Go ahead and indulge!
I bet you didn't think you'd hear that from a nutritionist.
While I flip through holiday-themed health blogs, I get that nagging irritation when I keep seeing themes like
'5 Ways to Avoid Crashing Your Diet This Holiday Season' and 'How to Keep Away From The Holiday Bulge'...
and this voice in my head screams: "Enough of the food (and fat!)-shaming already!"
While most of the time when you see me, I am teaching a cooking class, making salads, fermented foods, homemade soups, nut-milks from scratch and talking healthier alternatives to flour and sugar, it is important to note that I my life is not all healthy food, best practices and planning ahead!
However, I can also be found enjoying a real ice-cream cone, shamelessly munching my Mom's Christmas sugar cookies by the half-dozen and eating a little too much on the holidays, just those last few bites because it's sooooo good! And this is not a 'cheat day' or a transgression against my usually healthy diet.
Having treats and feasting with friends and family are some of the really juicy, great moments with food. Enjoying these moments without any ugly guilty feelings is just as important to my well-being as habitually eating healthy foods is.
I see food as the sustenance that it is, of course, but more than that, food is ties up in social gatherings, cultural traditions, feelings of nostalgia, warmth and comfort...and these reasons for eating are important too.
The 80/20 rule
is what can help guide decisions about when it's ok to indulge. 80% of the time, I eat what is going to help me maintain my body's health or get me to my health goals. The other 20% is all fair game, no guilt or shame at all. The exception is of course when the 20% causes more harm than benefit
, so we have to weigh the gains from personal satisfaction and the ability to stress less about diet rules, with longer-term health effects (such as strictly avoiding foods which we are allergic to).
So let's plan ahead
a little this year in anticipation of at least one social gathering that results in indulgence. The sort that can really combine some strange but great holiday favourites, such as Grandma's layered gelatin salad with all the stuffing, Christmas pudding and oodles of chocolates. Other factors like slowing down to eat, chewing (as mentioned below) and stressing less will really help to reduce discomfort from occasional over-eating.
Here are some things you can do to prevent that holiday bloat:
1) Eat your Enzymes:
Enzymes are proteins that act as catalysts for functions like sleeping, eating and digesting. One big reason for uncomfortable bloating is a lack of digestive of food enzymes. I encourage you to learn more about how enzymes affect your digestion and overall health and where to get them. I will direct you to my Nutritionist friend, Connie Sears from Nutritious Life
, and her great post about just this topic here.
Some key take-aways from Connie on enzymes: