I Now Eat Xmas Cookies Guilt-Free. And Stopped Researching Diets.

What’s your relationship like with holiday eating?

Do you love all the holiday fare yet feel overwhelmed by anxiety, stress, guilt or shame for eating in ways you typically don’t? 

At night, do you lie in bed resolving to start a new diet and exercise program in January?

Do you wish you could enjoy the holiday season without being distracted by all the food noise in your head? 

If so, you’re not alone—and it doesn’t have to be this way.

My clients have discovered that after working for a while on divesting from diet culture and eating more intuitively, their experience with holiday eating is much different than years prior. 

Over the years, their comments have sounded like this...

Zero Strings Attached
“I used to give myself a free pass to eat anything I wanted during the holidays. It wasn’t really free, however, as I believed I had to pay the price come January 1 by going on another diet and working out more. It’s so liberating to be able to enjoy all my holiday favorites with zero strings attached.”

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Stopped Stuffing Myself
“Since I’m no longer planning to cut out carbs in January, I no longer feel the need to stuff myself with sweets before they are off-limits.”

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No Looming Threat
“From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, I felt like I was engaging in one long Last Supper before my next diet started. The physical discomfort I felt from eating every meal as if it was going to be my last one convinced me all the more that I needed to get back on track in the new year. 

Thank goodness I now know it was the looming threat of another diet that was causing my scarcity-driven Last Supper eating. Without another diet around the corner, I'm now able to eat in a much more satisfying way.

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More Present and Engaged
“Once I started giving myself unconditional permission to eat whatever I want any day of the year, I stopped feeling obsessed with all the holiday food. I still love making it and eating it but I no longer think about it all the time. I'm now much more present for my loved ones and more engaged in other aspects of the season.” 

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Feel a Sense of Ease
“I used to go into the holiday season feeling deprived from my latest diet. As a result, I felt out of control with all that good food. It was like I had found water after being lost in the desert for months. I couldn’t get enough of it. Once I understood it was the dieting, not a lack of self-control, that caused me to eat in a binge-y way, I stopped restricting and eventually started feeling a sense of ease and peace with food."

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No Longer Feel Bad
“I still sometimes eat until I’m super full because the food is so delicious! The big difference is that I don’t feel bad about it anymore and I don’t feel like I have to make up for it.”

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Relief to Stop Researching
“In years past, I always spent New Year’s Day researching detox and diet plans. It’s a relief to know that this year I won’t be wasting my money on an expensive cleanse package or my time trying to learn the rules of a new diet program.”

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There's No Guilt
“My holiday eating is so much more enjoyable now that I no longer feel guilty for eating a bunch of Christmas cookies.”

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A Priceless Gift
Of course, the shift to more peaceful, pleasurable holiday eating doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to move away from diet culture toward a more intuitive relationship with food and your body.

Most people, including me, have found that with patience, practice and perseverance, the food stuff gets a little easier with each passing year.

To be able to eat with ease and gusto during the holiday season, and all year round, is a priceless gift—but even more so, it’s an inherent human right—that everyone deserves, including you.

My Food Police Spoiled My Vacations

Many years ago, my boyfriend and I were walking down a quiet cobblestone street in a small Turkish town when we encountered the most delicious aroma. Upon investigation, we discovered it was coming from a small, nondescript bakery on the side of the road.

We poked our heads in and were intrigued by a tray on the counter piled high with flakey, coiled pastries sprinkled with sesame seeds. We had no idea what they were and didn’t speak Turkish but eagerly bought one.

Back on the street, we tore into the roll. It was slightly sweet, crispy on the outside, and soft and tender on the inside.

Its flavor was unlike anything we’d ever tasted before. It took a minute to figure out the star ingredient was tahini and only seconds to decide we wanted more.

With our sticky fingers, we turned right back around, reentered the bakery and purchased more of those glorious rolls.

Momentarily Pleasurable
Unfortunately, this moment of pure pleasure didn’t last long.

It was quickly spoiled by my inner Food Police, the voice in my head that was always trying to make me feel bad, guilty and ashamed about my eating.

This critical, punitive voice berated me for eating something so caloric. It calculated all the miles I would need to run to make up for it. It told me it would be a good idea to skip dinner.

It made me feel remorseful, irritable and distracted.

All this relentless noise in my head turned me into a cranky travel companion and prevented me, and sadly my boyfriend, too, from fully enjoying the rest of our day.

Post-Vacation Compensation
My pastry experience was not unique. It happened over and over again on that vacation and many others with any food I considered bad, fattening or unhealthy.

Despite giving myself a “free pass” to eat whatever I wanted while traveling (WTH, I’m on vacation!), thanks to my dieting mindset, my eating was never truly free.

There was always a sense that I would have to pay for it, that I would need to undo the “damage” I had caused when I got home by restricting my eating and ramping up my exercise.

It’s understandable that I thought this way. Perhaps you have, too.

Diet culture with its anti-fat underpinning has normalized the belief that any sort of food “indulgence” needs to be compensated for with a diet, detox, cleanse, fast, workout, etc.

Just think about how many times you or your vacation companions have said something like “I’ll need to make up for all this eating when I get home!” or “My diet starts the day I return!” or “I’m cutting out carbs the minute I’m back!”

Because comments like these are so common and relatable thanks to our pervasive diet culture, most people will laugh, nod their heads in agreement and respond with a “Me too!” or “I hear ya!”

Guilt-Free Vacation Eating
What if it didn’t have to be this way? What if your vacation wasn’t tainted by worries about what you ate and how you’re going to make up for it? What if you could enjoy whatever you wanted and just move on?

Part of the process of making peace with food includes challenging your diet mentality and anti-fat bias, firing your inner Food Police, and truly giving yourself unconditional permission to eat—not just while you’re on vacation but every day of the year.

I absolutely love trying local foods when I travel. Doing so became so much more pleasurable once I healed my relationship with food and began eating with guilt-free gusto. It makes me wish I could go back to that bakery and do it all over.