The Holiday Season Can Intensify Food Stress and Guilt
While the holiday season can come with excitement, joy, and being with family and friends, it can also bring up negative feelings around food. For many people, this time of year can trigger shame, guilt, and restrictive behaviors. The cultural and societal pressure to “save up” and “earn your calories” places immense stress on individuals, especially those working towards a more intuitive approach and trying to avoid disordered eating behaviors. Working with an Intuitive Eating Nutritionist in NYC can help to challenge these societal pressures and bring you closer to your health goals.
Social gatherings that are often centered around food, combined with the pressures of diet culture, can create a perfect storm for feelings of discomfort. Food at these events can feel intense and the pressure to “save room” during the day is only amplified by family members who might be entrenched in diet culture. In addition to the food-related stress, comments about bodies and weight can also come up, triggering further shame and urges to restrict.
But while all of this can feel so overwhelming, it’s important to remember how normal it is to feel this way. Buying gifts, planning holiday parties, making social plans and commitments – all exciting things, but if you’re struggling with your relationship with food and your body, these can feel that much more draining. It makes so much sense why you’d be feeling stretched thin, exhausted, and stressed.
Even though diet culture is pervasive throughout the year, we tend to see it peak around the holidays. The various detoxes and messages encouraging you to “save your calories” or “earn your food” can feel relentless. The emphasis on needing to do X so that you are then allowed to eat is diet culture’s way of getting you to buy into whatever latest trend they’re promoting. Ultimately, these messages only exacerbate disordered eating thoughts and behaviors.
The promotion of new diet trends in the New Year tends to follow suit with the holiday diet culture, and the “new year, new me” mentality is holiday diet messaging rebranded for January. It promotes this idea that you can eat everything during the holidays, because in the new year, you’ll get to start over. This looks a lot like a binge-restrict cycle, just covered in glitter. Diet culture has a way of making things appear much shinier than they actually are.
How Intuitive Eating Helps you Navigate Holiday Eating Without Restriction
With all of this in mind, we understand that the holidays come with not just a lot of food, but also a lot of food comments and opinions. Intuitive Eating offers a different approach, one that encourages you to trust yourself, offers permission, and supports balance. Some key principles to consider during this time include: rejecting the diet mentality, honoring hunger, and allowing satisfaction.
Instead of looking at foods as “good” and “bad” or “healthy” and “unhealthy,” Intuitive Eating promotes neutrality and unconditional permission to eat. When we give ourselves permission, we decrease the fixation on food and the feelings that certain foods are somehow superior. It also allows us to enjoy food without guilt and judgement, because we are able to eat in a way that feels mindful and intentional. Foods don’t become “off-limits,” nor do they need to be earned, which ultimately decreases binge-like behaviors that might come out of restriction.
We are also able to honor hunger and fullness, especially with the increase in social events and irregular eating schedules. When you’re able to check in with your body by listening to your cues, you get to decide what sounds good and what feels satisfying without creating rules. As mentioned previously, the holidays tend to come with a lot of diet culture messaging that promotes rules, rigidity, and the pressure to eat in a certain way. However, this pressure fuels the binge-restrict cycle, because it tells us not to listen to our bodies, and instead, follow arbitrary rules that promise control. But the sense of control doesn’t leave any room for flexibility, and the black-and-white thinking promotes shame and guilt. When we practice gentle nutrition, we are able to incorporate satisfaction, nourishment, enjoyment, and connection. We’re able to lead with curiosity, sustainability, and balance.
How a NYC Intuitive Eating Nutritionist Supports You Through Stressful Seasons
Because this time of year can feel especially challenging, additional 1:1 support from a NYC intuitive eating nutritionist or dietitian can make all the difference. Together, you might work on practical strategies for navigating social gatherings and holiday parties, discuss ways to implement flexibility with changing meal structures, and how to eat mindfully without restricting. An Intuitive Eating nutritionist in NYC can also help you set realistic goals around movement, self-care, and boundary setting, while addressing anxiety related to food and body image so you feel more at ease and confident during the holidays.
It can also be helpful to remember that emotional eating is a normal part of the holiday season. Whether driven by excitement, stress, sadness, or nostalgia, food often becomes a source of comfort amid the chaos. Working with an Intuitive Eating nutritionist in NYC offers a supportive, non-judgmental space where these experiences can be explored without shame. With guidance, you can build tangible coping skills for social and food-related anxiety – such as establishing a meal structure to ensure regular eating habits, developing an understanding of food neutrality to reduce guilt and shame, and identifying ways to eat in environments that feel calm and supportive rather than chaotic.
Realistic Tips to Enjoy Holiday Food Without Shame
Holiday food is meant to be enjoyed, not earned, compensated for, or followed by guilt. You’re allowed to eat without shame, and you’re allowed to give yourself full permission to enjoy the foods you want, without labeling them as “off-limits.” When we give ourselves permission, the urgency around food often decreases, and food doesn’t feel so superior or powerful.
Permission-based eating can look like building a plate that feels satisfying, checking in with fullness without pressure to eat to a specific point, and practicing self-compassion before and after meals. It’s completely normal to eat past comfortable fullness at times or notice anxious thoughts arise, especially during the holidays. When this happens, it can be grounding to remind yourself that your body is capable of digesting the meal and that you are allowed to feel joy around food. Diet culture often clouds our own judgment, creating fear and doubt around enjoyment. Know that it is both okay and encouraged to lean into your favorite foods without needing to follow rigid rules.
As the holiday season approaches, here are a few supportive strategies to keep in mind:
- Aim to build balanced plates that feel both satisfying and nourishing.
- Incorporate grounding practices, such as box breathing, the 5-4-3-2-1 senses exercise, pausing to check in with hunger and emotional wellbeing, or engaging in conversation if that feels supportive.
- Check in with hunger and fullness cues throughout the day to support consistent nourishment and reduce the likelihood of engaging in a binge–restrict cycle.
- Prepare for unhelpful family comments by planning neutral responses, changing the subject, or leaving the conversation.
Even though eating during the holidays might feel chaotic, overwhelming, and stressful, there can still be moments of joy and excitement. It’s not about eating perfectly or following rules – it’s about flexibility, honoring your body, and trusting yourself around food. Allowing room for enjoyment alongside nourishment can help ease pressure and make holiday eating feel more sustainable and supportive.