Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body, I’m Katy Harvey your host. These next couple of episodes are going to be a little shorter and sweeter because I know that it’s a really busy time of year, and that you’re plugging into this podcast to get some ideas and support for how to navigate the challenges that pop up with food throughout the holiday season. So we’re going to get in, I’m going to give you some quick and easy strategies and tools, along with some really important mindset shifts that are going to help you think differently than you have in the past about your eating this time of year. 

If you haven’t done so already, make sure you have a copy of my holiday intuitive eating guide. There are some ways in which you might need to be a little more strategic and intentional about how you go about utilizing intuitive eating over these next couple of months, because so much is different when it comes to the types of foods all around us, the timing of meals, social gatherings, comments people are making about food and dieting, and all of this other stuff that makes listening to your body more challenging in the months of November and December. 

In the holiday guide you’re going to find 6 tips to help you stress less about food, and to listen to your body all holiday season long. The goal here is that you can stress less and celebrate more, without going overboard with food in a way that doesn’t support what your body needs. You can grab the free holiday guide at nondietacademy.com/holiday. 

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: the Simple app – s/o to the listener who sent this in! I actually hadn’t heard of this app before, so as always I did a deep dive to find out the scoop so that you don’t have to.

When you go to their website it has a headline that says “finally unlock weight loss with AI health coaching.”

It says that they combine habit tracking tools with AI coaching to help you lose weight. So you’re basically getting a robot’s advice on your health and nutrition and how to lose weight. 

The sad thing is that some of the advice you’d probably be getting with this app is likely better than some of the whacky stuff you see out there on the internet like people telling you to do coffee enemas for health and weight loss. 

A deeper look beneath the hood, and it appears that the simple app doesn’t promote calorie counting. Their methodology for weight loss is through intermittent fasting, which fundamentally disconnects you from your body, and instead of creating rules around what you can eat and how many calories or points or macros you can eat, it creates rules about when you can eat. It’s still rules. It’s still dieting. And it will still backfire in the same ways that WW, keto, and MFP do.

They also promise “a new you in 12 weeks” which is classic diet lingo and pie-in-the-sky promises that play into that fantasy that if we just eat a certain way and lose weight that we’ll be a whole new person and feel amazing about ourselves. 

The greater likelihood is that you’ll have temporary weight loss, you’ll feel really excited about that, and eventually your use of the app will fizzle, you’ll regain the weight and you’ll feel really frustrated, ashamed and discouraged. You’ll blame yourself and you’ll tell yourself that if you just had more willpower and if you had just stuck with logging your food, your sleep, your exercise, your water, and a bunch of other daily activities into this app that you would be happy and healthy forever. Because that’s the fantasy that they’re selling you.

Here’s the deal though – almost nobody can or wants to use an app like this forever. And the notion that it’s going to just help you create healthy and long-lasting habits that allow you to lose weight and keep it off for good is, quite frankly, BS. If that approach worked then the diet industry would no longer exist. 

The other thing is, even if you could theoretically keep using this app forever and it worked for you – do you really WANT to have to log all of those things every single day of your life forever? Do you really want an AI robot to tell you what to do because you can’t trust yourself with food or health habits? Do you want to be dependent on this external thing rather than trusting yourself and your body to lead you? I think that’s a profoundly sad message that companies like this are sending people. They are preying on your insecurities, your shame, your disconnection with your body and your distrust in yourself.

The fact that their program is built around the strategy of intermittent fasting I also take issue with, and will be covering that in another episode, so stay tuned. 

For now, the verdict is in – the Simple app = Wellness Woo!

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…How to politely say “no” to food and listen to your body during the holidays. 

Saying Yes to Food (Without Guilt)

First things, first you need to be comfortable with saying yes to the foods you want to eat during the holidays, without feeling guilty about it. If you don’t have this permission and peace with food, then saying no is going to likely be coming from a place of judgment and restriction, which isn’t helpful. 

So I want you to start with reframing all of the holiday foods as neutral. It’s just food. Even the things that you only eat this time of year are still just food. Yes, they might be special recipes or seasonal things that the stores don’t sell other times of year, but it’s still just food. It all breaks down into carbohydrates, protein and fat inside your body.

I’ll also remind you that there’s no reason you can’t make green bean casserole or pumpkin pie in March or July. Sometimes we can decharm these holiday foods by simply including them more often. 

If there are holiday foods that you feel guilty about eating, or that you don’t trust yourself to keep in your house, it’s worth exploring what your underlying fears and judgments are with these foods so that you can overcome those and have peace with these foods. I’m not suggesting that you need to overeat or have a free-for-all with these foods. Having peace with them means that you have equal permission to say yes AND to say no to the food when you’re not hungry for it, you’re not in the mood, or when your body doesn’t want or need it. 

If you have health or medical reasons that you need to have some boundaries with food, that’s totally valid. We can still start from a place of neutrality towards the food. Just because there’s a health reason that you might need to limit or avoid it doesn’t make the food inherently “bad” or “unhealthy.” Different people need different things for their bodies and their health. That’s one of the beautiful things about intuitive eating – it allows for us to embrace these differences and nuances so that we can all do what’s right for our own bodies without having to follow a rigid set of rules like you see on diets. 

So I want you to start by neutralizing your judgments about foods this holiday season, and reminding yourself that different foods have different nutrients in them – and that’s a wonderful thing. There is no single food that is inherently good or bad for health. All food provides some degree of nutrition and fuel for your body. That’s all that a calorie is – a unit of energy for your body. 

Listening to Your Body and Politely Saying “No” to Food

There will be times during the holidays that you’re full, or that you’re not really interested in eating a certain food, and it’s ok to say no. It doesn’t mean you’re being rude or ungrateful towards the person who made it.

This can be especially hard if you have a food pusher in your life. Maybe your mom or your Aunt Rhonda or your grandma say things like, “Oh honey, you have to have some. I made it just for you because I know how much you love it.” Or, “Grandma spent so much time preparing her famous sweet potato casserole, and it will hurt her feelings if you don’t eat it.” 

Declining someone’s food is not the same thing as rejecting their love. I need you to know that, and to remember it. You might even need to write it down as a reminder to save in your phone. In fact, I encourage you to take some notes during this episode and jot down some of these reminders, as well as the upcoming phrases that I’m going to give you so that you know what to say if someone is pushing or offering you food that you don’t want to eat in that moment. 

It can be quite empowering to realize that you can still enjoy the holiday foods you love, while also honoring your body and NOT overeating. 

This is a prime example of what food freedom actually means.

Strategies and Phrases You Can Use

In order to know when to say yes to food, and when to say no, it’s important that you’re slowing down to check in with your body. We want your body to guide you on this, rather than just saying yes because it’s there or no because you have some type of food rule or judgment against the food. 

So for example, you don’t have to say yes to a dinner roll or to mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving just because they’re on the table, or to the pumpkin pie for dessert just because everyone else is having a slice and it’s a quintessential Thanksgiving food. Instead of automatically saying yes to everything, practice slowing down and checking in with your body first to see what sounds good, what you truly want to eat, what’s going to be satisfying to you.

And on the flip side, be curious whether you have the impulse to say no to certain things because you have some type of judgment against that food. The other day a client inside of my UnChallenge told me that she didn’t think she had any food rules anymore until she did the activity for that day in the program and realized that there were still some sneaky food rules lurking beneath the surface that she’d been holding onto. So if your knee-jerk reaction is to pass on the dessert or the stuffing, you might ask yourself why. Is it because you truly don’t’ like or don’t want those foods, or is it because you have a story in your mind that they are unhealthy for you or too many carbs or calories or something along those lines? 

If you’ve decided that you genuinely want to say no to something because you don’t want it, whether you’re full, or not in the mood, or just don’t like it, here are some polite scripts that you can steal and use:

• “This looks delicious, but I’m feeling satisfied right now. Thank you!”
• “I’m just listening to what my body needs, and I’m all set for now.”
• “I’d love to save some for later when I can really enjoy it.”
• “Thank you for offering! I think I’ll pass for now, but I’m glad to know it’s here.”
• “I’m so happy to be here and enjoy the company! I might have some a bit later.”
• “I love that you made this! I want to wait until I have room to truly savor it.”
• “This sounds so good! I’ll keep it in mind and check back in a bit.”
• “It’s so tempting, but I’m good for now. Maybe I’ll try some soon!”

You can see how these scripts allow you to express appreciation without feeling pressured to eat when you’re not feeling it. They also leave the door open for a future “yes” if and when you decide you want whatever they’re offering.

I encourage you to write these down in a note on your phone so that you can review them before you go to holiday gatherings and have them fresh in your mind, and if needed you could pull up the note in your phone in the moment (while pretending you’re checking a text message). 

Remember that you have full permission to eat what you want, to listen to your body, to say yes to foods you enjoy, AND to say no when you’re not hungry, you’re not in the mood or if a food isn’t going to work well for what your body is needing in that moment. The holidays are a wonderful time to practice making peace with food and truly listening to your body. 

Don’t forget to grab a copy of my free holiday intuitive eating guide with those 6 holiday-specific tips that are going to make food so much less stressful for you this time of the year. It’s at nondietacademy.com/holiday. 10/10 recommend getting your hands on it, because it’s going to help you see how intuitive eating doesn’t have to be a free-for-all with food during the holiday season. Yes, you have permission to eat all of the delicious holiday foods, and you also have permission to slow down and let your body lead you. That’s what this guide is going to show you how to do. Again it’s at nondietacademy.com/holiday.

That’s a wrap for this episode. In case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

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