Mindful Eating for the Holidays

Welcome back, Wildcat! The Holidays are coming up soon which means lots of delicious foods! It also means diet companies ramping up their marketing to sell you an unhealthy, unsustainable diet. But practicing some mindful eating can help us truly enjoy the holidays and all the amazing food that comes with it, but without the uncomfortable overeating and without falling victim to a fad diet! Mindful eating is essentially eating with intention which helps us feel emotionally and physically satisfied and helps us avoid unpleasant overeating. Mindful eating also means using our five senses to listen to our hunger and fullness cues. Let’s check out some ways to eat mindfully and enjoy our holidays!

• Enjoy meals with others: Use mealtime as an opportunity to connect with one another. This will help us eat at a comfortable pace and have time to stay in tune with our hunger signals.
• Don’t skip meals before the big gathering: “Saving” your appetite for holiday feasts can lead to low blood sugar, intense food cravings, and over-eating. And then we get that uncomfortable, overfull feeling. If we eat normal meals throughout the day, we tend to naturally eat more comfortable and moderate portions at our holiday get togethers.
• Ditch the Clean Plate Club. It’s natural not to want to waste food, but trying to finish our plate when we are already full will only make us feel overfull and uncomfortable. Try to focus on how much we are enjoying our meal and take our time to avoid finishing our plate too quickly which can give us that not-so-fun overfull feeling afterwards.
• Honor your fullness: Check in with your body as you eat and see if you are hungry for more or feeling comfortable full and satisfied! It can take awhile for our body to tell us we are full, so eating slowly will help us keep in tune with our hunger cues!
• Allow yourself to enjoy your favorite holiday foods. Try to let go of any food rules. Shift our mindset from labeling food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. All foods nourish our bodies in one way or another. Food can nourish our body and our souls! Restricting the foods that we want but feel that we can’t have can leave us feeling deprived and guilty which can set the stage for overeating later on.
• Dump New Year’s Diet Resolutions. Instead of thinking, ‘I’ll just eat whatever I want during the holidays,’ focus on being mindful at your meals so that you feel emotionally and physically good during the holidays and don’t feel the urge to try a fad diet. Focus on eating without distraction, chewing thoroughly and taking breaks to chat with family and friends, and truly enjoying your food with all your senses! This will help us eat a comfortable amount of food, really enjoy ourselves, and not even think about it!

What mindful eating technique will you use this holiday season? See you next time, Wildcat!

Resources:

https://weillcornell.org/news/tips-for-mindful-eating-during-the-winter-holidays