How to Manage the Stress of Holiday Meals

This is a copy of the first edition of a monthly email for mental health providers. If you'd like to join the listserv, please email me at laura@silverstreetnutrition.com and I'd be happy to add you!

Hi there!

In case you don’t recall, I’m Laura Silver -- an anti-diet, HAES-aligned dietitian that specializes in helping adults heal from eating disorders, disordered eating, and the chronic cycle of dieting. Welcome to my new monthly email newsletter for mental health providers to offer tips on how to support your clients with food, movement, and body image related difficulties.

Let’s get into it!

As we get closer to Thanksgiving, the stress of holiday meals comes up more and more often with my clients. The most common worries I hear are about:

• Inevitable food, diet, and weight comments from family members
• Feeling out of control around their favorite special holiday foods
• Food guilt after “indulging” more often

All of these concerns make perfect sense to me — and I find it helpful to validate these worries for clients too. But it absolutely is possible to have a relaxing, enjoyable, and delicious Thanksgiving with family and friends. Here are a few tips for managing each of these concerns.

Food, diet, and weight comments from family. Talk to your client about setting boundaries with themselves and their family early and often.

Boundaries with themselves might look like: Choosing not to start or engage in diet talk, and reminding yourself not to take comments too personally (they generally say more about the commenter than the commentee!).

Boundaries with family might look like: Asking that certain subjects not be discussed, or just changing the conversation when they come up. Practice responses aloud in advance because it can be tough to come up with them in the heat of the moment.
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Feeling out of control around holiday foods. I’m often reminding clients that they have unconditional permission to eat any and all foods they like, which means they don’t need to treat any one eating occasion like the last time they’ll eat that food. With that said, oftentimes, folks only eat their favorite holiday foods once a year, so it can feel like “the last time” — at least for a long time. In response, empathize with the urge to overeat those special foods and remind them that it’s normal to be really excited about holiday foods, and OK if they do end up overeating. Then, remind them that while they might not eat these specific foods again for a while, the holiday isn’t the last opportunity to eat delicious food — that is allowed every other day of the year too.

Food guilt post ”indulging”. First, help clients see the positive intent of their food guilt. The goal of food guilt is not just to belittle ourselves, but to motivate “better behavior” next time. This deeper understanding of guilt can create space for a broader conversation about the (often surprising) ineffectiveness of guilt and shame to change our habits long-term. Discuss how to build a nonjudgmental awareness of guilty thoughts along with self-compassion statements to replace them with.

These are just a few ways to address these all-too-common concerns, but there are so many more directions we can go with clients. In my practice, I also find it immensely helpful to identify clients’ food rules and beliefs, provide more accurate nutrition education, and help them reframe those beliefs to be more flexible and kind.

I could go on and on, but I’ll leave it at that for today. Thanks for reading this far and please don’t hesitate to reply with any questions or reflections! See you in your inbox December. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Be well,

Laura Silver, MS, RD, CDN