SALT LAKE CITY The holiday season brings social gatherings, family parties, special events and holidays meals: all of which likely involve an abundance of food.
For some, this can feel overwhelming. It can be difficult to know how to navigate so many food situations.
The food culture we live in makes us all vulnerable to extremes in eating. We are either "on" or "off," "good" or "bad," eating "clean" or not. People are particularly vulnerable to all-or-nothing, black-and-white thinking during the holiday season. Its easy to throw all caution to the wind over the holidays with the promise of a diet in the new year.
As such, heres the best holiday eating advice youll ever get: Dont plan to start a diet in January.
If you know that a diet, restriction or deprivation is around the corner, youll make sure to get all the food right now before its gone. You may lack respect for your body because you think food will soon be scarce. Might as well enjoy yourself now before the suffering begins, right?
Instead, give yourself full permission to enjoy a variety of nourishing and satisfying foods during the holidays and beyond. If you know you can have it later, it will be easier to respect your bodys fullness cues.
Food habituation studies support the evidence for giving yourself permission to eat. Essentially, the more often you are exposed to a food, the less your brain fixates on it. Alternately, the less often you are exposed to a food, the more your brain fixates on it.
Its easy to feel guilty and beat yourself up about haphazard and chaotic eating patterns. Instead, Id encourage you to explore a few questions:
Instead of trying to "fix" overeating with more food rules, you may want to assess if your eating patterns are consistent, adequate, flexible and inclusive of a wide variety of foods. As you work to make them so, youll find you become much more level headed about food.
So, as you navigate food abundant holidays, Id encourage you to reassure yourself that you have permission to eat whatever you want, whenever you want it. By doing so, you can eat what tastes good in amounts that also feel good to your body because its not going anywhere.
To avoid the all-or-nothing mentality that leads to extremes in eating over the holidays, simply dont plan to start a diet in January.
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This is the best holiday eating advice you'll ever get - KSL.com
