Holiday Eating: Katie Davis

Holiday Eating

Holidays are a wonderful opportunity to see family and friends that you might not otherwise see during the year. But what is a holiday without rich and tantalizing foods? To arrive into the New Year with only positive memories of the holiday season, here are a few nutrition tips to guide you:

1.      Be “choosy” with your choices: The holidays are a great time because it is often your one chance during the year to have Aunt Sue’s famous pumpkin pie, grandma’s stuffing, or cousin Vinnie’s bacon-wrapped scallops. My advice? Eat them! But choose those options over other foods you are able to eat any old time of year. Be “choosy” – eat what you don’t always get!

2.      Be mindful: Once you decide what food(s) you are going to eat during that special holiday meal or event, find somewhere to sit down and truly ENJOY what you have selected. Don’t be in a hurry to eat – take your time and converse with family or friends as you eat. Food should be enjoyed slowly, thoughtfully, and with intention. As you are eating, take note of your hunger and satiety levels – always stop when you are comfortably full or even sooner if your craving is sufficiently satisfied.

3.      Eat a sufficient meal before evening holiday outings: If you are heading to an evening holiday party serving only appetizers or desserts, be sure to eat a well-rounded meal before leaving the house. This will provide your body with energy to help you more easily make good eating choices at the event. It is easier to make smart choices when you are not ravenously hungry.

4.      Mingle away from the food table: To take the focus of your party away from the food, mingle with family or friends away from the food table. Position yourself in a completely separate room or with your back to the food table. This will help you to think less about the food because you can’t see it.

5.      Make sleep a priority: Studies show that inadequate sleep signals a hormone in your body that increases the drive to eat and makes it more difficult for your brain to gravitate toward healthy options. Help your body by getting at least 7-9 hours of sleep each night on average.

6.      Enjoy what truly matters: Keep in mind that what truly matters during the holidays is not the food, but the time spent with family and friends. By focusing on the enjoyment derived from people and not food, the holidays will be much less stressful for you and making healthy choices will happen naturally.

Katie Davis, MS, RD, CSSD, LDN offers individual nutrition counseling on Tuesdays at The Awakening Center. For more info call 773-929-6262.   

Reframing the Holidays

As a child, I never understood why everyone felt that the holidays were a stressful season. At that age, the holidays meant winter break from school, presents, and more time with friends and family. Now, as an adult, I understand why so many people feel stressed during the“most wonderful time of the year,” as the song goes.

An annual event, my clients and I often discuss the holidays, their plans and expectations, as well as past experiences and memories from holiday gatherings. When talking about particular situations, I listen to the words each individual uses to describe the experience or expectation. More often than not, these words carry negative connotations. As a therapist, I often try to work with my clients to reframe such situations by using different words to describe the same situation. Reframing aims to provide a more positive perspective on a situation. Take, for instance, the statement, “I endure the holidays.” The word endure implies hardship and putting up with unpleasantness. I am not saying that people don't encounter unpleasant people or situations during the holidays, but if you approach a situation using different, more positive language, it can help shift your thoughts to be more positive. For example, “I managed the holidays” has an entirely different meaning than “I endured the holidays.” While “endure” implies toleration of the holidays, the word “manage” means to succeed in accomplishing, often despite difficulty or hardship, and gives the speaker more of a sense of power over stressful holiday situations. These small shifts in language help alter people's perspectives.

An example of shifting perspectives can be found in the opening scenes of the movie Love Actually, where friends, family, and lovers are seen reuniting at the airport during the holiday season. Viewers are shown the scenes that make them feel warm and happy, however, we all know that there are probably just as many disgruntled travelers who are bedraggled from missed or delayed flights, and who appear less than thrilled to be arriving into an airport terminal. Yet those negative aspects of holiday travel aren't highlighted in this movie. We can do the same for ourselves by choosing to identify and highlight the enjoyable parts of the holidays, such as catching up with old friends, and reframing negative aspects that come hand in hand with the holiday season, such as crowds when shopping.

Working to reframe experiences and expectations is not easy, however, using more positive language and choosing to think about what we do like about the holidays will lead to more optimistic thoughts and enhanced experiences in general, especially around the holidays.

Katie Anson, MA, LPC
Katie is bilingual (Spanish/English) and sees clients for individual therapy at The Awakening Center. She can be reached at (773) 929-6262 x23.

Creating Your Holiday

The holidays are full of expectations for everyone. We are expected to have a wonderful holiday with all of our family and friends. Usually this includes participating in many extra social activities, giving gifts and intense family interactions. Our internal expectations might tell us that we should be happy and enjoy everyone's company, or something is wrong with me that I'm not enjoying this.

What we don't stop to think about is the holiday activities we have are in addition to all of our normal daily activities. Our life doesn't stop for the holidays. We still have to work, or go to school, pay our bills and feed the dog. Usually, people end up feeling stressed and overextended. They cope by going into overdrive to do everything. But what if you did it differently this year? Instead of feeling overwhelmed, if you took some time to stop and be quiet and listen. Why not ask yourself what is most important to you this holiday? What would you like to see happen this holiday?

Maybe one of your goals is to take care of yourself this holiday. Then build in time for yourself to rest and take care of yourself. This may mean making arrangements with a friend to call each other if family gatherings get to be too much. Let them know ahead of time what your concerns and needs are and how they can best support you. Or maybe there is someone who has been supportive of you this last year that you want to acknowledge? What are meaningful ways you could connect with the important people in your life? Could you write them a note? Make a phone call to let them know how important they are to you? Or just think about what you would like to say to them. Maybe doing acts of service is something you'd like to try this year. How about making a list of all of the things you have to be grateful for this year?

Whatever you choose to do, make it about you and what your vision is for the holidays and not what others tell you it “should” be like.

Maureen McNichols Ed. S, LCPC is an intern at the Awakening Center and a co facilitator of the Tuesday night Eating Disorder Support group. She can be reached at (773) 929-6262 x.12

“Your Holiday Toolbox”

So here we are, smack in the middle of the holiday season- that 6-week period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. How are you doing in this stressful time? Are you reeling from that Thanksgiving dinner and hoping to make it through Christmas unscathed? Are you counting down to when life returns to normalcy? Or are you embracing each challenge that this holiday season brings with quiet determination and clarity of thought?

The New York Times published an article entitled “Duck! It’s the holidays” (by Joyce Walder, Nov 18, 2009) that relates the story of Eric Marcus, a 51-year-old NYC writer who invited his mother to Thanksgiving dinner at his home. Despite the wide array of food prepared by professional cooks that were also guests at this gathering, she complained loudly about the lack of a sweet potato dish. Marcus felt that this was just typical behavior on her part as she often found a way to be disappointed no matter the situation.

“Suddenly I’m 12 years old and we are someplace when she says something inappropriate and embarrassing yet again,” Mr. Marcus said in the article. “All her life, she has a habit of saying negative things.”

Does this sound oh so familiar to you? The holidays, with all their revelry and celebration, are often a minefield of negativity for many families. By merely bringing so many family members together, the holidays often trigger age-old family dynamics that have their roots in childhood. No matter if you are 50 or 15, you might find yourself in that caretaker or mediator or rebel or parent role just one more time.

If you have an eating disorder, the holidays might be so distressing to you that you might find yourself resorting to old and destructive ways of relating to food. There is just something about the magnetic pull of family dynamics that sees many of us engaging in old and unhealthy coping mechanisms that we thought we had grown out of.

For me, I know that whenever I face an interaction with my family, be it a mere phone call, a casual dinner or a Christmas party, I have found it useful to take some active steps to ensure that I can take care of myself should the old triggers reappear. Some steps include:

1) Plan, plan, plan: Prepare for potentially triggering situations by talking about your fears and insecurities with a therapist or with a good friend. You might want to draw up a game plan with several constructive things you can do if a distressing situation occurs. If you have an open and cooperative relationship with your family, you might want to send them an email in advance to politely request that they avoid talking about or doing certain things that might distress you.

2) Fill up your toolbox: You want to bring a variety of coping skills to the family dinner table so that you have healthy alternatives other than what you are so used to doing. You might want to write down several self-care activities that you know will be effective in soothing you- walking a walk, bringing a good book, updating your playlist with your favorite music are all good options. Sometimes, when these aren’t possible (maybe you can’t walk away from the dinner table) taking a good, deep breath helps a ton.

3) Lastly, be kind to yourself. If you do find yourself engaging in old patterns of behavior, try to really let it go and forgive yourself. It is important, when you fall, to recognize the fact that your past efforts and that the holidays are a really difficult time for almost everyone.

So for this holiday season, I wish you a time of healthy eating and healthy thought, and a time of non-judgment and self-acceptance.

Jolene Hwee is a master's level practicum intern from Northwestern University.

* The NYT article can be found at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/garden/19manners.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=duck!%20its%20the%20holidays&st=cse&scp=1