I Now Eat Xmas Cookies Guilt-Free. And Stopped Researching Diets.

What’s your relationship like with holiday eating?

Do you love all the holiday fare yet feel overwhelmed by anxiety, stress, guilt or shame for eating in ways you typically don’t? 

At night, do you lie in bed resolving to start a new diet and exercise program in January?

Do you wish you could enjoy the holiday season without being distracted by all the food noise in your head? 

If so, you’re not alone—and it doesn’t have to be this way.

My clients have discovered that after working for a while on divesting from diet culture and eating more intuitively, their experience with holiday eating is much different than years prior. 

Over the years, their comments have sounded like this...

Zero Strings Attached
“I used to give myself a free pass to eat anything I wanted during the holidays. It wasn’t really free, however, as I believed I had to pay the price come January 1 by going on another diet and working out more. It’s so liberating to be able to enjoy all my holiday favorites with zero strings attached.”

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Stopped Stuffing Myself
“Since I’m no longer planning to cut out carbs in January, I no longer feel the need to stuff myself with sweets before they are off-limits.”

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No Looming Threat
“From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, I felt like I was engaging in one long Last Supper before my next diet started. The physical discomfort I felt from eating every meal as if it was going to be my last one convinced me all the more that I needed to get back on track in the new year. 

Thank goodness I now know it was the looming threat of another diet that was causing my scarcity-driven Last Supper eating. Without another diet around the corner, I'm now able to eat in a much more satisfying way.

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More Present and Engaged
“Once I started giving myself unconditional permission to eat whatever I want any day of the year, I stopped feeling obsessed with all the holiday food. I still love making it and eating it but I no longer think about it all the time. I'm now much more present for my loved ones and more engaged in other aspects of the season.” 

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Feel a Sense of Ease
“I used to go into the holiday season feeling deprived from my latest diet. As a result, I felt out of control with all that good food. It was like I had found water after being lost in the desert for months. I couldn’t get enough of it. Once I understood it was the dieting, not a lack of self-control, that caused me to eat in a binge-y way, I stopped restricting and eventually started feeling a sense of ease and peace with food."

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No Longer Feel Bad
“I still sometimes eat until I’m super full because the food is so delicious! The big difference is that I don’t feel bad about it anymore and I don’t feel like I have to make up for it.”

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Relief to Stop Researching
“In years past, I always spent New Year’s Day researching detox and diet plans. It’s a relief to know that this year I won’t be wasting my money on an expensive cleanse package or my time trying to learn the rules of a new diet program.”

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There's No Guilt
“My holiday eating is so much more enjoyable now that I no longer feel guilty for eating a bunch of Christmas cookies.”

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A Priceless Gift
Of course, the shift to more peaceful, pleasurable holiday eating doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to move away from diet culture toward a more intuitive relationship with food and your body.

Most people, including me, have found that with patience, practice and perseverance, the food stuff gets a little easier with each passing year.

To be able to eat with ease and gusto during the holiday season, and all year round, is a priceless gift—but even more so, it’s an inherent human right—that everyone deserves, including you.

Today, I'm Getting Back On Track!

Today, I’m getting back on track!

How many Mondays have you said this to yourself?

How many times have you started your week with promises to eat better, eat less, eat clean, eat perfectly?

This used to be my weekly pattern.

I would lie in bed on Sunday night regretting how badly I felt I had eaten all weekend.

To quiet my inner food police and alleviate the guilt, shame and anxiety I felt, I’d promise myself that, starting tomorrow, things would be different.

Full of Hope
I’d wake up Monday feeling excited and hopeful about getting my act together.

Often, I’d be “good” and feel in control for the first few days of the week.

By Thursday night, however, things would start to fall apart. My discipline and willpower would begin to diminish.

I’d find myself obsessing about food, giving into my cravings, breaking my food rules, and reuniting with all the “bad” foods I declared off-limits on Monday.

I would try to fight it for a while, but eventually, I’d just throw my hands in the air exclaiming, “What the hell! I might as well just go for it because come Monday, I’m never letting myself do this again!”

Endless Cycle
Every weekend became a Last Supper.

It was an endless, exhausting cycle.

When I finally hit rock bottom and realized how damaging my diet mentality was, I began taking steps toward healing my relationship with food and my body.

This included breaking up with diet culture, ditching my diet mentality and food rules, and learning how to eat intuitively again.

Of course, this didn’t happen overnight.

Intuitive Eating is not a quick fix. It is, however, a pathway to freedom.

Since there are no rules and no illegal foods, there's no possibility of being bad, failing the plan and getting thrown in dieting jail.

Just Another Day
Now, Mondays are just another day for me.

The idea of “getting back on track” doesn’t enter my mind on the first day—or any day—of the week.

If you have a pattern of "starting over tomorrow" with your eating, please know that the desire to do so is completely understandable. It's natural to turn toward whatever might make you feel better.

However, instead of being stuck on this emotionally-draining roller coaster, I invite you to reflect on how it would feel to have a steady, peaceful relationship with food. How might your life change if every day of eating was just another day?

Josie's Hit Diet Rock Bottom. Have You, Too?

Josie has been dieting for more than 20 years.

At the age of 11, she went on her first diet. She’s been riding the dieting roller coaster ever since.

Over the years, she’s tried dozens of plans and programs, some of them multiple times.

She can easily rattle off the number of calories, points and carbs in hundreds of different foods.

Again and again, she’s felt the euphoria that comes with weight loss—and the shame that accompanies rebound weight gain.

When friends, co-workers and celebrities have raved about their new diet, she’s always jumped on board believing “This might finally be the one!”

Lately, however, she just can’t muster up her usual enthusiasm.

She’ll start a new diet then abandon it after a week or two.

Her decades of yo-yo dieting have left her feeling frustrated, exhausted, depressed and hopeless—and like a huge failure.

Josie's ready to throw her hands up in the air.

She's finally hit diet rock bottom.

Hitting Diet Rock Bottom
Although she’s unhappy with her weight, Josie can’t stand the thought of going on another diet.

She can’t stomach one more Last Supper, one more Monday of starting over, one more list of good and bad foods.

She’s burned out on tracking, counting, measuring and weighing.

She’s sick of letting her bathroom scale dictate her mood, her behavior and how her day unfolds.

So much of her life, she feels, has been wasted obsessing over every bite, feeling guilty about her choices and strategizing how she can make up for her food sins.

Josie’s tired of packing her own food to take to social gatherings and being preoccupied at parties by all the food she’s not allowed to eat but really, really wants.

She’s sad about how many events she’s skipped because she feared falling off the wagon or didn’t like how she looked.

After decades of being told what to eat, Josie doesn’t even know what she likes anymore.

She eats what she thinks she should, which often leaves her feeling unsatisfied and, understandably, scrounging for more food.

Her long list of food rules has sucked all the joy and pleasure out of eating.

The more she deprives herself, the more she finds herself eating in secret and bingeing on all her forbidden foods.

Many foods are banned from her house because she simply doesn’t trust herself with them.

Josie’s tired of denying her cravings, sneaking food, swinging from restricting to bingeing, and feeling out of control and ashamed.

She’s flat out dieted-out.

No matter how tempting the latest diet may sound, she now knows all too well that it will not improve her relationship with food and her body—it will only make it worse.

Yet, she doesn’t know what to do. For most of her life, all she’s known is dieting.

Sound Familiar?
If any of this sounds familiar, you’ve likely hit diet bottom, too.

Please know, you’re not alone.

I’ve heard hundreds of stories like Josie’s over the years.

And while you might feel like you’re stuck and at a dead end, you’re not.

There is another way; it's called Intuitive Eating.

Intuitive Eating isn't a plan or program but rather a set of guideposts that lead you back to the intuitive eater you can into this world as before diet culture disconnected you from your innate wisdom. 

It's about rejecting the diet mentality and trusting your body's inner cues (e.g., hunger, fullness, pleasure, satisfaction) to guide your eating instead of external rules.

By putting the same effort you put into dieting toward getting out of it, you can cultivate a more peaceful, trusting and roller coaster-free relationship with food and your body.

I don't have any magical powers. Neither do my clients. If we can reclaim our ability to eat intuitively, so can you.