Why You Don’t Need to Make Up for Holiday Eating

I remember running a gobble jog one year a long time ago (emphasis on ONE year…as I have yet to do another since).

This was before my career change into dietetics and before my better understanding of nutritional health and diet culture, otherwise I probably would have thrown a clot because... 

All along the course there were signs put up with pictures of various Thanksgiving foods with the…wait for it… CALORIES printed under them.

You heard that right. 

Who DOES that?!?

All I know is that there is a special place in hell for the person who thought this was a good idea. 

And also, WHY?!?

I can only assume that it is because you were supposed to feel really great about the food that you were “earning” with that run.

“Earning” food, “saving up” and “making up” for food eaten are such common themes this time of year, but are also present concepts year round, especially whenever food is supposed to be enjoyable and fun. 

These concepts are problematic for SO many reasons but I’m going to focus on one right now. 

It can jack with your metabolism.

More specifically, the behavior of restricting, “over” eating, and then restricting and back and forth is super confusing for your body, who isn’t aware that there are body size preferences. It just thinks that you don’t have access to food consistently and so it better slow down the use of energy when food is not as plentiful (restriction) and save up when food is plenty (“over” eat).

If you wrestle with the need to earn, save up, or make up for food eaten, what could it look like to eat more consistently instead?

If you want to get out of the restrict/over eat cycle and  learn to eat more consistently year round, you ay want to see if eating intuitively is right for you.