Me: “I’m going to treat myself this holiday season!”

— me, who has rarely, if ever, denied myself anything.

This is ME, on the real.  From the outside, it appears as a healthy dose of “self-love” and “treat-yo-self” mentality, but in reality, I tend to indulge more than I limit.  Since the majority of the things I put in my body help me rather than hurt me, I don’t give myself too hard of a time when I want a treat!  (However, I still have that gnarly, looping diet culture narrative playing in my head from time to time.)

This holiday season, let’s rewrite the narrative!

Who wants a limiting life full of self-trash talk, thoughts of regret, and perspectives of “you can’t eat this because ____" and other tactics we use to punish ourselves??  All because you ate a slice of pecan pie?  No way… Something’s gotta change in that mindset.

What if we give ourselves permission to eat anything we want?

What does that mean?  How can we do that while still knowing when we’re actually satiated and satisfied, and not spiraling in whipped cream and eggnog?

Well, think about the psychology behind someone telling you that you can’t do something. Makes you wanna do it even more, huh?  Same thing with the food!  AND it creates a sense of “Oh man, I don’t know when I’m going to be able to eat this again, so I gotta have more than what actually feels good to my body, since this might be the last time I’ll get to have this!”.  Now we aren’t listening to the body and, instead, we are listening to the frantic voice of a little ego in a scarcity + fear-based mindset.

Now, think about how GOOD that same serving of food would taste if you actually allowed yourself to eat it?  The cloudy layer of knowing when to stop eating is cleared up since you allow yourself to indulge now, and you know you will allow yourself to indulge again when the time is right.  And imagine the attitudes, thoughts, and feelings that would be present now with the “Okay, sweet ME, go ahead…enjoy this :)” perspective, rather than the “if you eat this now, you have to go on a walk tomorrow for at least 30 minutes, and you can’t have ____ that you were really looking forward to” mindset.  Things would taste so much better – not to mention would legitimately digest better, since you won’t be in a place of mental/emotional stress, which is the opposite of “rest and digest.”

There will be so much more room for gratitude towards

1. Your new awareness and self-validating love

2. The fact that you are ALLOWED to enjoy something yummy

3. How amazing it is to even have such wonderful food so easily available to you

So let's do this: Shift into gratitude vs. subconscious punishments/withholds.

Gratitude is an almost-cliche buzzword nowadays, but it is for reason.  Gratitude has this incredible way of transforming thoughts, feelings, and actions, and thus your entire human experience in any given moment. For this anti-guilty-eating purpose, let’s think of it as thoroughly enjoying the experience given to you at THIS moment.

How much better is that?

So go into this holiday season with compassion for yourself, with grace, and even with a (healthy) fire under you to eat as cleanly as manageable the rest of the time.