Basic Nutrition Tips- Savoring + Ignoring Holiday Nutrition Hype
This weeks article is about the incredible health benefits of practicing savoring and all the unrealistic nutrition advice that is being undoubtedly blasted in your social media feed and email these weeks. “Eat fruit instead of sugar laden sweets this holiday season”, “tips to ditch alcohol for the holidays”, “Stay on track this holiday”, etc. You may have seen our most recent article with a similar flavor on indulging without guilt this holiday along with some tips on how to maintain in the gym; and we feel that is WAY more sane and realistic for most people. While it is no doubt a great idea to still make healthier substitutions using more whole and minimally processed ingredients, stick to your exercise routine as much as possible, and maintain a solid sleep and self-care routine; we realize the food choices this time of year can be a bit of a challenge.
Idealistic Goals Often Fail When Stressed or Unprepared
The holidays and December especially is a time when you may be feeling some extra stress (or not if you’re taking it back a notch this year, and if so, good on you!). However, you are likely not on a typical rhythm that you may normally keep for the rest of your year. Holiday gatherings and so many extra happenings and things to get done at home and work on top of the normal day-to-day make for a less than ideal scenario to try something new or even give extra effort at times with various health focused habits. In fact, lack of readiness and preparation along with a concrete action plan is why many people have a tough time sustaining progress in general. Other contributors are not having the ability to revamp your gameplan as you move along so you get sort of stuck if you manage to actually get things going. December may not be an ideal month in that regard either.
What perhaps may be even more frustrating for you this time of year (and for us at RB to see as well) is the amount of articles and social posts promoting restrictive eating practices like cutting out sugar or even unrealistic substitutions like fruit for holiday pies at parties. I have yet to see either of those create long or even short term success for very many people. While these aren’t necessarily unhealthy on face value, they ignore a fundamental underpinning to what healthy and intuitive eating behavior really is. Sometimes it’s about learning how to better be present and enjoy the process of nourishing your body and perhaps even learning how to savor those moments when you’re enjoying holiday treats.
Here’s the thing, if you are so concerned about exactly how and what you are eating, but you never actually stop to savor and enjoy what you are putting in your body, then you may be missing the forest for the trees. In other words, without knowing how to slow down and savor, you’re missing the most foundational and healthy intuitive eating (and general life satisfaction) tool you could use.
Wine Tasting Analogy
A while back I used to use an exercise with my nutrition coaching clients that involved essentially trying to wine taste your food. Jon Kabat-Zinn was the way I heard about it through his MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) training. For those who don’t know, Jon is largely credited with bringing Mindfulness practice mainstream into the west along with some other key figures that he himself learned from. I mention it here because a practice like this that involves the effort to be presently focused on sensory stimuli while slowly eating a single raisin may be just what you are missing this holiday season rather than swapping fruit for ice cream.
The holiday season with all going on is a great time to start envisioning and brainstorming (very useful tools) what you will focus on next, but with all going on, it is a very tough time to actually create and stick to a concrete gameplan unless you’re ultra regimented or planned in advance. And this can also backfire since the holidays often require flexibility. More flexible goals for the win to come in the new year…
So in the meantime, let’s practice something very useful as we move through December…
Our advice this holiday instead…
SAVOR! Learn to be truly present and ENJOY as we move into the new year!
This is not a carte blanche endorsement to go ape wild and throw everything out the window, but it may help you to change how you approach things this holiday season and give you a truly critical tool you can use to catapult further results and maybe even a more fulfilling life (truly). The key is actually slowing down enough so you can take the time to really givge savoring the attention it needs and deserves. If you work on developing this key behavior and practice it trhis holiday when it may be a bit easier to do so than take on no sugar December, this may be a big win for yoru nutrtion and overall health as you go to make bigger moves in the new year.
Why savor food this holiday season? If we learn to practice more mindful awareness, truly savor things like our food (and yes even those holiday treats) along with other areas to be appreciative for in our life we can make lots of gains:
Lessen the likelihood of snacking and better control it, including between meals.
Paying attention to the sensory details of the food you eat may also reduce impulsive eating in general and improve overall eating habits
Help you lose weight if that is one of your goals for better health; and make you more aware of your eating triggers and increase capacity to make healthier choices
Specifically gain awareness and ability to deal with distractions, emotions, and environmental cues for eating behaviors
The conscious enjoyment of positive experiences in general is a huge mediator between mindfulness and well-being; and those who savor more tend to have higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction
If any of these resonate with you, then that may be enough of a sign to give this a go in the weeks ahead. Simply pick a meal each day to slow down and savor. Maybe this is dinner or maybe you have more time at breakfast. Perhaps it’s even a treat. If so, here is the original MBSR “raisin tasting” exercise to try:
https://mbsrtraining.com/mindfulness-exercises-by-jon-kabat-zinn/mindfully-eating-a-raisin-script/
We enjoy helping people improve their relationship with food and practice better nutrtion habits. We will be opening some more spots in the new year for nutrition and health coaching with us, so if you or someone you know has been thinking about it, set up a consult to get things going. https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=20706020&appointmentType=17238949
References:
Jakait, S. R., & Geier, K. (2013). The mindful experience of eating: Applying mindfulness to the act of eating. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 113(3), 426-435.
St. Pierre, L. M., & Copeland, J. L. (2009). Mindfulness and weight management. Eating Behaviors, 10(2), 151-160.
Wansink, B., & Sobal, J. (2010). Mindless eating: The science of why we overeat. Mindless Eating: Why We Overeat and How to Stop (pp. 1-23). Bantam Books.
Woo, C. K., & Lee, L. T. (2014). The role of savoring in the relationship between mindfulness and well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 68, 216-221.