4 Gifts to Give Yourself this Holiday Season

If you’re desiring a more peaceful relationship with food and your body, here are four gifts to consider giving yourself this holiday season.

1/ Silence Your Food Grinch
Silence the Grinch (a.k.a. the Food Police) in your head that says you're being bad for enjoying all the yummy holiday fare.

Unless you stole the food or harmed someone to get it, there is absolutely no reason to feel bad, guilty or ashamed about your food choices.

You also never have to earn the right to eat anything or make up for your eating.

(For more holiday Intuitive Eating tips, click here.)

2/ Ditch Diet Culture Content
To help you move away from diet culture and the diet mentality—and stop spending so much time, energy and headspace thinking about food and your body—ditch any content regarding dieting, food restrictions, good and bad foods, weight loss, the thin ideal, fitspo and so on.

Do an audit of all the content you engage with including social media, videos, TV shows, podcasts, apps, websites, blogs, newsletters, magazines, books, cookbooks, etc.

Consider replacing this content with more supportive resources in areas such as Intuitive Eating, Health at Every Size, body liberation and size diversity.

3/ Toss Your Scale
It’s so easy to let the number on your scale define you, to dictate how you feel about yourself and determine how you go about your day.

By tossing (or donating) your scale, you're reclaiming your power from a piece of junk that’s completely incapable of measuring your innate worth and overall wellbeing.

If you’re not quite ready to get rid of your scale, put it in an inconvenient spot, like the back of your closet or a high shelf in your garage.

4/ Skip the Dieting Bandwagon
Resolve to not jump on the dieting bandwagon come January. And when I say dieting, I mean any eating, lifestyle or wellness plan with a bunch of food rules and eating restrictions.

Diets erode your ability to trust your body and your instincts, and negatively impact your physical and psychological wellbeing. Plus, they suck all the joy out of eating and living. 

If you are tempted to go on a diet, which is completely understandable given the world we live in, I encourage you to learn about the potential negative side effects—everything the diet companies don’t warn you about—so you can make an informed decision. If you have a history of dieting, you’re likely quite familiar with these outcomes.

Beyond the Holidays
If you want help getting off the dieting roller coaster and giving yourself the gift of a more peaceful relationship with food and your body that lasts well beyond the holidays, I'm here for you.

Did You Catch These Episodes?

I’m back with a fresh roundup of not-to-be-missed content.

This time, I’m shining the spotlight on some recent podcast episodes. Topics include fat positivity, weight stigma, weight science, Intuitive Eating and more.

Informative, insightful and engaging, these shows are bound to make your next cleaning session, road trip or flight fly by.

Ten Percent Happier: Anti-Diet Series
In this two-part series, host Dan Harris explores our often complex relationship with food and our bodies, including his own struggles, with actress and activist Jameela Jamil and anti-diet dietitian and author Christy Harrison.

Part 1: Jameela Jamil on Mental Self-Defense

Part 2: How to Embrace the Anti-Diet with Christy Harrison

I also encourage you to listen to Dan’s life-changing episode with Evelyn Tribole, one of the co-creators of Intuitive Eating.

Maintenance Phase: Is Being Fat Bad for You? [Spotify | iTunes]
Hosts Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes dive deep into the research to challenge the simple and harmful narrative we’ve been fed regarding health, longevity and weight.

Burnt Toast: Healthcare for Fat People is Based on the Premise that it's Acceptable to Kill Us to Make Us Thin
Author Virginia Sole-Smith chats with activist Ragen Chastain about fighting weight stigma on behalf of our bodies.

I also highly recommend checking out Ragen’s whip-smart newsletter Weight & Healthcare.

Full Bloom: Why Should I Give Fat Positivity a Try?
Host Zoë Bisbing talks to therapist and activist Dr. Rachel Millner about what it means to be fat positive, including how to raise fat-positive children and break the cycle of intergenerational weight-related trauma.

As always, I hope this content helps support you on your journey toward a peaceful relationship with food and your body.

5 Thanksgiving Don'ts

Along with all the yummy food, the Thanksgiving holiday often comes with an unsavory serving of diet culture.

For a satisfying, peaceful eating experience, keep in mind these Thanksgiving don’ts:

1. You don’t have to earn it.
Despite what diet culture wants you to believe, you don’t have to do anything to earn your Thanksgiving meal. You don’t have to do an intense workout or not eat all day to deserve a spot at the table.

2. You don’t have to make up for it.
Just like you don’t have to earn the right to eat, you don’t have to make up for your eating after the holiday by working out extra hard, skipping meals or starting a cleanse or diet.

3. You don’t have to justify.
Whether it’s having seconds or thirds, filling your plate with mostly mashed potatoes, or eating pie for breakfast, you don’t have to justify your choices to anyone. You have the right to eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

(For tips on handling the Food Police in your life, head on over to here.)

4. You don’t have to feel bad.
Diet culture wants you to feel bad, out of control, weak, guilty and ashamed for eating a lot. You don’t.

It’s normal to sometimes eat simply for pure pleasure and to sometimes eat until you're stuffed, especially when enjoying foods that are novel and only around for a brief period

5. You don’t have to participate.
Just like people who avoid discussing religion, politics and money, you don’t have to participate in diet and weight talk.

The easiest way to navigate it, especially when you’re dining with a wide range of people, is to nonchalantly change the subject.

For example, if your uncle starts raving about his latest diet or your mom comments on someone's weight, steer the conversation toward a different topic, such as “I’d love to know what shows everyone is into right now” or “What’s your favorite holiday memory?”

Of course, these five don’ts are helpful to practice not just on Thanksgiving, but every day of the year.

P.S. Consider taking a moment this Thanksgiving holiday to reflect on everything you appreciate about your body, whether it's your arms for enabling you to hug loved ones, your nose and tongue for helping you savor all the yummy food, or your eyes for witnessing the change of seasons.