want to feel great before the meal, during the meal and after the meal.

When you make it a point to have the intention of feeling great, it reminds you that you are the source for how you are feeling. If you want to feel great, put attention on what make you feel great.

This works especially well when you are eating. When you pay attention to truly extracting as much enjoyment from the meal as possible, you’ll find yourself automatically eating with presence and awareness. You find yourself savoring every bite and attuning to the unique pleasure that’s available in each and every morsel that passes your lips.

And happily, when you eat this way—in peace, relaxation and receptivity—your body responds by creating the hormonal environment that supports you feeling satisfied with your food, versus feeling endlessly hungry for more. Plus, you digest better and burn calories most efficiently, so it’s a win-win on every level.

Food aside, bring the intention to feel great into every interaction. If the vibe of your family gathering is bringing you down, how can you be the leader who directs the flow of events so that you are having a good time? Can you be the instigator for a walk, a game, a family meditation session? If the conversation topic is dull and shallow, can you pepper some interesting questions into the dialogue in order to help people open up?

It can take true creativity and inventiveness to guarantee your own good time, but it’s worth it. (Tweet it)

This can mean initiating something, and it can also mean walking away. If you find yourself in a triggering situation, bring your healthy boundaries into play and step away. If a conversation that doesn’t nourish you, don’t feel obliged to participate. Instead, in the spirit of being responsible for your own mood, move your attention to something or someone else where you can feel good instead.

When you interact with the world this way, inviting others to be part of the enjoyable experience you are committed to having, without depending on them to make it happen for you, an incredible sense of independence arises. And that independence spreads to food. You don’t feel that you have to eat all the food in order to feel good. Instead you choose to eat what you and your female animal truly want to eat, in the quantities that make you feel good in the moment, and going forward, without the after-effects of a food coma.

So there you have my top 2 Pleasure Practices for a festive and celebratory Thanksgiving. I’ll top it off by saying THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for your participation in the pleasurable weight loss movement. United by our vision of what’s possible for each other, we can change the world.

I leave you with a Thanksgiving prayer.

May you have humor with your family
May you have communion with your friends.
May you feel at peace with food.
May you know the light within.
May you sense the joy of the natural world.
And may you feel harmony with your female animal.

With love and gratitude,
Your devoted,
Jena

P.S. I’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving with friends in NYC. I am especially thankful at this time for the baby I am about to birth (a book, not a human baby) and all the ways the process is making me grow and expand outside of my comfort levels. I’m having more and more courage to color outside of my previous lines, so stay tuned!