This post & episode is not meant for medical advice.
Please seek help from a licensed care practitioner if you suffer, or think you suffer, from an eating disorder

If you struggle with food & diet thoughts in menopause, and this AMPLIFIES through the holidays, this post & podcast episode will:

• Uncover any challenges this season may pose if you struggle with food or are thinking of ditching diets.

• Help you identify your Holiday Food Personality while moving through this season with a non diet approach.

Did you know the Holiday Season is also called the Festive Season?

It’s also been coined: Eating Season from the Urban Dictionary.

Whatever you call the time between Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day, one thing is certain:

There’s lots of food around.

And if you’re like me, and are the host year after year, there is a LOT of food to prep … and enjoy!

From bakeries to grocery stores, parties to gifts, holiday foods are ABUNDANT. The desire to eat them is abundant too.

It creates a lot of stress in those that aren’t addressing their food relationship.

If you are in menopause, you have been immersed in diet culture for a good part of your life. Diet culture messaging can increase our feelings of GUILT this season.

It call also magnify an already unsteady body image in menopause.

I’ve seen this time of year called Festive Season, Holiday Season, and Eating Season. Not to be confused with seasonal eating, which is a completely different thing.

What is Eating Season?

Have you heard of Eating Season? The urban dictionary defines it as:

The period of time from Thanksgiving, (or perhaps as early as Halloween depending on regional traditions) until Super Bowl Sunday, where every event involves an outrageous volume of food …

The rest of the information turns into fatphobic language, so I'm not even going to link the site here in the show notes for information.

Side note here: only you get to comment on the amount of food you eat during the holidays.

Here in Canada, we’ve just finished Thanksgiving weekend.

Even though I know it is a problematic holiday, I do get together with family, have a nice dinner and practice gratitude. (If you would like to learn more about indigenous & food appropriation of Thanksgiving, I DO have a link in the show notes, below.)

While the practice of gratitude is one facet of eating mindfully, it also is a positive action towards the abundance of food that can be overwhelming during the holiday season.

Let’s think of Mindful Eating as an antidote to guilt, shall we?

Eating season, or the Festive Season,
is challenging for many.

The holidays are stressful, bringing up family conflict, magnifying the loss of a loved one and for those who struggle with food, this can INCREASE FOD CONFLICT at a time when there is lots of delicious food around and available.

There may be comments from family such as, “Oh, do you really need another piece of that?”

Thanks, no one needs to hear that.

The stress and the emphasis on food, all take a toll on emotional well being. It makes sense that many want to diet in January as a New Year’s Resolution, even thought diets are rarely effective, long term.

New Year’s Day seems to mark the subsequent season of dieting/shame for eating that delicious food doesn’t it?

Or does it mark a season of wellness trends?

Whatever this season means to you, if you are reading this, you are curious about how you navigate the holiday season and food.

You can start by looking at how you currently get through the festive season.

How do YOU navigate food during the Holidays?

First, identify what your current FOOD thought process is around holiday season. Which one describes you best?

1. Throw all my “food rules” to the wind and enjoy the season for all it’s worth! I’ll think about my health in 2023.

2. I’ll just try and enjoy some of the foods I crave, and limit my eating.
   It’s going to be hard, but I just need to have willpower.

3. I plan to diet on January 2nd. When that day comes. that’s it. I’ll throw away all the leftover goodies, make salad and soup and hit the gym.

4. I am planning to approach this season differently this year and listen to my body, for feelings of satisfaction, along with hunger and fullness?

Second, if you identify with numbers 1-3, did you know that there may be some pitfalls in this type of thinking?

1. Throw all my “food rules” to the wind.
   This doesn’t seem like a bad idea, really. I’m all for tossing food rules out into the garbage! The flaw here becomes apparent in two ways.
   
   If you throw all rules out into the garbage, are you ignoring a health condition, like a blood sugar issue, that might benefit from conscious choices?
   
   If worrying about your health only when January first comes is your plan, you may be in the all or nothing thinking process of diet culture.
   
   If this is your pattern every year, and things stay the same with your health and emotional state about food and your body, it might be time to REFLECT ON THIS PATTERN.
   

2. Limit my eating. It’s going to be hard, but I just need to have willpower.
   Ah, I can relate to this one.
   In my 20’s and 40’s, when I knew I’d be faced with gingerbread or pumpkin pie, I’d skip meals, eat only salads, with NO protein.
   Then I could just eat the cookies! Instead, I’d end up really hungry, REGULARLY, during holiday season which had me eating way more cookies than if I just stuck to regular meals with protein, fat and fibre!

   I thought this happened because I had no willpower, and that I just needed to try harder.
   
   I didn’t realize how my BIOLOGY, my body’s safety systems, drove me to eat.
   

3. I plan to diet on January 2nd. Then I’ll throw out all the goodies in my cupboard and that will be IT.
   Will it? Can we be realistic here?
   Again, this is an all or nothing approach.
   It’s a pattern many of us have been in over the years. Throwing away foods that tempt us seems logical, like diets seem logical. But is it?
   
   You may have seen this action called the “pantry clean out”.
   
   It does nothing to change your relationship to food or uncover why these foods are so tempting to you to begin with!
   

4. I am planning listen to my body, for feelings of satisfaction, along with hunger and fullness.
   I believe this is a balanced and realistic approach to Eating Season.
   
   Did you know that science is backing this approach as an alternative to dieting? Mindful Eating teaches you to become more PRESENT, or conscious while eating, and even in your choices around food.
   
   It helps you understand your own body cues, so that YOUR OWN CUES guide you, not some diet that doesn’t understand your individual needs or emotions around food.

What’s the FIRST step to shift diet culture thinking through the holidays?

You’ve identified your food thought around the holiday season.

What is a NEXT STEP for you, if you want to start backing away from diet culture during Eating Season?

One of the popular tips for ditching the diet mentality through the holidays is to stop restricting foods. Giving yourself permission to eat the foods you desire, without guilt, does help limit cravings for these foods, due to deprivation.

These are good tips, if you’re far enough along the food relationship journey to be able to DO THEM, while unravelling feelings of guilt and shame about your eating and your body,

While these tips can help you stop skipping meals if your “tactic” is to save calories so you can eat the cookies without guilt, it can be hard to JUST STOP RESTRICTING.

You may have been doing this food restriction thing for a long, long time. Years of dieting thoughts will linger in your head, and this is normal.

Your first step is to understand your hunger.

Taking a moment, to pause and assess your hunger level is the LOGICAL first step in moving away from diet culture practices through the holidays.

Thinking of eating something? Pause and ask yourself. Am I hungry?

Did you answer yes?

Next assess, how hungry am I? I have a FREE (no email required) Hunger Scale on this post here.

Once you feel your level of hunger, you can move on to making food decisions based on needs AND desires.

Here’s an example: If you are very hungry, and feel like you need to eat, but WANT to eat something sugary, what does your INNER COACH say? Keep in mind that the inner coach is not to be confused with the inner critic. (This post here talks about that inner critic).

Your inner coach is your voice of kindness, logic and reason. That inner critic is shaming you and telling you what you SHOULD do.

Notes & Sources:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/thanksgiving-traditions-indigenous-canada-1.620711

Ready for more?