Holiday Season Reminders
Thanksgiving and the holiday season can be a really stressful time of year if you’re in recovery and struggling with your relationship with food/body. There tends to be a lot more food around us, family members who like to drop unsolicited and triggering comments, and negative content circulating social media about how to “stay on track” during this time of year.
While it can be a difficult few months to navigate, it’s important to remember that you’re not alone in your struggles and that you deserve to enjoy all of the good food and fun celebrations this time of year!
Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays because of the food, but I used to get really excited for this day for the wrong reasons. I saw it as a day to completely forgo all of my food rules and “indulge” in as much of whatever foods I wanted, irrespective of my true cravings and fullness levels. And even though I granted myself permission to eat fear foods + more food on this day, I still felt so sh*tty and guilty afterwards.
Now that I’m in recovery, I’ve learned to give myself more grace during this time of year and freedom to enjoy these holidays. Here are a few reminders I like to affirm to myself during any big holidays like Thanksgiving :
You don’t need to restrict your food intake the days leading up to the holiday. You’re allowed to eat how you normally do and don’t need to “save up calories” for the “big day”. This habit and mindset only perpetuates the binge-restrict cycle. You’re allowed to go into Thanksgiving dinner without having fasted the entire day. If you’re hungry in the morning or afternoon, you’re allowed to eat!
You don’t need to punish yourself with excessive exercise for eating “more” food and/or “cheat foods” on days like Thanksgiving. You’re allowed to continue moving your body in ways that feel good to you, but you shouldn’t feel the compulsive need to excessively move to “burn off” calories. Food isn’t always meant to be “fuel” and is so much more than a calculation. It is enjoyment, comfort, nostalgia, memories, family time, and more.
You’re allowed eat leftovers if you want to and these same foods over the course of the coming days, weeks, months and years. They shouldn’t feel “off limits” or like they can only be eaten on special occasions. Food categorization (i.e. labeling foods as good vs. bad) is a very toxic habit that diet culture has instilled in so many of us. In a truly healthy relationship with food, all foods fit 365 days a year.
If someone made a triggering comment either to you or someone else about food/body, remind yourself that it has more to do with them and their relationship with and perspective on food/body than it does you and your mindset on these topics. It can be hard to not internalize these comments, but once you realize that what they say is a reflection of them and not you, you’re able to let the comments bounce off of you more easily and continue living your life with your new mindset around food/body.
If the comments are targeted at you and it’s gotten to the point where you can’t take it anymore, you have the power to put your foot down and set boundaries with these people. You can say, “I would appreciate it if you stopped commenting on my body/eating habits/etc. It’s really triggering since I’m currently in recovery from dealing with disordered eating/restrictive eating habits/an eating disorder, and I really just want to enjoy this time of year in peace without thinking about food and body image constantly. So I hope you can respect that.”
Try to step out of your head and all of the thoughts running through it about food/body, and center yourself with where you’re at, who you’re talking to, the sounds in the background, the smells, the sights. Maybe there’s festive music playing in the background. Or an incredible aroma circulating throughout your whole house from cookies or a turkey or some pie baking in the oven. Or maybe you feel this warmess inside your heart as you sit in your living room with a cozy cup of hot chocolate as you watch a Christmas movie with your family/friends. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in your thoughts, but consistently reminding yourself to be present will slowly start to minimize the loudness of these thoughts and take more and more power away from them.
Turn off social media if it’s a trigger for you. Such a fine line exists between hopping onto an app to watch a video or two and entering the doom scroll which sucks us in like a black hole. And I don’t know if it’s because I spend less time on social media now, but some of the content I see pop up is so outrageously alarming and absurdly shocking to me that someone would actually promote the content they’re promoting. Especially to the younger crowd on these apps who are much more impressionable, the holiday season content can be so overwhelming and triggering to consume in large volumes. To evade having my good mood entirely depleted by social media, I remove some apps from my homescreen if I feel like it’ll be hard to stay off of them. There’s no need to engage in something that you know will only lower your mood and hurt you (and trust me, you’re not going to miss out on anything that major while you’re off these apps!).
There’s so much more to life than food, calories, body image, clothing sizes, etc. Your body is not going to change from eating a few cookies and it won’t “ruin” all of your progress to enjoy the food this holiday season. Life is truly too freaking short and special to spend all of your time and energy counting every piece of food you put into your body and fixating on every how every inch of your body looks every day.
Although the holiday season can be an anxious few months to navigate, you are more than capable of not only getting through it, but also having fun and enjoying yourself this time of year. Give yourself grace and know that you’ve got this!
You have the power this holiday season, not diet culture.
I’m cheering you on always 🤍
x Emma