Intuitive Eating is a proven process to help people improve their relationship with food and actually be able to enjoy food without any stress or anxiety. Last week’s article followed the first five intuitive eating principles in relation to Christmas. Welcome to Part 2, which follows the remaining five! This is your guide to being an intuitive eater at Christmas.
6. Feel your fullness
It’s seen as normal to many that the Christmas period is spent in a state of fullness. There’s nothing wrong with this but if you regularly eat past the point of comfortable fullness, it doesn’t feel very good. Being an intuitive eater means being able to make the conscious decision to stop eating at a point which is comfortable for you.
If you’re new to intuitive eating, you can start by figuring out your own body signals for knowing what fullness feels like. You can do this by carrying out an experiment with yourself. Try pausing in the middle of a meal or snack for a time-out. Use this time to check in with your body and taste buds; is the food still doing things for your taste buds? Is your hunger going away? Are you feeling satisfied? Do you feel pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? These questions will help you to tune in more with your body signals and help make food decisions to suit how you want to feel. It’s also an important point to remember that you shouldn’t feel obligated to eat more just because someone may be pushing you to.
7. Cope with your emotions with kindness
Christmas can be a stressful time, which means that if you struggle with emotional eating, there’s more potential for it to happen. There is nothing wrong with emotional eating – at the end of the day it’s a coping mechanism to help you. However, if you’re nervous about emotional eating this Christmas, try exploring beforehand how you can help yourself and seek nurturance in these moments. A couple of ideas:
- Call a friend and talk through your feelings
- Go for a nice walk
- Do some gentle exercise such as yoga
- Put some music on and have a dance around
- Get cosy in a blanket with a hot chocolate and read a book
8. Respect your body
Christmas can flag up all sorts of body image issues if you don’t yet feel fully comfortable in your own skin. It’s common to hear of relatives commenting on each other’s weight loss/gain or feeling the need for performative eating to fulfil others’ expectations. Body image is a complex issue and it can be a long journey to get to a place where you feel good in your own body. If you’re not there yet, it’s ok, you don’t have to like your body. But can you respect your body this Christmas in order to help yourself?
Respecting your body is a form of self-care and this can include many things. You can start with doing nice things for yourself e.g. give yourself a manicure and/or get your hair done. Choose clothes which you feel comfortable in and which make you feel good – there is nothing worse than not being able to enjoy your day because you can feel your knickers digging into your skin. Stand up for yourself and do what is right for you – don’t let anyone else dictate to you how you should be eating, and shut down any diet culture talk – it is not helpful. Finally, try not to play the comparison game with your body – you never know someone’s health and happiness just from looking at their body. You don’t need to look like anybody else – just be you.
9. Joyful movement
Christmas is a celebration which is centred around food and for many families (who have the privilege), they will be surrounded with an abundance of food over the festive period. For anybody struggling with anxiety around food, this could lead to feeling the need to do loads of exercise to ‘compensate.’ This is your reminder that you absolutely do not need to be killing yourself with an extra gruelling workout this Christmas. There is no need to ‘exercise off’ any extra calories you may have eaten – this is not how the body works.
Of course, our bodies were made to move and feel good, so I’m not telling you not to exercise over Christmas – just do the type of movement which you enjoy, whether that’s a dog walk with your family or bopping some moves around the kitchen whilst waiting on your turkey! Don’t worry if you don’t have time to move as much over Christmas as you normally do – one or two weeks won’t have an impact on your long-term health and your body may enjoy the rest!
10. Honour your health with gentle nutrition
Finally – the nutrition part! In terms of Christmas, this is similar to respecting your body. If you respect your body and want it to feel the best it can, then you can think about adding in some gentle nutrition over the Christmas period. Christmas is all about food and by all means eat what you fancy, just remember that you don’t have to stick to stereotypical Christmas food all week if your body is craving something else. Using myself as an example, I know that after a few days of turkey sandwiches, Christmas pudding and Quality Streets, I’ll be craving something entirely different – such as a buddha bowl of veggies or a fruit salad! Therefore, I will make sure that I have a couple of different options in (or to take with me) over the Christmas period, so that if my body is ready to move on from the heavier food, I’ll have something to give it! If you’re starting to feel a bit stodgy after a couple of days, pull on every principle I’ve mentioned in this article (and part one which you can read here), tune into your body signals and ask yourself what would feel really good to eat right now.
Merry Christmas!
There you have it – your guide to being an intuitive eater at Christmas! I hope you found this article useful. If you would like further help exploring intuitive eating in the new year, why not book your free discovery call here! All that’s left to say is have a fantastic Christmas and a very Happy New Year!
