How to stop feeling guilty about food this Christmas time
Tags: Diet, Food, Christmas, Mental Health, Fitness

For many people, Christmas is a time of celebration, family and gifts with the festive season offering us the perfect time to unwind and appreciate those around us. With these feelings of joy, comes the inevitable feasts and festive treats that are shared to symbolise the love and warmth felt during this time of celebration. As a society, many of the celebrations and festivals that we enjoy are marked with traditional foods that often stray away from fruit and veg, and are instead filled with yummy sugars, carbs and fats. Yes, Christmas certainly provides us with an array of delicious treats to dig into and all should be enjoyed carefree! However, for many people, the bombardment of food during Christmas time can leave feelings of guilt, shame and even anxiety. Food is a delicious and great way to spread joy but is also heavily demonised in the media making many people feel that indulging into their favourite treats is a ‘sin’ that should be ‘burnt away’. These shameful feelings can often defeat the joy that Christmas brings and turn a celebration into an anxiety-provoking time of regret. So, how do you turn away from the harmful messaging of diet culture and learn to fall in love with festive food again, completely guilt-free?

Make sure that you are still eating 3 meals a day

At Christmas time, it can be tempting to skip meals in order to minimise the guilt that you may be feeling from previous indulges, however, skipping meals will leave your body unsatisfied which will only lead to an even larger binge later on. This cycle is common for many- you eat ‘too much’, you feel guilty so you decide to skip breakfast and then your body craves food so you repeat this over and over again! Falling into this trap will leave you feeling ‘out of control’ around the Christmas buffet and guilty after every festive celebration. Christmas isn’t fun if you're constantly beating yourself up about food! To top this cycle, you should make sure that you properly satisfy yourself with 3 large meals a day and as many snacks in between as your heart desires. Doing this will prevent sudden urges to eat absolutely EVERYTHING insight and will prevent you from feeling guilty about a binge.

Unfollow social media accounts who encourage diet behaviour

After a long day of eating and drinking until the button on your jeans only just comes together, there is nothing worse than scrolling through social media and seeing a skinny fitness influencer telling you ‘how to shred your Christmas weight’ or ‘how to burn off your pudding’ (yes, these are actual Christmas posts that I have seen!). These posts are simply unhelpful and do nothing but increase the guilt that you may feel. The least important thing about Christmas is the size of your waist and NO ONE should be telling you otherwise! The easiest way to escape these guilt-inducing posts is to unfollow anyone who makes you feel bad about the food that you've enjoyed or the way that your body currently looks/feels.

Change your food mindset

One reason that it is so easy to feel guilty about the food that we eat, is that society has thought us that food exists solely for the purpose of dictating our size or shape. We are told that protein grows are muscles, that greens will help us to ‘detox’ and that sugars will make us gain fat. Rarely are we thought about the deeper nutritional purposes of the food that we eat and it is even rarer that we are thought to view food as simply an experience or a privilege. In truth, we are privileged to be able to eat an excess of food at Christmas time and this privilege should be cherished and enjoyed. Instead of thinking about food as calories or macro-nutrients, think of the food you eat and memories made, pleasure given or energy that can be used for other exciting moments in your life. When we stop putting a numeric value on food, we can start to appreciate it without feeling guilt or shame.