5 Thanksgiving Don'ts

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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.

How Strong is Your Diet Mentality?

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Did you know that the first principle of Intuitive Eating is “Reject the Diet Mentality”?

This step is critical because having a dieter’s mindset disconnects you from your body's wisdom, including your own internal cues that tell you what, when and how much to eat.

When you operate with a diet mentality, you eat according to external factors and rules (e.g., calories, points, macros, good/bad foods, fixed schedule, etc.) rather than honoring your body’s needs, desires and preferences.

Approaching food with a diet mentality can make eating a fraught, unsatisfying experience and lead to a disordered relationship with food.

Ultimately, having a diet mentality erodes your ability to trust yourself, your body and your instincts, and negatively impacts your physical and psychological wellbeing.

Diet vs. Non-Diet Mentality
Even if you aren’t on an official diet or have never dieted, you may still have a diet mentality due to our pervasive, insidious diet culture. It’s the voice in your head that sounds like this:

Diet Mentality

Non-Diet Mentality
In contrast, the non-diet mentality—that is, the Intuitive Eater voice—sounds like this:

  • Am I hungry?

  • I can have anything. What do I want?

  • What sounds yummy and nourishing?

  • Do I want this particular food?

  • Will I feel deprived if I don’t eat it?

  • Will this food satisfy and sustain me?

  • Is this tasty? Does it hit the spot?

  • I trust my body to tell me what it needs.

  • I honor my hunger and cravings.

  • I'm feeling full. I can have more later if I want.

  • I don't feel guilty, anxious or ashamed about my eating.

Where do you stand with the diet mentality?

This Feels Scary!
Rejecting the diet mentality can feel pretty scary, especially if you’ve been trapped in this mindset for a long time. You may fear that if you let it go, you’ll lose control, eat “badly,” never stop eating, and completely go to pot.

These fears are totally understandable.

In time, however, they will start to fade as you realize that it's the dieting mindset—the deprivation, restriction, micro-management, hyper-vigilance, moralism—that prevents you from having a peaceful, intuitive relationship with food and your body.

Your fears will further subside as you reconnect with your inner signals—your hunger, fullness, desires and satisfaction—and rediscover that your body is the only guide you need when it comes to nourishing yourself.

I Don’t Want to Pass Dieting On to My Kids

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Can you relate to Sandra's story?

For as long as she can remember, Sandra's mom has meticulously counted calories and carefully weighed almost everything she eats.

When her aunts visit her parent's house, the conversation is often centered on who is doing what diet and how it’s going, together celebrating their wins and commiserating over their struggles.

Their own mother, Sandra's grandma, is a very restrictive eater and frequently comments on family members’ weight and polices everyone's eating.

Sandra's dad also has a fraught relationship with food. Over the years, he’s swung numerous times from eating everything to restricting something, whether it’s fat, carbs or the hours he’s allowed to eat.

At the age of 11, Sandra's mom took her to her first weight-loss meeting.

Although she felt a little weird being the only kid in the room, she also felt inspired by the success stories the women in the circle shared, especially when everyone cheered and clapped.

It felt good to be a part of their club and to be doing something to fix her apparently problematic body.

Ending the Legacy
Stepping into that weight-loss clinic as a young girl launched Sandra on the dieting rollercoaster. Since then, she’s tried every diet under the sun. After more than 20 years of yo-yo dieting, she’s hit rock bottom.

Even though she doesn’t like her body, she can’t stand the thought of going on one more diet. More than anything, she can’t stand the thought of passing her family’s legacy of body shame and dieting on to her kids.

Many of my clients who are thinking about starting a family or already have kids express their desire to protect their children from our harmful diet culture. They don’t want them to suffer the way they have.

This is also true for many of my clients who don’t have children but have kids in their life, whether it’s their nieces, nephews, friends’ kids, students or team members.

And it’s true for my clients who didn’t grow up in a family entrenched in diet culture yet didn't escape its pervasive clutches and are deeply motivated by the idea of not handing down their food and body challenges.

I get really excited when my clients share this desire with me because I know the positive ripple effect that can occur when just one person heals their relationship with food and their body, how doing so can put an end to a history of disordered eating and anti-fat bias.

What Kind of Role Model?
For my clients with this goal, we spend time exploring what type of role model they want to be when it comes to food and bodies.

We talk about how they can reclaim their ability to eat intuitively while helping the kids in their life maintain their ability to do so.

Then we do the challenging yet rewarding work that’s required to recover from diet culture and build a peaceful relationship with food and their body, one that they’re excited to pass along.