Ever feel like you're at war with food during the holiday season? You're not alone.
This is the time of the year where diet culture gets loud and you might feel the pressure to have your last "hoorah" with food before getting back on track with a new diet in the New Year.
You might want to be able to enjoy food and be present with loved ones, without feeling like food is the main attraction and you can't focus on anything else.
You might be surrounded by family members who are constantly talking about food, dieting or weight, and that can be really triggering.
If you can relate to any of those, I used to feel the same way and I want to give you 3 pieces of advice that made a tremendous difference for me as I was first working on having a better relationship with food.
From being mindful and present with your loved ones, to trusting your body to guide your food choices, I'm here to help you break free from the cycle of restriction and guilt.
I believe in your ability to enjoy food with joy, peace and freedom this holiday season, while honouring your body and doing what feels best.
RESOURCES
Connect with Sabrina:
Ever feel like you're at war with food during the holiday season? You're not alone.
This is the time of the year where diet culture gets loud and you might feel the pressure to have your last "hoorah" with food before getting back on track with a new diet in the New Year.
You might want to be able to enjoy food and be present with loved ones, without feeling like food is the main attraction and you can't focus on anything else.
You might be surrounded by family members who are constantly talking about food, dieting or weight, and that can be really triggering.
If you can relate to any of those, I used to feel the same way and I want to give you 3 pieces of advice that made a tremendous difference for me as I was first working on having a better relationship with food.
From being mindful and present with your loved ones, to trusting your body to guide your food choices, I'm here to help you break free from the cycle of restriction and guilt.
I believe in your ability to enjoy food with joy, peace and freedom this holiday season, while honouring your body and doing what feels best.
RESOURCES
Connect with Sabrina:
It's the holidays. Holidays can be fun, they can be joyous, but if you're someone who has a history of dieting or you're struggling with your relationship with food, then this can also be a stressful time. So if you're someone who may be leading up to the holidays, you tell yourself you're going to eat extra clean so that you can really enjoy yourself, or maybe you'll skip meals or save up calories to go out for your Christmas dinner so that you can really indulge yourself, but then you end up overeating or feeling out of control and eat in a way that feels really chaotic and uncomfortable and afterwards you feel guilty. Maybe the day after Christmas, you're telling yourself that you need to eat extra clean that day, and this happens every year and you feel like it is this emotional roller coaster around food, especially when it's food related holidays like Christmas, and then there's new years right after. If that's you, I'm going to give you three major life changing tips in this episode to help you navigate the holidays around food in a much healthier, much more peaceful way, so that food doesn't feel like it has control over you, so that you can eat the things that you want, like the turkey or the Christmas ham or whatever food you eat with your family, and you can eat it without guilt and you can really be present and you can be mindful and you can enjoy the time with your loved ones. So let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the live unrestricted podcast, a show where you'll learn how to heal your relationship with food and your body so that you can focus your time and energy on more important things like your personal growth. I'm your host, sabrina Magna, food freedom coach, and my mission is to help make your life happier and healthier, without stress, overwhelm or guilt about food. If you love the show, please do go out and share it, and if you're looking for support with your relationship with food, details about my programs are in the show notes. Thanks for spending time with me today. Now let's jump in. Welcome back, my friend. I'm so thankful for you and thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:I was looking over the past year and I realized that I completely missed the one year anniversary of this podcast, which makes me sad because I do like to celebrate things like that. But a year ago, on December 6th, is when I released this podcast and I'm not going to lie, I was pretty scared when I released it. I had a lot of fear, as most people do, when you're starting something new and you're stepping outside of your comfort zone, because I didn't know what to expect and I didn't know if I was going to be able to stay consistent with it and come up with new topics. And the truth is that it has been relatively easy, because there are just so many things that are related to your relationship with food and exercise and your body, and there's so many nuances, and I have really been loving creating this for you every single week, and I'm thankful that you have been listening and if you've been listening since day one, then amazing, and thank you so much for being part of my community. And if you haven't done so, then definitely come and follow along on Instagram. I'm always posting little snapshots of my daily life and sharing some things that I've been working on. So for the past month two months at this point I've been working on this brand new video series, all about how to stop feeling obsessed with food, and it's going to be coming to you in January 2024. So a few weeks from now, and the registration is not officially open, but if you want to hop on the waitlist so that you get notified instantly when the registration opens so that you can save your seat. You can go to the show notes or head to the URL, which is SabrinaMangalcom. Forward slash training dash waitlist and you'll get priority access to the registration.
Speaker 1:And by getting back to the topic at hand today, this is the time that, especially when I was struggling with the disordered eating that my food anxiety would increase, I was super rigid and controlled in everything that I would do, so I had all of these food rules and I was tracking my calories and I was over exercising, and so when it came to the holidays and I was out of my routine and I was surrounded by people and I couldn't be as rigid and also I was going to be around foods that I want to eat, but I also don't trust myself around. And so it was this super conflicting feeling within me and what I would often do is I would try to eat like really, really well leading up to the holidays and afterwards as well, like I did no sweets January and that never went well. But I would also do things like save up my calories. So that means that I would under eat, skip meals, not eat as much as my body was really asking for, leading up to an event that I knew that a lot of food was going to be at, and then I would end up binge eating and feeling uncomfortable and feeling sluggish because I ate so much and I lost control of the sweets table and it was just this vicious cycle and I hated the fact that, like I still look back on some of my family branches and the fact that I wasn't focused on being with my family and enjoying opening the presents together, but I was so focused on food and that is what I remember about those events and like that makes me so sad because my family is something that is so important to me being time with loved ones, being present and intentional with my life and I wasn't able to do that because food had this like ridiculously big place in my mind and in my life. So I want to give you today three tips so that, if you can relate to that, you can save yourself the guilt and the frustration and the anxiety and the overwhelm and you can actually be present with your loved ones and not be hyper focused on the sweets table the entire time. You can go to an event and trust yourself around food, trust that your body is going to guide you, and being able to stop eating when you're full and feel satisfied and still enjoy the foods that you want to eat, while being able to listen to your body and eat in a way that feels good. All right, so let's get into it.
Speaker 1:As always, you know that this is a doing podcast. It's not just a passively listening and thinking. This all sounds like really good ideas, but not applying it, and I understand that can be hard to do when I'm just behind a mic here, and that's exactly why I love coaching inside my food freedom academy, because I get to really hold your head and be by your side and help you apply everything that you're learning inside the online course. But I will do my best in this podcast and I guess that you will have to hold yourself accountable. So the first thing that you're going to want to keep in mind so that you don't feel out of control around food, so that you can get to a food related events during the holidays and not be hyper focused on it you know being able to be around it but also focus on conversations and be able to eat and listen to your body and not have to go into the bathroom and input everything that you had eaten into my fitness pal.
Speaker 1:So let's start with my very first tip and I've talked about this before but it is to not save up your calories. I know, especially if you have a mind of a dieter which is thinking about how many calories you're allowed each day, and that could be 1200 calories, 1500 calories, 2000 calories whatever rules you have either created in your mind or have been told by someone is the right amount to eat, even though your body will fluctuate from one day to another about, like, how much you actually need to eat and consume. But if you have that kind of mind, then you can rationalize and it can make a lot of sense to you to just say all right, if I'm allowed 2000 calories, for example, and I know that I'm going to go to an event where there's going to be higher calorie foods and I might want to eat foods, more foods that I normally would not eat, then what I'll just do is I will save up some calories, as if eating was a math equation, but I will save up some calories so that tonight I can use up more calories that I haven't used up during the day, and that might look like skipping breakfast. It might look like what I used to do is I would just have like plain Greek yogurt with no carbs in it, and of course, that led me to be hungry all day long. So those could look different for you what restricting beforehand could look like. But I want you to imagine if, let's say, you went in an entire day without drinking water and the entire day you're thinking about getting your hands on water and the only thing you can think about and I'm saying this on my end, because I just tend to always need to be drinking water and I'm always very thirsty but imagine it may be a day doesn't seem like that much for you, or two days where you just don't allow yourself to drink water, or you drink very little, a lot less than your body needs Then chances are your thoughts about getting your hands on water are going to increase. And when you eventually do get your hands on water so let's say that you've been a full day in the desert and then someone hands you a water bottle well, you're probably not going to take this like very small, polite sip. You're going to be quenched. You're going to be so thirsty that you're going to chug that water bottle, and if someone gives you a second one, you're going to chug that one too, because you've just gone a very long time without getting something that is necessary for your well-being, for your optimal functioning, for your survival.
Speaker 1:And somewhere along the way, diet culture has convinced us that food is not necessarily something that we need enough or adequate amounts of. It is something that, with just enough willpower, we can say no to, and our biology just won't fight back. And that's not the case. Food is something that we need for survival, and so what will happen if you quote unquote save up your calories, get breakfast under eat, is that you will notice that around noon or around one o'clock, you're going to start looking forward to that chance to eat. Right, so maybe you're meeting your family around four or five or six pm.
Speaker 1:You're going to already be anticipating all of the food that you're going to be able to eat. And this is not because you're addicted or obsessed with food. It's because your body is going to activate these biological and psychological mechanisms to send you signals to say, hey, we're missing something, we haven't had enough food today, we haven't had enough carbs or whatever. You're restricting, and so you might get intense thoughts about food. Your body is going to start telling you I need some food. And then you're going to go to the family event or I keep saying family, but this could be loved ones as well You're going to go there and it's only going to be about the food, right, you're going to look at the appetizers and you're going to try to have conversations with people, but you're going to be thinking about the food and it's very hard to be present in your life when that's your scenario.
Speaker 1:And then, when you do start eating, because you're going to have felt that primal hunger, which is this like urgent, intense desire to eat because you haven't had enough food then you're going to start eating and it might feel hard to stop. Or you might want to get your hands on everything and you might eat really quickly and not completely listen to your body, because it's very hard to be mindful when you're eating, when you are like chaotically hungry. Do you ever have those times when you come home from work and you haven't eaten since your snack or even since your lunch, and like the moment that you step into your home, it's like an urgent need to start eating and then you're just going to eat anything that you can get your hands on. You're eating quickly, maybe you're eating standing at the counter, you're not slow, you're not really paying attention to how every bite tastes and so you're not actually fully tasting the food. So this might sound counterintuitive, it might go against what everyone tells you to do during the holidays, if you have a lot of diet culture on your social media.
Speaker 1:But during the holidays, my advice to you, if you want to be able to really just enjoy them without food being the central focus, is to just eat normally, right. So eat your breakfast, eat enough, eat your carbs, eat the things that you normally would have. Hopefully you don't regularly and consistently undernourish yourself, but make sure that you are not forcing yourself to go hungry during the day. Make sure that you are having your breakfast, your lunch, your snacks, and you'll see that you're obviously still going to have that hunger that you're going to want, during a food related holiday activity, to be able to enjoy the food and taste it all, because your body is like that Right, like. If you allow yourself to just follow a regular structure, then you're going to be able to, yes, enjoy the foods that you want, but it's going to be so much more mindful. You're going to be able to slow down and that's going to allow your body to communicate with you better when it is full, when it is satisfied.
Speaker 1:And if you are having a thought right now that is thinking but what if I gain weight doing that Like? What if I eat normally during the day and then I eat more fun, more quote unquote fatty or what you might call junk food, and I'm doing air quotes behind my mic right now? What if I do that at night? Then I'm going to eat extra calories. And what I will say to that is, if you currently have a life, that the only way for you to enjoy holidays or just fun foods right, it might be cultural foods the only way for you to enjoy these kind of foods is for you to restrict and under eat during the day and you believe that the weight that you're at right now is the weight that you're meant to be at your set point weight. The healthy, maintainable weight that you are supposed to be at is one that does not require under eating, restriction, dieting over exercising. It is one where you can eat the foods that you love, live a life that involves food and culture, and not have to compensate in other areas of your life.
Speaker 1:All right, so, moving on to tip number two, a second reason why you may feel out of control around certain foods during the holidays and again, I'm saying during the holidays, but this could be at any time of the year, but I know that this is the time where there's a lot more food and there's a lot more special occasions, so that's why I'm saying it in this instance. But one of the reasons why you might feel especially out of control around food is because you might tell yourself that this is the only time that you can have these foods. In your mind, this could be seen as a cheat meal, a cheat day, maybe even a cheat week or a cheat two weeks. And the thing about having this kind of mentality is that a cheat meal or a cheat day is really just a planned binge. It is saying that these are foods that can only have during this time. Therefore, I will have as much as I can during this time, because who knows when I'm going to allow myself to have this food again. And then there's usually that mentality of I'll start again tomorrow or I'll start again on January 1st, I'll start again once the holidays are over and so, of course, if you have like this short, limited amount of time to get things in that you really love, you will make the most of it. Think of it this way Imagine that you're going on a camping trip and you're only allowed one shower for the entire week. Well, you will make the most of that one shower, right? You're going to have that hot water on and you're going to stay in there as much as possible and you will really milk it. I remember.
Speaker 1:So my family, as I said, we do this like big Christmas brunch. We do it on December 26th because one of my brothers is a firefighter and so he often works on Christmas, and we are five kids and then each of the kids have their own partners and like families to go to. So we do our big Christmas on December 26th and we start off with this big brunch, and my parents always get these pastries of like almond croissants and chocolate croissants and like just amazing, amazing pastries from this cafe that we have nearby, and this is usually one of the only times of the year that we have these pastries, and especially when I was struggling with disordered eating, then that was the only time of the year that I would allow myself to have these foods, because I would never go to a cafe and order a coffee with a croissant. That was completely against my rules. So what would happen is, on that Christmas morning well, december 26th I would wake up early. I would do a very intense workout to try to burn as many calories as possible. So this goes hand in hand with my first tip, which is don't do that. If you want to work out, if you want to move your body because that's what feels good or maybe it helps with your mental health absolutely go for it. Just evaluate what the intention behind it is.
Speaker 1:But I would do this massive workout and then the pastries would come out in this big bowl that we would put in the middle of the table, and then we'd also have like chocolate fondue and crepes and all of that. And this was like my mecca, right, Like this was my ultimate quote, quote cheat meal. And so I would have one pastry and then I'd have another and I was like, wow, this is just so incredibly delicious. And my mind would go well, yeah, this is so good and this is the only time that you can have this, so eat as much as you can, even if your body is telling you you've had enough. This doesn't feel good anymore, your stomach hurts. I would keep eating them. And what's interesting and sad is that we keep eating these foods right, because we think that the more quantity I have, the more I will enjoy it. But while we're eating it, we're not really slowing down and paying attention to the taste and savoring every bite.
Speaker 1:There's a reason why I spend a lot of time on teaching D members inside Food, food and Academy how to be mindful eaters is because you actually savor your food more and you don't need these massively large quantities, because you're no longer like fogging out or disconnecting while you're eating, either because of the guilt or you're just not present for it. So I would end up eating so many pastries. And so what I want to suggest to you and it might be hard because you might be thinking intellectually yes, this is the only time that I'm ever going to have these Christmas sugar cookies or whatever food that you have just during the holidays. It might be hard for you to believe that there will be another time that you can have this food before the next year, but you need to remind yourself that this actually is not the only time that you can eat these foods. You're a grown adult, so whether it's those Christmas sugar cookies or the Christmas ham or whatever is your specific Christmas food I can't even come up with any on the top of my mind right now you can have these foods in July or September or March or April literally any time of the year, right. So now we're talking about those foods that you might be telling yourself like this really is the only time.
Speaker 1:But then there's those foods that you truly could have at any time of the year, kind of like those pastries that I was talking about, or maybe for you it might look like pie or cake or baked goods. You can and you should have these foods year round, because if you don't, then you pile it in to this really short amount of time whether it's one meal, one day, one week or the full two weeks of holidays and you end up having what I call, like, these negative experiences with this, this food. This doesn't mean that the food doesn't taste good, but when I talk about negative experiences with our FFA members, I talk about these experiences that harm your relationship with it. So this may look like you deciding that, see, I can't control myself around this food because every time I start eating it I just can't stop. That's how I felt about pastries, and now I'm able to have like half a pastry on Christmas morning and be happy and satisfied.
Speaker 1:So you might build up this negative association to this food, and it never just stays with the food. Then you start to build up this negative view of yourself, this, this perspective that I can't control myself around this food, and I'm sure that you felt this way before. And remember, your brain is powerful, it's extremely powerful, but it's kind of like this child, left to its own devices, because it will take in whatever information that you give to it and just run with it. Your brain operates on the law of least effort and so if it already has a negative belief and then you give it information that confirms it, then you are just going to deepen that belief and it is going to start to feel so true to you, even though what you might not realize is that a belief is simply a thought that you've told yourself enough times that you've really started to believe it. So if you want to be able to have the special cookies or the cake or the pie and not feel like you need to eat the entire sweets table and be able to enjoy your food and slow down and eat in a way that feels good. Listen to your body, stop when you're full.
Speaker 1:Then you need to remind yourself that this is not the only time that you can eat these foods. Think back to the shower example. Showers might be fun, they might feel good, but it's not something that you think about all day, every day. It's not like the most exciting part of your day, because you probably shower regularly. But if you go on a camping trip for two weeks, let me tell you that by the end, having that shower is going to feel really special and you are really going to look forward to it. When you have something regularly, something called habituation happens. You get used to that thing. But if you don't allow yourself to eat those foods regularly, then they're going to feel way too special. You're going to put them on a pedestal and then it is super likely that you're going to overeat. That's the second tip for you.
Speaker 1:And then the third one is have and hold your boundaries when it comes to food, when it comes to diet. Talk conversations about weight and people's bodies. I know that you cannot control what other people say to you. You can't control what conversations are being had around you, and that can be really tough, especially if you are actively working on healing your relationship with food and your body. And if you are, I commend you and I want to tell you that you are not alone. Find yourself a community. Surround yourself with people who are on the same path as you. I cannot tell you how important having a strong community is, because if you're doing this all on your own and then maybe your family is not supportive of this, maybe your family is actually extremely fat phobic and they're always dieting, and so events and holidays when there's food involved, there's going to be a lot of chatter and a lot of things that can be triggering to you, and it could be easy to fall into food guilt and anxiety. It could be easy to just have the second serving, not because you want to, not because your body is asking for more food, but just because someone is a food pusher and they're making you feel bad about not having a second portion or not having another glass of wine.
Speaker 1:So my advice to you is to, especially if you can beforehand, spend like two, three, five minutes by yourself and set some intentions, set some boundaries, decide the way that you want to protect your energy, and that could look like not engaging in conversations around weight and around food. That could look like changing the conversation so, if someone brings it up, or it could even look like verbalizing what your boundaries are right. So maybe at Susan, I no longer want my weight or my food choices to be a topic of conversation. The way that you decide to protect your energy is really up to you and your level of readiness and also evaluating the people around you and their level of openness, and sometimes it will just be easier to walk away. I have a full training on how to handle diet talk and conversations inside the academy, because this is something that is really important, because it can be very easy to get pulled back in and to want to starve yourself tomorrow after eating that piece of pie or to feel bad for going for a second serving even though your body is still hungry. So my third tip to you is to hold set and be very clear about what your boundaries are.
Speaker 1:Protect your energy, and I recommend that you write some things down that you want to remind to yourself when you are around people who might be triggering for you, and remember to trust yourself. I know it can be really easy to take on other people's opinions and to lose trust in the process, or to lose trust in your body and what you're doing. But if you have gone up to this point, can you know that you're on the right path? Then you know that restricting and telling yourself that you can't have certain foods is only going to lead to rebound eating, and you don't want to start another diet on January 1st and just get pulled right back into that cycle. You know this, so remind yourself of that this holiday season. So I'm going to summarize for you those three tips.
Speaker 1:So number one is don't save up your calories. Eat consistently. Don't skip meals. Eat enough right. Honor your hunger, and that will help you be more mindful when you do eat. Be able to slow down. Your body's gonna communicate much better with you. It's gonna be less chaotic and you're gonna be able to focus on things that matter to you more, like conversation with your loved ones.
Speaker 1:So second one is to remind yourself this is not the only time that you can eat these foods right. If it's the pastries, you can go to the cafe a week from now, if you really want to, and have that croissant, because the truth is, whether you have it now, when you've already had enough food, or whether you have it a week from now, when you're actually going to be able to enjoy it so much more, you're eating the food, but in the second scenario, you're eating it in such a more positive way and you're gonna be able to enjoy it more. So remind yourself this is not the only time that you can eat these foods, and whether you actually do go and make those Christmas sugar cookies in April or not, it really doesn't matter, because you're giving yourself the permission, and with permission comes choice. It often happens that let's say, I'm having, like this really great pad thai at a restaurant and I've had enough and I'm full and I kind of push it away. I'm like you know what this was delicious and I know this is probably the only time gonna be able to have this pad thai at this restaurant. I'm going to put it aside because I wanna walk away feeling satisfied and having had a positive experience. However, if I really wanna come back to it, if I have this like really crazy craving for it tomorrow, in a week or in a couple of weeks, or whenever that is, I allow myself to come back to this restaurant and have this pad thai again. So that reminder that permission. With permission comes choice and intentionality. And then the third tip for you is have hold, protect your boundaries. So today we just scratched the surface and what I gave you were very action oriented things that you can do.
Speaker 1:However, when it comes to really healing a food obsession getting rid of guilt and shame, not feeling out of control around food, but being able to trust yourself with food and being able to stop thinking about it 24 seven it does require going deeper. It requires getting down to the root cause of food obsession, hitting into the subconscious, right Like so what is driving the show, without even you realizing there's a reason why people have so many blind spots. I'm sure I have blind spot when it comes to a bunch of different areas of my life, and they're called blind spots for a reason. If we knew that they were there, then we would just fix them and we would get rid of them. But if you're feeling stuck, if you feel like you understand everything that I talk about on this podcast and you understand intuitive eating and it makes sense for you, but there's still resistance there. You don't feel like you are fully in a healthy and balanced relationship with food and you wanna know why and you wanna learn actionable frameworks, strategies, tools and you wanna be coached as you're learning all of this.
Speaker 1:Then that is exactly what I'm going to cover in this brand new three-part video series that's gonna start in January 2024, how to stop feeling obsessed with food. So if you wanna get unstuck, if you want to truly heal your relationship with food this new year so that you are no longer falling back into the same cycle, then make sure that you get on that waitlist sabrinaemangalcom forward slash training dash waitlist, and you can also find that in the show notes. Have amazing holidays. I am going to be there by your side, if you need to hear my voice plot my podcast on before going to one of your family get-togethers. And I believe in you and I want you to remember what is truly important to you, and that is probably connection, presence, enjoyment of these important experiences in your life. I love you and I will catch back in with you on December 27th, after the holidays.