Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body, I’m Katy Harvey your host. If you’re listening to this the day or week it comes out, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American listeners. I know I’ve got a lot of people from other parts of the world too, so happy holidays no matter where you’re listening from.
This episode is going to be another one that’s a little shorter and sweeter, because I know it’s a really busy time of year, and I want to make this valuable, strategy-packed and to-the-point and send you on your way. Time is precious and I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to this show.
As you can tell from the title, we’re going to be talking about how to enjoy holiday foods, like pie, without the guilt. You know that person at a holiday gathering who almost braggadociously passes on dessert or the dinner rolls?
I made one of my Diet Culture Debbie Reels (it’s where I have on the purple wig) poking fun at this on IG the other day and one of my dietitian buddies chimed in saying “I used to be that person,” and I said, “Same here!” I used to be that obnoxious person who gave off a holier-than-thou vibe about what I was and wasn’t eating during the holidays. And I pretended I was perfectly content with not having any pie, and not eating the more decadent sides at Thanksgiving, but the truth is I felt bummed and deprived, and when I did eat something that I deemed unhealthy I felt guilty about it.
I’m sure a lot of you listening can relate to this. When you’ve been on a dieting or healthy eating kick during the holidays, it’s so easy to come off this way, even if that’s not what you’re intending. And beyond how it’s coming off to others, it’s not a fun way to spend the holidays.
So we’re going to talk through how to say yes to the foods you enjoy this holiday season, without guilt and without being a Diet Culture Debbie.
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: Collagen
The market for dietary collagen has surged in recent years due to consumer interest in weight loss and anti-aging benefits. Collagen supplements reached $46.6 million in sales in 2018, and the protein is now included in various food products. While early research hints that collagen may support joint health, skin elasticity, and muscle growth, experts caution that evidence is limited and not conclusive.
First, let’s define collagen. Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body. It provides structure to your skin, bones, muscles, and connective tissues. Sounds pretty important, right? It is! But here’s the thing: the collagen in supplements isn’t the same as the collagen in your body.
When you ingest collagen, whether it’s in powder, pill, or gummy form, your stomach breaks it down into amino acids—just like it would with any other protein. Your body doesn’t take those amino acids and magically send them to your skin or joints. It uses them wherever they’re needed, and that’s not necessarily where you want them to go.
Now, let’s look at the claims:
- Claim #1: Collagen improves skin elasticity and reduces wrinkles.
Some small studies suggest that collagen might have minor benefits for skin, but these studies are often funded by the companies selling the products. Plus, the effects are minimal and temporary. If you want to improve your skin, focus on things like sunscreen and hydration—those have solid science behind them. - Claim #2: Collagen helps with joint pain.
This claim is also shaky. While some studies show a slight improvement in joint health, the results are inconsistent, and the effects aren’t as dramatic as marketing suggests. Regular exercise and a balanced diet will do far more for your joints than a supplement ever could. - Claim #3: Collagen is great for gut health.
This one is pure pseudoscience. There’s zero high-quality evidence that collagen has any special effect on your gut. This claim is just a buzzword-packed way to sell more products.
Instead of spending money on overpriced collagen powders, focus on eating a balanced diet rich in protein. Foods like chicken, fish, eggs, beans, and nuts provide all the amino acids your body needs to make its own collagen. Plus, vitamin C from fruits and vegetables helps support natural collagen production.
And remember, no single supplement is a magic bullet. Good health is about consistent habits, not quick fixes.
Benefits may stem from adequate protein intake overall, not collagen specifically.
Considerations for Use:
Natural protein sources are preferred over supplements.
Lifestyle factors like sun exposure, smoking, and sugar intake significantly affect collagen health.
Collagen supplements may contain contaminants like heavy metals, warranting caution.
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…Eating holiday foods without guilt.
Diet culture thrives during the holidays. You see all those headlines about avoiding holiday weight gain, the unhealthy foods to avoid this holiday season, how many calories are in the average Thanksgiving dinner, how much exercise you’d have to do to burn it off. It’s all so toxic and unhelpful.
Society creates this pressure to “stay on track” – while simultaneously there are extra foods all around us. It’s this impossible double standard to live up to.
And all of this is essentially rooted in the fear of holiday weight gain, and ultimately the fear of fatness. You hear all the time how the average person gains X amount of pounds during the holidays, but the studies show that this isn’t actually true. The average person gains less than 2lbs during the holidays, which I wouldn’t even consider weight gain considering that our weight can easily fluctuate a few pounds in either direction in a given day.
So let’s let go of the unfounded fear of weight gain, and ease up on your stress and guilt about food this holiday season.
What giving yourself permission to eat really means
Permission to eat the foods you want doesn’t mean chaos – it means you have choice. Just because you have the freedom to eat any food you’d like this holiday season doesn’t mean that you need to have a free-for-all or gorge yourself.
Permission means that you have the choice to choose any food, that there is no moral judgment against the foods and that you can listen to your body.
It’s about trusting your body to guide you, and knowing that you’re not a “bad” person for eating a piece of pie, or a “good” person for skipping dessert.
Freedom to say yes to the foods you want to eat, and equal freedom to say no.
Why guilt has no place at the table
Feeling guilty about the foods you eat disconnects you from your body. When you’re feeling guilty, you’re stuck in your head with all of the judgments about how unhealthy the food was, or that it was too many calories, or that you ate too much and now you’re going to gain weight and feel like crap. It’s all very disconnecting and upsetting.
The other thing that food guilt does is it puts you in the restrict-binge cycle. You end up trying to avoid the guilt by avoiding the foods that you deem unhealthy and this kicks up the deprivation and sets you up to eventually go overboard and overeat or binge, which then of course you feel guilty about and you punish yourself by restricting and the whole cycle repeats itself.
What you need to remember, and to actively work on with your mindset is knowing that food isn’t a moral issue – all foods are morally equal. You’re not a good person for eating a salad, and you’re not a bad person for eating pie.
Food is just food, and all foods have value – nutritionally, emotionally, culturally, socially, pleasure, comfort, joy, fuel, etc.
I was working with a client recently who has been feeling guilty for eating chips and other salty, crunchy snack foods. And what she is noticing is that those are the exact foods that she craves and turns to at night when she’s not even hungry. It’s what she wants when she’s bored, lonely, upset, or feeling some other uncomfortable emotions. The foods that we are labeling as bad/unhealthy are the foods that we tend to eat in ways that don’t align with what our bodies need.
So with her, what we are working on is including the chips and other salty crunchy foods during the day, and not just at night. What this is doing is helping to neutralize and decharm them. And part of the work there is for her to also challenge her judgmental thoughts about chips. Instead of thinking of them as unhealthy, she is reframing them as carb + fat.
You can do the exact same thing with any holiday food that you notice yourself feeling guilt towards. Work on decharming it, neutralizing it and reframing it.
Practical steps to enjoy holiday foods while listening to your body
If you don’t have it yet, I highly recommend you go and grab my free holiday intuitive eating guide because it is going to give you more of these practical tips to enjoy the holiday season by using intuitive eating as your superpower. It’s at nondietacademy.com/holiday.
I was teaching on this the other day inside Non-Dieter’s Club, which is my membership program for my Non-Diet Academy alumni, and we were conceptualizing intuitive eating as your superpower that you can lean on this time of year.
While everyone else is “trying to be good” and feeling the pressure to “stay on track” with their diets, you get to listen to your body, enjoy food without feeling guilty, and embrace the other parts of the holidays because you’re not obsessing over the food.
One of my clients who was at the Non-Dieter’s Club training I did on this had taken NDA this past spring, so this is her first round of holidays as a full-fledged intuitive eater and she said that she feels excited, and that it feels like an experiment to listen to her body, and that she feels so free compared to holidays in the past. THAT’S what I want for you too!
So here are some practical steps you can take:
- Mindset shifts
- I shouldn’t eat this >> Do I want to eat this?
- One meal or snack or day of eating doesn’t determine your health.
- Listening to your body
- Powerful Pause
- Honor your fullness
- Prioritize satisfaction
- Give yourself full permission to enjoy your favorite holiday foods
- If it tastes amazing, savor it. If it doesn’t, you don’t have to keep eating it.
- Handling social pressure
- Go back to my previous episode for some scripts to say no thank you to food you don’t want to eat and some ways to shut down diet talk gracefully and without turning it into a debate over the validity of dieting vs intuitive eating.
Remember: You deserve to enjoy this holiday season without an ounce of guilt. Giving yourself permission to eat the foods that you love is a step towards having true peace and freedom with food. And you get to do this while listening to your body, and honoring your hunger and fullness, and thinking about not just what tastes good – but also what makes you FEEL good.
Don’t forget to grab the holiday intuitive eating guide at nondietacademy.com/holiday so that YOU can use intuitive eating as your superpower this holiday season, and enjoy your favorite foods – without guilt, without going overboard, and while letting your body guide you towards what it needs.
Reach out to me if you have any questions or if you want to share any wins from the holidays this year. It would be really fun to hear your wins and your stories about how intuitive eating is helping you this holiday season! My DMs are always open for this, so don’t hesitate to reach out! I’m always happy to chat with you.
In case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.
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