5 Tips for Managing Holiday Food Anxiety
For many people, the holiday season brings warm feelings of joy alongside a strong sense of dread and anxiety. This is also a time when grief can loom large and old wounds are easily reopened.
If you have a complicated relationship with food, all of that can feel like a lot to hold alongside the food anxiety you already feel. You might find yourself worrying about what food is being served days before the actual event, bracing for comments from relatives, or feeling pressure to restrict before a meal.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. The National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC) notes that for someone experiencing an eating disorder, the holidays can bring anxiety and dread because so many festive traditions revolve around food. These feelings can also show up for people without a diagnosis, since diet culture teaches so many of us to approach holiday food with fear and guilt.
We hope the five weight-inclusive, anti-diet tips in this blog post can help you create more ease and less anxiety this holiday season.
👉 Also for mental health or nutrition support? Let’s talk. Get started today.
1. Eat regularly throughout the day.
A common pattern before a big holiday meal is to skip breakfast or eat very little to “save room” for what’s coming. However, arriving at the table feeling ravenous because you haven’t eaten all day can make food feel more urgent and overwhelming, which often raises anxiety.
Regular meals and snacks give your body steady fuel and give your mind a little more room to be present with the people around you. This kind of planning can also help you avoid falling into the restrict-binge cycle.
If you’re working with our team at Metrowest, we would map out a plan for the day together so you can nourish yourself instead of restrict.
👉Read More: How Can Intuitive Eating Add Ease To The Holidays?
2. Make a plan with your support people.
While professional support is important, identifying people you can lean on in hard moments is a powerful way to manage your anxiety around holiday foods and gatherings. Here are some ways you can go about this:
- Set up a text buddy who knows to check in during dinner.
- Agree on a code word with a partner or friend who’s at the event with you for when you need to step away or want support.
- Plan ahead to take a short walk outside between courses with a non-judgemental friend or loved one.
If you have a therapist, a session before and during holidays can give you space to prepare for and work through anxieties that come up.
3. Set a gentle boundary around diet and body talk.
Holiday tables are often full of comments about “being bad,” New Year’s resolutions, or how someone’s body has changed. These remarks can feel insignificant to the person saying them, but they can land heavily when you’re already feeling anxious about food or are in eating disorder recovery.
Here are some ways you can set and hold those boundaries:
- “I’m trying to keep food talk off the table this year. Can we catch up on how your new job is going instead?”
- “I’d rather not talk about anyone’s body today, mine included. I’d love to hear about your holiday plans.”
- “Thanks for thinking of me, but I’m all set.” This works well when someone comments on your plate or pushes you to have more or less of something.
- “Let’s save the New Year’s resolution talk for another time. Right now I just want to enjoy being together.”
- “Food doesn’t have to be good or bad for me, so I’m going to sit this conversation out.” Then excuse yourself to refill a drink or check in with someone you trust.
If you don’t want to be so direct, you can also redirect the conversation subtly: “I’d love to hear about your trip this year” or “Can we talk about something other than food today?”
👉Read More: Anxiety and Eating Disorders: How to Navigate Healing With Both
4. Give all foods permission to be there.
Diet culture sorts foods into “good” and “bad,” and holiday treats often land firmly in the second group.
The thing is, when a food feels off-limits, it can start to take up a lot of mental space. What’s more, restriction often leads to overeating. This is called the Binge-Restrict cycle, which suggests that when your body goes without enough food, the strong pull to eat that follows is a built-in survival response. Why? Because not eating enough signals to the brain that food is in short supply, which prompts it to seek out large amounts of food whenever it becomes available.
This is something that’s important to work on before you head into holiday meals. Believing all foods fit is a key component to healing from food anxiety—but it takes time. It’s not a switch you flip as you head into the holidays.
5. Meet yourself with self-compassion.
This is hard. We know because we’ve been there and we’ve worked with hundreds of clients who have struggled with food anxiety, at the holidays and otherwise.
Healing can be hard work, but also managing anxiety in the moment can be challenging too. For example, even with careful planning, holiday meals may not go the way you hoped. You might eat past comfortable fullness, feel triggered by a comment, or notice old thoughts creeping back in.
Having self-compassion and giving yourself grace in these moments is critical. Here are some ways you can practice self-compassion:
- Speak to yourself the way you would speak to a close friend.
- Place a hand on your heart and repeat: “This is hard, and I’m doing my best.”
- Follow Dr. Kristen Neff’s 3 mindful self-compassion steps.
You Deserve a Holiday Season With More Ease
Food anxiety during the holidays can feel isolating, but you don’t have to carry it by yourself. Small steps like eating regularly, leaning on your people, setting boundaries, giving foods permission, and offering yourself kindness can help make space for the parts of the season that matter most to you.
If holiday foods are bringing up more worry than you’d like, our multidisciplinary team of therapists and dietitians is here to help. We provide weight-inclusive, Health at Every Size® aligned care through a collaborative care model, so you can get support for your relationship with food and your body in one place.
Reach out to us at Metrowestnutrition.com to learn more about working with us this season and beyond.
