The holiday season is a notoriously bad time for the waistline. In fact, just thinking about December makes some people swear they've put on a pound or two! While this tends to be a time of year that people want to look their best--most people see family and friends galore at holiday parties and gatherings and want to look nice dressed up, or be remembered as looking their best--it's also a time when staying svelte is most difficult. Think about it; in addition to the regular causes of stress-related weight gain, we have these other factors to contend with:

• More food. Better Food.
  Yes, with all the holiday parties and nice dinners with family, people are often presented with more opportunities to gorge themselves with really delicious (and often more fattening) food. More food is served socially this time of year, and there are also generally more sweets being passed around. This makes for more times when we have to 'be good', and we're bound to slip up a little extra.

• More Emotional Stress.
  The holidays can bring social and emotional stress as we face family gatherings where there might be some unresolved conflict, or attend office functions with people we might not choose to hang out with socially. There's also the stress of buying gifts (often on a tight budget), fitting in all the activities of the season, and other stressors that occur during the holiday season. (Read more about those stressors in this article on holiday stress.) Because stressed people tend to eat more, and gain more weight, this can take a toll.

• More Excuses
  People who are celebrating often indulge more than they would in their regular lives. When celebrating the holidays, there are several occasions where people might relax their dietary standards a little, in the name of celebration. These celebrations, however, can be rather plentiful during the holiday season, and the indulgences ("Oh, look--the neighbors made us fudge!" "Hey, it's a party! Why not have another piece of pie?" etc.) can add up.

So what's a body-conscious person to do? Obviously, you can't cancel the holidays!

The first step is to be aware of these triggers, and notice them before they catch you off guard again this month. Have a plan for parties (you can eat a little--not a lot--and try to throw in some extra exercise, for example), and watch your holiday stress levels. And follow regular guidelines for combatting emotional eating, of course.

Tools and Guidelines for Combatting Emotional Eating:

• Take The Stress and Weight Gain Test
  Stress can contribute to weight gain in several ways. If you're having trouble with your weight and wonder what role stress may be playing, or if you just want information and resources for healthy change, this is the quiz for you! The following 10 questions are each designed to help you assess a different aspect of your lifestyle to determine if you may benefit from some simple changes that can help you keep your weight under control when you're stressed. At the end of the quiz, you'll find resources that pertain to your specific situation.

• What Causes Emotional Eating?
  Even if we know what we're supposed to be eating, there are additional factors that influence how much and what type of food we consume. One of these factors is stress, which is linked to increased emotional eating. Emotional eating has many causes. Learn about the main reasons--besides hunger--that stressed people eat, and find resources to stop emotional eating.

• How To Stop Emotional Eating
  As anyone who's watching their weight will tell you, hunger is just one of many reasons that people eat. If you're an emotional eater, you may find yourself eating to deal with uncomfortable emotions, using food as a reward when you're happy, and craving sweets or unhealthy snacks when stressed. This article can help you to cut down emotional eating and develop healthier eating habits--even when stressed!

Going to see your family (or your partner's) can be wonderful and stressful, all at once! While it might be really special and fun seeing everyone (or not--some of you know what I mean!), it can also be stressful for a number of reasons. There might be a relative that you love, but can only take in small doses. You may find yourself or your partner acting differently around your families of origin, and not know how to adjust. You may stress about gifts, alliances, roles, events or any number of things. Or you may get homesick because things are just so darn fun when you see your family! Whatever the stress you may face, I think I have a resource or two here that can help you diffuse stress from the situation. Check out the articles below.

How To Deal With Difficult People
These general tips on dealing with difficult people may be especially handy when dealing with frustrating family members. Here are some ways that you can enjoy the positive, and not let people's negative traits spoil your time together.

Do You Suffer From 'Revertigo'?
If you or your partner seem to turn into someone else, someone strange, someone not unlike the teenage (or younger!) version of yourself when you're around your family, you just may be suffering from revertigo. There's help. Read more.

How To Deal With Unresolved Family Conflict
Is there an elephant in the living room where your family gathers for the holidays? Here are some tips for you.

Stress Relievers for Busy People
With school, work and family time commitments expanding, especially this time of year, many people are finding themselves busier than they'd like to be, and there's not always time for long and involved stress relief practices. Here are some stress relievers that fit nicely into a busy schedule.

The holiday season can be a stressful time. With the combined stressors of holiday shopping, financial strain, difficult relatives, travel stress and a busy schedule of demands, many people find themselves more stressed than usual. Women, who often shoulder the bulk of the added holiday burden as far as baking, shopping, coordinating, party-throwing and planning are concerned, are often particularly stressed during this time.

This added stress can come out in many different ways. Some people respond to stress emotionally, either feeling anxiety, depression or anger and frustration. Others respond with a weakened immune system, getting sick more frequently (which is more of a danger during this season anyway, as people crowd indoors and swap germs in airports and malls). Others just power through and find themselves battling burnout by the end of the year.

As people try to cope with all these stressors, relatively few people take the time to learn new stress management practices; most just use their regular coping tactics, but to a greater degree. This is fine for people who normally cope with stress in a healthy way. For many people--people who do use some healthy coping techniques--also cope with stress in unhealthy ways, either with 'comfort food', a glass of wine, a shopping trip or something similar. These behaviors aren't the healthiest coping techniques to begin with, but they aren't generally as harmful as when they're taken to an extreme. Under increased pressure, mildly unhealthy coping becomes emotional overeating, excessive drinking, chain smoking, compulsive buying, and the like. And these responses to stress generally add more stress.

How does one deal? By replacing unhealthy coping with healthy stress management techniques.

First, finding some healthier ways to reduce stress can make quite a difference here because, when there is less stress to react to, unhealthy responses can diminish. Also, when healthy coping skills are substituted for unhealthy ones, it's easier to let go of unhealthy habits. Finally, after working harder at healthy stress management (which can include ideas mentioned in the resources below), if you still find yourself feeling overwhelmed with stress or coping in a way that causes problems in other areas of your life, it might be a good idea to talk to someone and find resources to help.

Holiday stress can be a bit daunting, but it can also be just the thing you need to cause you to reexamine your lifestyle and your reactions to stress, and create healthier habits for the coming year, and for your future. Here are some resources to help.

Coping Resources from Elizabeth Scott

Unhealthy Responses to Stress: What Are They?

Quiz: Is Your Stress Level Unhealthy?

Building Resilience to Stress

Healthy Coping Strategies

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Find More Holiday Stress Relief Resources In The Holiday Survival Guide

Readers, Respond! Self Sabotage Stories
Self-sabotage can show up in a multitude of ways! From chronic procrastination to Type A behavior to picking the wrong people in our lives, self sabotage can be easy to fall into, and can cause untold amounts of unnecessary stress. Have you experienced self sabotage yourself? How did you recognize it? How did you stop? Share your self sabotage stories, and see what you can learn from the experiences of other readers.

Whether you're dealing with holiday stress (from excessive busy-ness and other things), financial stress (from buying masses of gifts), school stress (finals? mid-terms?), family stress (revertigo, anyone?), or general life stress, this time of year often brings additional stress. Sometimes this stress affects us in obvious ways--we feel stressed!--and sometimes the stress sneaks up on us.

We may not realize that we're doing too much until we feel panicked from having no time to do what needs to be done; we may not realize the extent of our anxiety at seeing extended family until we find ourselves dreading getting on that plane. Sleepless nights, headaches, and other symptoms of stress might clue us in before we realize on our own that our stress levels have gotten too high.

Why not get proactive, and manage the stress before it surprises us or feels overwhelming? Take a minute to check-in with yourself, looking inward to scan your feelings, and mentally scanning your body for tension and physical symptoms of stress. Examine what you're feeling, and pinpoint the areas that are causing the most stress. And manage stress with a multi-layered approach. The resources below can help.

• What Is Stress, and How Do I Manage It?

• How To Tell When It's Too Much Stress

• Stress and Immunity

• Common Symptoms of Too Much Stress

• 5 Minute Stress Relief

When have you known that your stress levels were too high and you needed to take some real steps toward stress management? What did you do, and what worked well? Share you story here, or in the comments, and enjoy other readers' stories as well.

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