Four Tips For Intuitive Eating At The Holidays

For folks dealing with chronic dieting and disordered eating, the holidays can be incredibly challenging. Things like holiday foods, being around friends and family, and navigating fatphobic diet talk can get in the way of enjoying the holiday season. If you’re constantly dealing with triggers, how do you survive the holidays while honoring your hunger, fullness, emotions, and body? I’m going to share a bit about intuitive eating as a practice for helping you do just that. 

What is intuitive eating? 

Intuitive eating is a practice developed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in the mid-1990s. It consists of 10 principles to work through in order to get back to your body’s normal appetite cues and develop a more neutral, non-diet relationship with food. Intuitive eating is not a diet. (I know a lot of diets say they’re not diets…but really, this is not one of those). Intuitive eating is something we’re born with. When babies are hungry, need comfort, or are full/satisfied they will let caregivers know by turning towards, crying, or turning away to communicate their bodily needs. We can lose our intuition about food through social conditioning and diet messages that tell us to ignore our internal cues. Intuitive eating is a way to help relearn them. 

The 10 principles of intuitive eating are:

1. Reject the diet mentality

2. Honor your hunger

3. Make peace with food

4. Challenge the 'food police'

5. Feel your fullness

6. Discover the satisfaction factor

7. Cope with your emotions

8. Respect your body

9. Intuitive movement 

10. Gentle nutrition

These principles can help you reconnect with your intuition around food and have a more neutral body image. When practicing intuitive eating, it’s not necessary to follow these steps one after the other in order to move on to the next. However, I teach people it is important to make sure you’re not going into the movement and nutrition principles without really digging into rejecting the diet mentality and working on honoring your body’s hunger, fullness, and satiety cues. Feed your body when it’s hungry. Enjoy all kinds of foods. Eat for the fact that it tastes good and can be celebratory…not just for fuel or as a treat for exercising. Otherwise, intuitive eating practice just becomes the “eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full” diet. 

My top four suggestions for holiday intuitive eating practice

Below, I’ve listed my top four suggestions for practicing intuitive eating during the holiday season. Before getting into intuitive eating practice, please be kind to yourself and know that this process can involve years of unlearning diet culture. While many programs preach that you can learn intuitive eating quickly, it can take a while to feel confident in your intuitive eating ability. These tips of mine are just a starting place for what I hope becomes a new way of connecting with yourself, your body, and food beyond the holiday season.  

Tip 1: Notice how the diet mentality impacts you and challenge it this season

It’s important to begin your intuitive eating practice by listing all the ways the diet mentality shows up in your life. Diet culture informs the diet mentality which is the idea that certain body sizes, shapes, and fitness levels (particularly thin or fit) are better or healthier than others. The diet mentality can look like this: 

• Eating more or less based on whether you exercised or ate a certain way the day before

• Measuring yourself via a scale or the size of your clothes

• Comparing your body size with others or with photos of yourself 

• Allowing yourself “cheat days” (which insinuates you’re restricting certain foods on other days)

• Labeling certain foods as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy

• Calling yourself good or bad, healthy or unhealthy based on your food and exercise behaviors

• Guilt for eating certain foods or feeling righteous or “good” for eating other foods

• Overexercising or feeling guilty if you don’t exercise

• Judgment or criticism of people in larger bodies 

• Negative self-talk about your own body compared to other bodies

• Ignoring your hunger cues or beating yourself up for feeling full or past full

• Eating past fullness and vowing to “do better tomorrow”

• Deciding to start eating a certain way and feeling hopeful just to say “screw it” if the day doesn’t go as planned and then overeat or binge eat

• Limiting snacks or certain foods in the pantry due to feeling out of control around them

I could go on and on with this list but you get the idea.

When you start noticing how this mentality comes up, you can begin to challenge it by recognizing how dieting impacts your behavior. For instance, dieting might make you ignore hunger cues so you get “hangry.” It might leave you feeling foggy or low energy, so you end up reaching for candy or fun foods for quick energy. It may even make you more susceptible to binging particularly when your executive functioning (aka decision-making brain) is tired. 

During the holidays, notice how the “should’s” and “should nots” of dieting come up about certain foods (we call those rules the “Food Police”). Notice how other people talk about their bodies and holiday “treats.” You may also find that the diet mentality makes you feel bad about the food you eat and how you talk about your own body. Start to challenge these notions of diet culture and learn more about the impact of diet mentality. Check out the book “Health At Every Size” and this info from the National Eating Disorders Association for starters.

Tip 2: Pay attention to hunger and fullness 

Honoring hunger and fullness can help you maintain energy and a stable mood (this is especially important during the holidays when emotions and stressors tend to be high). Many times, folks don’t know when they’re hungry or full because they either ignore their hunger cues until they’re ravenous or eat until they’re past full. Start to practice eating adequately and consistently throughout the day. Your body needs fuel between every 2-4 hours depending on what you ate at your last meal or snack. You also need carbs, fat, protein, and fiber at each meal and snack. By giving yourself these nutrients regularly, your body is going to be more equipped to tell you when it feels hungry or full. Your job is to listen to that.

Hunger cues include things like: 

• Lower energy

• Feeling grouchy

• Stomach grumbling

• Thinking about food more

• Food looks and smells more enticing  

• Headache

• Feeling empty stomach

Fullness cues can include: 

• Food not tasting as good as at the beginning of the meal

• Stomach feels full but not distended

• Decreased desire to eat

• Feeling more energy or alertness

• Slowing down eating

• More distracted from food because you’re not as hungry

Once you start to notice and honor these cues, plan to keep up with your adequate and consistent meals even on holidays that may have a larger main meal. Don’t show up to parties super hungry. Instead, eat a snack or small meal beforehand so you can tune into what you really want at the food table. Going in with too much hunger can lead to eating more than your body may want. If that happens, though, check in with yourself and say some kind words. It’s ok and normal to overeat at times. Normal eating is not about perfection. It’s about nourishing your body and that’s going to look different every day. 

Tip 3: Cope with your emotions

Holidays can be supercharged with emotion. It’s vital to build a toolkit of coping strategies for dealing with feelings so they don’t build up and blow up when you’d rather them not. You are responsible for helping yourself find calm in the chaos. Become aware of triggers that can arise and have a plan for dealing with them. Certain triggers may include things like:

• Visiting people you haven’t seen before after your body has changed

• Seeing family

• Being in locations or spaces from the past that bring up certain memories

• Smells that can trigger memories

• Food and body commentary

• A loved one is no longer sitting at the dinner table

• Change in routine

• Financial stress

• Differences of political or religious opinion coming up in conversation

• Other people trying to parent your kids or pets

• Dressing up for special gatherings 

• Change of weather means having to put on certain clothes that may or may not fit (I’m looking at you, jeans)

We may or may not be able to anticipate every single trigger that arises during the holiday season, but you can go into this time of the year with an arsenal of coping strategies. Your job is to start building awareness of the feelings, thoughts, and sensations that clue you into which coping skill you’ll need to get through. Check out my free resources page for some awareness-building tools like journal sheets and coping strategies lists. 

Before going into the holiday season, make sure you’re implementing routine coping strategies such as getting enough sleep, eating adequately and consistently, reaching out to support people, taking rest, and spending time doing fun things just for yourself. All of these self-care tactics can help you get ahead of managing big emotions so they’re not so overwhelming when or if they happen. 

Here are some other practical tips for planning ahead and keeping your cool: 

• When getting ready for a party or event, set an intention for what you want to get out of the experience (e.g. connection, fun, laughter, letting others know you care). If your mind goes to overthinking about food, your body, what others are thinking about you or your outfit, come back to your intention. 

• Limit the time you spend at an event to 2-3 hours. Go early and leave early or go late and leave as things are winding down (or whenever you feel ready). 

• Plan to have an aftercare activity waiting for you such as a shower, notes of kind words to look at when you get home, a walk with a friend. 

• Have a go-to outfit for parties that makes you feel comfortable. If your clothes don’t fit, it’s time to find clothes that do. Your body deserves to be comfortable (and it’s going to make it easier not to get preoccupied with the fit of your clothes or negative body talk).

Tip 4: Treat your body with respect

Last, but not least, it’s so critical to treat your body with respect. You don’t have to like or even love your body, but you do need to treat it with kindness, meet its needs and acknowledge all that it does for you. This is going to make getting through stressful times easier.

I like to think of body respect as treating your body the way you would a person or pet you love. You wouldn’t deny them water, food, shelter, kind words, something cozy to snuggle in on a cold day, or a sense of joy. If you want to incorporate more body respect into the holiday season and other times, here are some ideas: 

• Wear clothes that fit (including undergarments!)

• Hydrate with enough water during the day

• Go to the bathroom when you have the urge - others’ needs can wait!

• Eat enough and often

• Eat foods you enjoy - yes, including holiday foods!

• Be mindful of the people you hang out with - if they engage in diet talk or talk about your food or body, it’s ok to set limits or leave!

• Move your body in a way that feels good instead of for punishment or to make up for food

• Practice saying something neutral or nice to yourself such as “Thank you stomach for digesting my food” or “I appreciate my heart for beating all day every day”

• Rest when you need it - reframe that it makes you lazy. Instead, reclaim that rest doesn’t need to be earned–that’s just the narrative of hustle culture.

How to find out more about intuitive eating? 

If these tips were useful and you want to learn more about intuitive eating, you can get additional info by going to Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch’s websites. You also can find an intuitive eating certified counselor or coach on the Intuitive Eating Directory. 

Start Working with An Intuitive Eating Coach in Raleigh, NC

If you are sick and tired of diet culture, feeling fried by the holiday diet vernacular, or bummed from picking on your body, then it’s time to change gears. Feel free to reach out to me to learn more about intuitive eating. I’m an Intuitive Eating Certified Counselor through Evelyn Tribole’s training. If you’d like to get in touch, here’s how: 

1. Send an email via my contact form

2. We’ll set up a free 20-minute discovery call to see if we’re a good fit

3. We’ll begin working together to help you become an intuitive eater and find food freedom!

You don’t have to be stuck on the merry-go-round of body shame and food chaos. I love talking to people about how they can reclaim their lives and stop dieting for good. I hope to hear from you!

Other Services Offered with Counselor Kate, LLC

At Counselor Kate, I'm here to offer a variety of services in addition to intuitive eating services. I’m also happy to offer support with releasing trauma stored in the body through trauma and somatic therapy. Together, we can also work on rebuilding a positive relationship with food and your body through eating disorder therapy and other services.