Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah and New Year may be very stressful holidays for women. The holiday season is a time that is supposed to be about thankfulness, giving and receiving, and celebration. But, it may be torturous to some women.
Why?
Not only does a woman need to prepare the food for those who will come to celebrate with her, but also she must not eat it, in order to look her best. Looking her best is an expectation when it comes to holiday parties, but the duality of preparing food and not eating eat it, plus the stress of having family join you may send many (if not every woman in the planet), straight into compulsive-eating mode.
The following are some tips to avoid eating compulsively during the holiday season. Hopefully, you will be able to apply them and enjoy eating during this season and well beyond.
- Do not try to deprive yourself of the foods you love.
- Don’t make eating a secret. Feel entitled.
- Acknowledge the foods you enjoy. Enjoying is not a sin.
- Make public that this holiday season you will not diet. This will take the pressure off you.
- Refuse to engage in in diet talk. Diet talk may feel as if it connects you with other women, but in fact it does breed anxiety.
- Do not deprive yourself, ahead of time. It backfires every time.
- Do not fill up on diet foods before a party because you will still eat at the party, and feel worse.
- Have a friend (or a family member) enlisted to talk to, if anything upsets you during the holiday event.
- Practice feeling hungry without getting upset.
- Measure your hunger on a scale from 0 to 10, so you know when you are heading to eating compulsively.
- Eat something before you are ready to eat compulsively!
- Imagine eating in a relaxed manner.
- Ask for the recipe if you love something you tried.
- Do not do the “talk yourself diet” when eating.
- Remember that deprivation leads to bingeing.
- Do not criticize yourself no matter the weight or shape of your body.
- Dieting is not the answer to a weight problem since dieters tend to yo-yo and gain more than the lost in the first place.
- Enjoy your holiday. I hope these tips help you this holiday season!
Iréné Celcer, 56, has extensive experience working internationally with men, women, and children who suffer from obesity, body image disturbances and eating disorders. She is a regular guest at CNN where she talks about her specialties on , food and disordered eating, parenting and bullying. Iréné holds graduate degrees in psychology from Universidad de Belgrano, Argentina; Holistic Psychologyfrom Antioch University, San Francisco; and Social Work from Yeshiva University, New York. She is is the author of the collection of books, Hope & Will Have a Baby (Graphite Press, 2007, 2010), 99 Tips to Reset the Table: Parenting in a Society Obsessed with Food, Weight, Obesity, & Body Body Image (Graphite Press 2015). She is also the author of some books in Spanish: Mujer, Cuerpo, Dieta? La Voz de La Obsesion/ Women, Their Bodies & Dieting: The Voice of an Obsession/ (Vinciguerra 1996) and La Tirania de las Dietas/The Tyranny (Planeta 1994). Her daughter is 15 years old.