5 Tips to Make Holiday Eating More Enjoyable
Can you relate to any of these common holiday food experiences?
A strong desire to lay down or take a nap after eating too much at Thanksgiving dinner.
A sugar high and crash after an afternoon of baking Christmas cookies.
Binge eating holiday treats and sweets.
Grazing non-stop on charcuterie boards and buffet spreads at holiday parties to the point of physical discomfort.
Eating for comfort or distraction due to the stress of travel, spending time with difficult family members, loneliness, higher spending, or a never-ending to-do list.
These experiences are often followed by refrains like “’tis the season,” “treat yourself,” “f*ck it,” or “the diet starts next year.”
In the long term, improving your relationship with food makes food-centric celebrations easier to navigate and more pleasurable without a side of guilt and shame. The challenge with changing your relationship with food is it doesn’t happen quickly. However, if you are reading this just weeks or days before the holidays, all is not lost. There are some simple things you can do now that increase your short-term pleasure in holiday foods and lay the groundwork for deeper work in the future.
5 Tips to Enjoy the Holiday Foods This Year
Eat Regularly
Skipping meals or eating less before a big holiday meal is not helping. When we arrive at a meal overly hungry, we feel more out of control around food, tend to eat faster, and are less in tune with satisfaction and fullness cues.
Instead of skipping or skimping before a big meal, eat regular meals and snacks even on holidays. Most people feel best when they have a meal or snack every 3-5 hours during the day. A breakfast that includes protein and fiber (like eggs and whole grain toast or Greek yogurt with berries and granola) can leave you feeling satisfied and help stabilize your energy and mood throughout the day.
2. Move Your Body
Moving your body helps to manage stress and emotions, which can reduce the desire to eat for comfort. Moving also supports digestion, so if your system is feeling a little sluggish, a walk around the block after dinner will likely make you feel better than laying down.
3. Get Enough Sleep
Like movement, sleep can impact many aspects of wellbeing. Those that are well rested have more capacity to manage tough emotions. Sleep is when your body does some of its most important immune-supporting work, like tissue repair and general body detoxification.
Not getting enough sleep can impair insulin sensitivity, which can increase hunger and cravings, especially for simple carbohydrates and fats (hello cookies!), that can give quick bursts of energy but leave you tired, irritable, or hungry again soon after. It is recommended that adults get between 7-9 hours of sleep each night.
4. Eat What You Like and Politely Pass on the Rest
There is plenty of pressure to eat everything offered to you during the holidays, but it is ok to politely pass on things you don’t care for. You don’t have to tell Aunt Becky you think her Jello salad is a nightmare, but you don’t have to eat it either. A simple “No, thanks” is a great place to start.
Focus instead on the foods you really love. If it is something that is only available one time a year, you might notice a desire to eat more of it than is physically comfortable. This is a natural reaction to restriction or limited supplies (a major culprit in the diet cycle!).
Try to remind yourself you can always have more later in the day or the next day when you are hungry again. Food tends to taste better when you are a little bit hungry (but not ravenously so). It is also worth considering if this favorite food could be available more than once a year for you to enjoy.
5. Practice Self-Compassion
If the other tips on this list don’t go as planned, turn to self-compassion. Self-compassion has three tenets:
Self-kindness means being warm and understanding to yourself rather than judgmental and critical.
Common humanity accepts that all humans suffer and that you are not alone.
Mindfulness allows you to find that balance of accepting what is happening without suppressing it (toxic positivity) or exaggerating it (over-identification).
Remember: What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.
Beyond the Holidays: Cultivating a Health Relationship with Food
A healthy relationship with food is one that allows you to experience pleasure and satisfaction in eating without guilt, shame, or restriction. It allows you to more easily eat in response to your internal cues of hunger and fullness and embrace variety in your food. It recognizes the role of emotions in food choices while also expanding your toolbox for coping with them.
This is no easy feat in a society dominated with diet culture messages, but research suggests a more peaceful relationship with food supports better physical, mental, and emotional health, making it more than worth the effort.
My favorite framework to develop a healthy relationship with food is intuitive eating. It is based on 10 principles that support a non-diet approach to food and health.
The five tips mentioned above can help you navigate the holidays with more pleasure and ease, and they also provide a jumping-off point to further improve your relationship with food and your body. I invite you to join me in exploring Intuitive Eating in my virtual 12-week Intuitive Eating for Skeptics class or by working together one-on-one. It is never too late, or too soon, to make peace with food and find pleasure in eating.
The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to be medical advice or to diagnosis, treat, cure or prevent any disease. This information does not replace a one-on-one relationship with a physician or healthcare professional. Dietary changes and/or the taking of nutritional supplements may have differing effects on individuals.
To learn more about how working with a nutritionist could help you, schedule a free 15-minute call.