Enjoy Holiday Food without the Anxiety
November 18, 20248 min readIts Actually Healthier to Enjoy Holiday Foods without the AnxietyFood anxiety can peak during the holidays. Heres how to manage it and enjoy yourselfBy Allison Parshall Martine Severin/Getty ImagesThe year-end holidays are a time to gather and celebrate with loved onesand to enjoy rich, delicious foods. But for many people, these special meals come with anxiety and guilt. In a recent survey by Orlando Health, 39 percent of U.S. respondents reported worrying about how much they eat during the holidays. And a quarter agreed they should skip meals to save calories before a feast such as Thanksgiving dinner.The messaging we absorb about health and the holidaysespecially surrounding diets and weight lossis often misguided, says Sara Riehm, a registered dietitian at Orlando Health. Riehm guides clients through a six-week lifestyle program to further their health goals. She sees firsthand how counterproductive our go-to ways of thinking about health and weight loss can be, particularly during the holidays. This time of year she spends a lot of time helping people build more effective and healthy ways of approaching situations where theyre surrounded by delicious foods that might not be the best for nourishing their bodies.It's not necessarily restricting or cutting out all of those foods, she says. It's creating a balance so that we still get to enjoy our holiday but also keep our health in mind.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Scientific American spoke with Riehm to learn more about how certain dieting misconceptions can harm us, what tips can help us navigate the holidays and what to do when New Years resolution time comes.[An edited transcript of the conversation follows.]Why do many people feel anxious about what they eat during the holidays?I think a lot of people feel very uncertain and nervous because, in the past, holidays have included a lot of overindulging. I have a lot of clients who are trying to learn how to improve their health, but then when a special occasion like this comes along, theyre not really sure how to handle it because its a unique circumstance. And in particular, its a circumstance where youre almost encouraged to be over the top and overindulge. Its a time when a lot of people end up feeling out of control. But I personally love starting with clients around this time of year because I get to help teach them and walk them through this holiday season in real time.Why might this focus on holiday eatingor anxiety about itbe counterproductive?Stress can definitely contribute to weight gain just by itself. When we have higher levels of [the stress response hormone] cortisol in the body for longer periods of time, such as during the holiday season, that can definitely contribute to weight gain. So in the context of weight management, that can be counterproductive to what were trying to achieve.Then theres the toll that focusing so much on food takes on our mental health. There are so many other things that we should be experiencing or thinking about during the holiday season. At their core, the holidays are supposed to be joyous times of celebrationof gathering, gratitude, gift giving and celebrating our loved ones. I try to emphasize with my clients to focus on what they want to prioritize during the holiday season: What are the things that are actually important to you during this time of year?What if health goals are one of those important things?I recommend trying to create a balanced plate by leaning into the vegetables that are on the table. Oftentimes theres some sort of salad or a roasted vegetable or even a green bean casserole; those are some of the more nutrient-dense foods that we can consume. Theyre nourishing our body but also still leaving room for the other delicious foods that we want to have. Believe me, Im still making room on my plate for mashed potatoes and mac and cheese. But Im also considering how I can best nourish my body in this situation.Another way to stay on track with health goals is getting a little bit of movement. Im not necessarily suggesting going to the gym as a family or doing the Turkey Trot. But studies have shown that even doing a two- to five-minute walk immediately after you eat can improve insulin sensitivity, which could be really beneficial for anybody that might be managing insulin resistance.I also recommend thinking about what foods you want to prioritize. For me, I know that I can get mac and cheese and mashed potatoes all year round, but my grandmother only makes derby pie on major holidays. So because I know that Im trying to stay focused on certain health goals, I might cut back from the mac and cheese and mashed potatoes, save a little bit of extra room for the derby pie. And thats how we still create that balance.If its important to me to build healthy eating habits but also not to miss out on enjoying grandmas pie, how do I keep these special occasions from derailing my progress?Its all very individual; it depends on where you are in your health journey. Ideally, you have this baseline that you've created of healthy habits, so having one slice of pie or one cookie is not going to change much. Without that baseline, however, it can be really hard to come back to that. I encourage my clients to engage in a cycle of plan, act, reflect. As much as you can, try to plan for unexpected situations as we come upon this holiday season. Reflect on whats gone well in past years and what hasnt. If, in the past, we overindulgedand that left us not feeling the best in our body or maybe with higher lab values that we werent happy aboutthen we can plan for how we want to handle this upcoming holiday season. What can we do differently this time? Then we can act upon that plan as best as we can for next year.Continuing to engage in this cycle of plan, act, reflect keeps those less-than-ideal situations or decisions from becoming, for lack of a better word, relapses, where we fully revert back to our old habits. I have found in working with clients that thats one of the more powerful strategies so that we can release some of our suboptimal decisions and still move forward in a positive, productive way.Many people believe they should skip meals to save calories before big holiday dinners. Why do you not recommend that?When we restrict food like that, its counterproductive to our health goals because its very, very difficult to make healthy decisions when were hungry. Its going to be difficult to make those balancing decisions that we talked about before. Additionally, when we restrict, we also have a tendency to binge. How many times have we been in a situation where weve gotten a little bit too hungry, and then weve eaten a little bit too much, and then we dont eat for a while, and the cycle perpetuates itself? We get into this cycle of restricting and binging, and for certain people, that can become a very serious issue.So I dont recommend it. Its not healthy. Its not a way to balance your nutrition. What I would recommend is to go ahead and have some small meals or snacks throughout the day leading up to your main meal. Leave room for your favorite foods on Thanksgiving, on Christmas, during the holiday meals. But dont starve yourself, right? Dont create this situation that sets yourself up for failure when youre trying to maintain these health goals.The survey found that one in three respondents believed they needed a detox or cleanse after the holidays. Why dont you recommend this?The best way to move forward, if you feel like you have overindulged or made a suboptimal decision or a decision that you dont like, is to acknowledge it and reflect upon the factors that led to it, come up with a plan for next time and then move on. That is the biggest advice I have. Dont dwell on it. Compensatory behaviors like juice cleanses and overexercisingor even to go so far as purging with vomiting or laxative pillsthat bumps up very closely against disordered eating behavior. If you find yourself engaging in that side of that type of behavior, please be very honest with yourself and maybe seek some support. Evaluate why you feel like you need to do those things because they can be dangerous types of behavior if you continue to engage in them.But you also need recognize that we don't need to do all that. We can enjoy a meal on a special occasion that comes around once a year and then move on with the rest of our journey. I say it so many times: the same way that one healthy meal is not going to change your life, neither will one unhealthy or less than great meal. So release it. That's my biggest piece of advice: acknowledge it, and let it go. The same way that people say, New year, new me, break that down even smaller: new day, new me or even new meal, new me. Put in the work to figure out why you made that decision [youre unhappy with] so that it doesnt continue to happen, but then move on.How do you help people reframe their relationship with food so that it is less adversarial and punitive and more accepting and flexible?I dont think I can succinctly answer that, to be honest, because this is what I spend six-plus weeks counseling people about. Its heavy stuff. Its peoples relationship with food. Its the psychology behind nutrition. [At its core], its diet culture, which places the value of thinness above all else. When we break it down and we think about why we think about foods with morally charged wordsgood, bad, clean, dirty, cheatits because of diet culture. Thats how, as a society, weve been conditioned to think of it. As somebody in my position, Im trying every day to try to dismantle it. Because it is so not true. I desperately try to get my clients to think of food in a neutral way, to give them freedom, to take the power away from foodbecause it is, at the end of the day, just food. Its just a way to nourish your body.One of the concepts I like to teach is a nutrition spectrum. I try to have people think of foods as always foods, sometimes foods and rarely foods. Rarely foods are the ones were having as treats. Maybe theyre high in saturated fat, sodium, sugarthose more inflammatory nutrients that we know are not great for our health and can be connected to some of those cardiometabolic diseases that were trying to avoid. Then in the middle we have sometimes foods. Maybe they dont have those health risks associated with them but arent the best way to nourish our body either. The vast majority of our foods are going to fall in that category. Then always foods are the most nutrient-dense: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, plant-based proteins such as beans, peas and lentils. Things like that that are super nutrient-rich, so we want to have them all the time.If we can lean more toward the sometimes and always side of the spectrum as often as possible, were doing okay. So when we think about Thanksgiving and the holidays, think about where your food is going to fall on your spectrum and try to lean more toward those sometimes and always foods. And you can have a rarely food because its a holiday and those happen rarely!One last, very important question: What is derby pie?Oh, let me tell you about it. Derby pie is a Kentucky delicacy that my grandmother, whos from Louisville, makes. Its basically pecan pie, but it has chocolate and bourbon in it. Theres a lot of corn syrup in there, tooits indulgent. And it is so good, and she only makes it twice a year, on Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is my thing that I always make room for.If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, you can contact the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders helpline by calling (888) 375-7767.
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