Food for thought: Festive Feasting for a Healthy Mind

While the holiday season can be an enjoyable time of year, it’s important to acknowledge that for some, it can be triggering for their mental health and stir up a mix of emotions, particularly for those managing an eating disorder, following a specific diet, or practicing mindful eating.

Regardless of your body shape, size, or the era you grew up in, holidays and what we eat, can impact our mental health, and trigger a spiral of emotions.

Here are a few tips to get you through the holidays while keeping a mindful focus on our relationship with food and your body.

Let’s make a big effort to stop the diet talk!

These discussions are not ideal, nor necessary.

Bodies fluctuate!

It’s important to remember that one or two days of eating more than you normally would, will not impact your weight or health in the long term. It’s normal for our weight to fluctuate, and this too is likely to happen during the holidays.

Why does our weight fluctuate? Some reasons are:

·         what we’ve eaten

·         drinks we’ve consumed

·         exercise

·         our digestion

·         women’s cycles

It’s normal. Scales are a tool, and normalising fluctuations can be a good strategy to support mental health.

Stop the diet talk

Engaging in discussions about weight, exercise, shape, appearance and calories may be triggering for those around you. These discussions are not ideal, nor necessary during the holidays or anytime for that matter! Let’s make a big effort to stop the diet talk!

Avoid commenting on people’s physical appearances

Commenting on other people’s physical appearances can be activating. We don’t know what those around us are going through. The person who has lost weight may have health challenges. The person in a larger body may be dealing with an eating disorder. Being mindful of this during the holidays can help support the people around you. Bodies are beautiful in all shapes and sizes; wouldn’t it be boring if we were all the same?

Food does not have a moral value

What does this mean? It’s all in the labelling of perceived ‘good’ food and ‘bad’ food. Food is food! Some foods may have a higher nutrient value than other foods, but this does not make them good or bad. The holidays give us a chance to eat the food that is important to our families, such as recipes passed down for generations, or new recipes discovered this holiday season. Let’s remove the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ food labelling, be mindful and enjoy eating delicious foods with the people you love.

iStock Photo cred: SeventyFour

Self-care

The holiday season can get pretty overwhelming, and it's easy to overlook the helpful habits we've developed for maintaining our mental well-being. During this time, it doesn’t take much to fall back on habits like excessive drinking and binge eating as ways to cope with stress. That's where self-care becomes important. Everyone’s selfcare can look a little different because we are all unique A simple yet effective way to kickstart your self-care is by taking a moment to pause and be fully engaged in whatever you're doing.

We hope these tips will help make a difference in how you navigate the festive season and prioritize your mental health.

Guest Author: Rebecca Vincent (Amity Health - Mental Health Clinician)