Intuitive Eating During the Holidays
How Can You Approach Food With More Ease During the Holidays?
Let’s do a little word association game around themes of the holidays: I’ll go first.
Halloween: Candy!
Thanksgiving: Pie!
Hanukkah: Latkes!
Christmas: Cookies!
When it comes to the holiday season, food is often at the center of the festivities.
Throughout history, food has been one of the primary representations of culture, class, comfort, family, and love. Providing and “putting food on the table” has long symbolized success, sacrifice, and care. Passing recipes down from generation to generation has kept family heritage and history alive. “Breaking bread” has been associated with bridging differences. What we eat and when we eat it signifies so much of our identity and sense of belonging — and this factor is only amplified during the holiday season.
Why Can Food Feel So Complicated During the Holidays?
With so much food quite literally on the table, it can be easy to fall into whatever habits you may have around food or body image. Maybe you tend to self-soothe with food, over-eating nervously past the point of comfort when stuck in a conversation with an estranged family member. Maybe your entrenched food rules return, where you find yourself savagely deconstructing pigs out of their blankets at the demure office holiday party because carbs are the anti-Christ. Or maybe you’re just mindlessly eating, not quite noticing what you’re putting in your body or not really caring.
Whatever your pattern or struggle, Intuitive Eating could be a welcome practice this holiday season.
What Is Intuitive Eating?
What is Intuitive Eating? Intuitive Eating is when we follow our body’s intuitive desires when selecting what and when to nourish ourselves.
Step 1: Hunger Cues
How Do You Recognize Hunger Signals in Your Body?
It starts with the hunger cue. Have you ever heard your stomach growl or felt the pang of your stomach concaving around its emptiness? Sometimes this hunger cue can be super obvious, but it can also be more subtle and harder to detect. Regardless of the severity or clarity, your body will let you know when it wants fuel.
Detecting this cue is called interoception, or the ability to notice and understand the sensations inside your body such as your heartbeat, breathing, or hunger. Following your body’s lead to feed is the first step toward eating intuitively.
Step 2: Food Selection
How Do You Choose What to Eat Without Food Rules Taking Over?
The next step is selecting what to eat. Can you feel what kind of food that hunger pang is craving? Does it want something warm and hearty? Something light and bright? Maybe a little sweet treat?
Whatever the case, intuitive eating asks that you honor what your hunger cue is yearning for, as this craving comes from your body to support a biological need.
It should be noted, however, that this step can take some time to click considering how intertwined one’s body cues are with one’s mind messages. The task of engaging in interoception is not so simple when we’ve allowed our brains to intercept our body’s signals time and time again.
This is where we tend to conflate the body’s cravings with the brain’s rules or opinions. The kids today call this food noise.
What Is Food Noise and How Does It Affect Eating?
If you struggle with food noise — thinking constantly about food — it’s imperative to examine your explicit and implicit rules or ideas about nourishment and attempt to challenge the ones that limit you from eating intuitively (excluding allergies or dietary restrictions for medical, cultural, religious, or moral reasons).
What have you labeled as “good” food versus “bad” food? Why? What are your goals regarding your health and your body? Are they rooted in authentic needs or social influences?
This process of dismantling food rules or subconscious beliefs can be difficult and may take time.
How Does Disordered Eating Intersect With Intuitive Eating?
I also feel it’s necessary to address the elephant in the room when it comes to our mind’s rules and opinions about food and body: disordered eating.
Whether you struggle with a diagnosed eating disorder or behaviors that contribute to disordered eating, intuitive eating can be a liberating way out of this cycle. However, the grip of an eating disorder or disordered eating habits is usually extremely strong and incredibly difficult to loosen.
If you feel constricted by negative or nonstop food and body noise to the point of impacting healthy functioning, consider calling the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline at +1 (866) 662-1235 for support. You are not alone.
Step 3: Satiety Cues
How Do You Know When You’re Comfortably Full?
The final step involves tuning into your satiety cues, or your feeling of fullness. Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch describe satiety on a spectrum ranging from hunger to overfullness, helping individuals learn to sense and honor their body’s signals.
This spectrum of interoception can be a helpful guide on the journey toward intuitive eating, though it may vary from person to person.
Why Is It Hard to Listen to Fullness Cues?
It can be tempting to dissociate while eating, ignoring body cues entirely. However, gently checking in with your sense of satisfaction during a meal can help you honor fullness and reduce discomfort.
By noticing and naming where you fall on the hunger–satiety spectrum, you may become more mindful and responsive to your body’s needs.
How Does Intuitive Eating Build Self-Trust?
The concept of intuitive eating requires self-trust, which can be difficult for someone who believes they can’t trust their body or mind.
Be gentle with yourself as you learn to quiet food noise and reconnect with your body’s messages. Your interoceptive wisdom has been guiding you since infancy, though social pressures and expectations may have made it harder to hear.
Intuitive eating can be a path back to inner safety, nurturing, and self-trust.
If you feel called to learn more about intuitive eating, consider reading Intuitive Eating: An Anti-Diet Revolutionary Approach by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. And if you’re interested in exploring intuitive eating with support, reach out to our Client Care Coordinator to find a therapist who can help guide you back to yourself.
Warmly,
Ali Eagle, AMFT
