I'm already starting to feel anxious. November and December are my least favorite months. I try to stay busy--volunteering, working extra hours, traveling, but in creeps the anxiety and loneliness and then comes the food.

This will be the first time in seven years I can't use food to comfort me. This is very concerning. I white knuckled my way through a Halloween party. And Thanksgiving! Oh my goodness. The only thing that's good about Thanksgiving is the food.

Are any of you Mad Men fans? I picture Betty with her crazy small portions, chewing eat bite 50 times and forcing herself to smile. Ug.

I'm trying to visualize a Thanksgiving that doesn't suck and I really can't. I'm having a failure of imagination.

Why can't you use food to comfort you? If it gets you through the holidays to comfort yourself with legal foods every now and then, why not do it? It's better to PLAN to do so with LC treats than to try to go without and have something carby on accident. I mean, even the thought is upsetting you. Work with yourself, not against.

If you'll forgive my saying so, I suspect this is probably why.

Unlike most low carbers who have a wide variety of foods to chose from, a vegetarian really does have a pretty restricted diet.

At home when I cook for myself, I eat a very wide range of veggies and tofu and sauces and nuts (I eat more carbs than most of you, but it's low enough to lose weight and not have cravings).

But it's been a problem for me in social situations. A few people on the forum have told me to just toughen up and I get that. There's just more anxiety during the holiday season.

And I think it's not a good habit for me to continue to use food to shove down feelings. I've most definitely been a crankier person during this whole process, probably like someone giving up smoking.

Thanks for replying.

I could not agree more. After all, where has that gotten us, over the years?

Try to make a pact with yourself; when you start to panic, when you feel like you have to eat something, do something else instead. Probably good to do this at home...

Just sit down and FEEL what you are trying to avoid. Cry, get angry, get over it.

Feeling is so hard. You may cry a LOT. But please don't be afraid of those feelings. They're natural and ok. I still cry so much since I stopped bingeing. But it's worth it in the end. You maynlt have coping mechanisms set up already but they will come in time.

I always dreaded the inevitable weight gain of the holidays until I came up with a cure to my insatiable love for high carb, fattening stuffing. I made a low carb stuffing that satisfied my cravings and a substitute for mashed potatoes that made me forget about the high carb versions. I found that I always have a hard time not giving in to comfort food, so to get around going off plan I made low carb versions.

http://guiltfreegourmet.blogspot.ca...key-dinner.html

Jsheridan: I empathise with you. I find endless cups of tea take the edge off food temptation for a while, but apart from that I don't know how to help.

November and December are difficult months for me too, much of it is psychological: familiar holiday food evoking memories of happy, carefree holidays of the past. I can usually scrape through Thanksgiving unscathed but sooner or later Christmas does me in, at least to some extent.

Temptation is everywhere. For example, people keep giving me boxes of chocolate. Good stuff too. I pass it on to others easily at first, but it keeps on coming and sooner or later I want to "just taste one". Of course, then I can't stop until the box is empty. The next stage is terror that I'm so far out of control I'll declare open season on ALL carbs. And alcohol: there are two gift bottles of REALLY good vintage champagne in my refridgerator right now. They are such a huge treat, something I would never buy for myself. I'm waiting to share them with friends, but as I type this I am DYING to open one and have a "sip". Inevitably, if I do that I'll eventually finish the bottle. Then, eventually, the other one.

It's like being at war with myself. If last year is anything to go by, come January 2 I'll be utterly exhausted from battle fatigue.

Don't take this wrong, but what else could be troubling you instead of the 'food at the holidays?'

you mention anxiety and lonliness.

I think you need to address other areas of your life.
While one might think this food out there in the world is the problem, there are other underlying things that make that food so darn important.

everyone needs to assess their life every now and then. maybe there are changes you really need to handle and address.

just throwing that out there and maybe it might mean something to you. I know a few times thru my life I was 'in that zone' and had to change things to make my life more fulfilling and different and ??? you know LOL

hang in there and best of luck