Help for Navigating Food and Eating During the Holiday Season
Food over the holidays………
The holiday season is a period of time annually that can hold a lot of different experiences, thoughts and feelings for different people.
Family dynamics. Shifting plans. Organising. Reunions. Travel. Joy. Overwhelm. Excitement. Rejuvenation. Connection. Loneliness. Plus so many other possible things.
It’s also a time of year that diet culture can unfortunately feel very loud. This includes both the chorus of diet culture chatter from those around us, to our own internalised voice of diet culture..
We want to support you to navigate food over the holidays this season by returning to three helpful anchor point themes:
- Anchoring in food and eating as a self-care practice
- Anchoring in gathering up tools to navigate diet culture talk new years resolutions
- Anchoring in using the holiday season to explore YOUR unique values around food (not diet cultures or an eating disorders)
1. Food and Eating as Self Care
Anchor in Regular Eating
No matter the day, be it an ordinary Tuesday or Christmas morning, your body needs consistent nourishment. Regular meals and snacks support every process in your body: energy levels, digestion, metabolism, mood, sleep, hormonal cycles.Your body always deserves regular nourishment.
“I really shouldn’t………”: Rethink Restriction
It’s common for diet culture to influence our eating patterns in the lead up to Christmas. “I’ll just save my calories for the big meal” or “I’ll skip breakfast since I’ll be eating so much later.” But scientific studies and the lived experience of countless individuals show that restricting food backfires. It leaves us over-hungry, dysregulated and disconnected from the joy of eating.
Instead, trust that honoring your hunger throughout the day builds a sense of safety in your body. Honoring the bodies need to bed fed regularly and adequately in the absence of reliable or accessible hunger and fullness signals and cues is just as important. Not everyone can access their signals and cues or is in a place to use them in a safe way to ensure their body and mind are well nourished.
By nourishing yourself consistently, you can arrive at your festive meals feeling more present and grounded.
Gentle but Important Reminders: Fluctuating Appetites are Normal!
Your appetite may feel different during the holiday season and that is so normal. You may have access to foods you enjoy that you often don’t get access to (hello Nannas secret meatball recipe).
You are not doing something wrong if you need to eat more, eat more often or eat when you’re not physically hungry. Regardless of how your appetite fluctuates or the reasons you choose to eat, strive not to judge yourself and compare your experiences with food and eating to those around you. Every human has a unique appetite and as humans we don’t eat only when we are physically hungry (more of this later in the blog :). We can have an appetite for many things including connection with our past, with others and our culture which can be experienced in some ways through food.
2. Responding to Diet Culture
Disordered eating, diet talk, and conversations about weight loss and bodies are unfortunately so normalised in our culture. During the holiday season, these messages become even more pervasive. Being able to recognise when diet culture or disordered behaviors or commentary are showing up can help safeguard us from returning back to these unhelpful and unkind thoughts and behaviors.
On social media, we often see examples of articulate comebacks and assertive boundary-setting, which can be empowering. However, this may not feel aligned to us for every relationship, cultural dynamic, or situation. You might not feel comfortable being overly direct for example.
Here it’s helpful to know that safeguarding our relationship with food and our body can take many forms. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to this. Boundary-setting has many shades of grey. For example, it can be as direct as saying, “I prefer not to discuss diets or weight,” or it could look like leaving the conversation when diet culture commentary commences (going to do something else, somewhere else). It can also look like a commitment to returning back to internal processes to ground yourself like:
- Reminding yourself that people’s comments are projections on their own struggles, not you.
- Knowing you have the right to excuse yourself to a private space if conversations feel overwhelming/challenging to practice a support tool that works for you.
- Return to helpful affirmations like the ones listed in this blog or that you have used in the past.
Allow yourself permission to toe dip into the ways that feel aligned to you for how you might communicate or behave externally to others and internally to yourself that creates a sense of safety and calm.
3. Redefine Food and Its Role in Your Life
The holiday season can invite reflection on what food means to you. What values are important to you (not to diet culture or an eating disorder), that you could expand into your relationship with food? In this way, food can be a vehicle to align with your values, beyond just fuel, health or weight and shape.
Below are three examples from A Workbook of Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns by Margit Berman that may feel relevant for this holiday season.
- Cultural Connection:
- Exploring traditional recipes
- Connect with elders to learn family food practices
- Love and Relationships:
- Cooking for loved ones
- Eating adventurously what others offer
- Accepting meals offered to you, or recreating childhood comfort foods
- Cooking your way through a family cookbook
- Joy and Adventure:
- Cook a special dish
- Try a new recipe, or explore festive foods (without a side of guilt. You have full permission, whatever it is)
- Connect to satisfaction (check in with your senses. What lights them up about a dish for you?)
Above all, remember:
“No matter what is swirling around you, remember: Holidays may not be a “normal” day, but they are still another day of being in your body. And like every other day, you and your body are worthy of food, rest, and compassion.” – Abbie Attwood
Diet culture is at one of it’s peak volumes of the year over the next couple of months. This is both in advertising and social media, the conversations and behaviors you may be exposed to and unfortunately often some public health messaging too. This holiday season WILL pass though (whether that fills you with sadness, relief or both) and you will return to routines that are more predictable and consistent.
You may experience moments of challenge with food over the holidays and even if you expected it and saw it coming it can be unpleasant, uncomfortable and maybe even distressing or painful. This experience is not a short coming or a failing on your part and it does not get to define you, the work you have potentially done already to heal and reclaim your relationship with food and body OR where you are heading to. You are not alone on this journey of discovering new ways of being with food and your body and there are real challenges as you navigate the waves of diet culture that roll over us all during these seasons.
So as you navigate this season, try to hold space and compassion for both the challenges but also the opportunities for joy, connection, and meaningful moments too.
You deserve all the good stuff that holidays can have to offer too. Do not hesitate to reach out to support services if you need them. They exist for a reason.
Need Help over the Holidays?
- Lifeline 131 114
- Beyond blue 1300 22 4636
- Access your local Queensland Health Mental Health Acute Care Team 1300 MH CALL (1300 642 255)
- A confidential mental health telephone triage service that provides the first point of contact to Queensland Health mental health services.
- Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467
- If your matter is very urgent or life threatening, always call 000, or present to your nearest Hospital Emergency Department
