Episode 21. How to Deal with the Holiday Food Frenzy

Halloween is here and we feel like this is the unofficial start of the "Holiday Season." 

Stress! Food! Let's be honest—that's how most of us feel about the holiday season. Let's chat about: 

• Ideas for staying sane 
• How to deal with ALL THAT FOOD
• How to handle Halloween candy and other sweet treats with your kids
• And more!

This is also a great conversation to keep in mind during the rest of the year too—you don't want to miss this one!

Thank you for listening! We love you latte!

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-Ashley & Carrie
This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice.

Transcript

[Music]

hey it's Carrie and Ashley we welcome you to the self-care Cafe we are both

health professionals and moms and nature lovers and food lovers and love helping

women get over dieting and just start living we think that talking about

bodies and perfect bodies and dieting is just

boring did we put you to sleep there Carrie yes so if you are ready to ditch

dieting and get to living and talk about more important things then you are in the right place we don't put shame and

guilt on the menu here we don't even have to tip us nope come hang with us the advice is

free we want to have a bunch of girlfriends to just hang out with and get real with and it's time to start

living

ladies hello Carrie hey Ashley how are

you I'm good all together now you're

great oh so what have we got on the menu today so let's talk about holiday

food stuff that's a great one and because a lot of times we don't discuss holiday

stuff until Thanksgiving right like the official start of the holiday season but

we thought it would be better to start like our unofficial start of the holidays which was with Halloween

because there's so much candy and with that goes comes some anxiety and

stress yes for sure I I always think about about that I'm like everyone

struggles with you know lots of different things around the holidays and food is one of them and why aren't we

talking about it sooner because Halloween candy is such a big deal for a lot of people too and not only for us as

moms parents adults but also for how to

deal with it with our kids too and we'll kind of chat about a little bit of

everything I think today around the food piece with the holiday yeah for sure and the earlier you start

it um it gives you more practice before like holiday season's really in full

swing right so um yeah because there's so many

different parties and and Gatherings um and what do we like we

both have seen and we both have felt it ourselves too right that just like oh my gosh there's so much yes so much and how

do I handle this and and you know and then also how do we handle it with our kids like um do we just let them you

know Gorge themselves on candy like how um I know you've got some great advice around this so yeah and I think that I'd

like to put a little disclaimer this is all just

suggestions and advice based on our experiences other people experiences

um kind of an intuitive eating approach but please do what you feel is best for

yourself and your family because it's easy for us to say some of the things that we do because we're doing them and

not everyone's ready for that and that's okay and sometimes it's just starting to think about things in a different way

like Carrie and I tend to say that we plant seeds a lot around different

mindsets so just keep that in mind yeah and keep an open mind too like maybe there's something like well I just

don't there's no way that it'll work you know we sometimes we jump to that that conclusion right there's no way that will work because you know and we give

all these reasons but um sometimes if you stop and just kind of keep an open mind and think okay or maybe part of

what we're saying will work or help you or whatever so um yeah thank you for

exactly and I like again if you listen to the podcast you all know I love

experiments and so that's one thing to think about too like if what I'm doing

is stressful to me and it doesn't seem to be working for me anymore what am I

willing to try or is there one thing that I could do differently or think about differently and how how might that

look right and life is always changing so what is working right now down the

road May no longer work for you um depending on your life circumstances so being willing to always be open to

changing um and trying new things that may work better yeah so around

holidays people are feeling lots of things right Carrie yeah can you say stress of course

what is stressed backwards desserts yes and sometimes we're

stressed about desserts and sometimes we're stressed about the food in general

or we're stressed about um a lot of times we're over scheduled we're

overwhelmed we're not getting the rest we need because we're staying up late trying to work on things gifts party

planning um any of that yeah the holidays like there's all

this extra on top of our normal right like life isn't busy enough that let's add

let's add holiday parties and and the stress and the you know spending the money and gifts and um then if you you

know don't do that then you there's the guilt over you know it's it's like there's so much we put so much on

ourselves and yes there so many ways that conversation could go exactly but in general a lot of us do

feel more stressed out around the holidays um for many

reasons um and feeling like you have to do it all and do it all yourself yes

really kind of an overarching theme of it exactly and when we are stressed like

that our self-care goes right down the tubes because we're prioritizing this like

newish kind of priority about gifts and figur out holiday stuff and we're

putting everything else that we're doing on the back burner um so we tend not to

be meal planning as well or we tend to skip out on our um movement that makes

us feel better or we tend to skip out on our sleep or any number of things right right um

yes for sure like selfcare goes right out the window tends to over the holidays what's ironic about that Carrie

and the irony is that's the time of year you need it the most

ex and if you if you already engage in like self-care like routines and

whatever um practices it it's you know how much

better you feel when you're doing it right so maybe and and and it's really

important to get out of the All or Nothing mindset through the holidays it's like okay so you can't get your

full workout in so what do 10 minutes right like like take what you've got um

maybe you can't sit and soak in a tub for 30 minutes soak in it for 10 that 10

minute thing is kind of like my f like's there's like just enough like who can't do something for 10 minutes right right so um you know just short make it

smaller I mean obviously we all only have 24 hours to a day period like so how we fill it is up to us and by if

you're letting all your self-care practices be put on the back burner

through the holiday season you're gonna you're going to burn out you're you're not going to feel as

good um and you won't get to enjoy right the time the holidays with your family

friends or whoever you spend it with or even just yourself like it'll just be

miserable yeah yeah well and let's make that another podcast like for how to get

out of the All or Nothing mindset Ashley's making making the note in

our in our file um because I think that's a really that could could be an

entire um trying another episode trying to get out of that mindset yeah I think so too um so a big part of of going back

to like the food around the holidays right would you say Ash that like a lot of it is

so so many times we don't trust ourselves around all of it and that's the cause of definitely there's a lot of pieces to

it but I think that is probably like the base layer of it or one of the base

layers of it um because most of us probably don't allow ourselves to eat

most of the foods that are out and about during the holidays um or maybe we do

but not in the like quantities that are available during holiday season and so it's very

easy to go into holidays saying oh I'm not going to have XYZ whatever food

because I don't typically eat it but then we're constantly bombarded with it it's everywhere it's accessible it's

right in your face um and it's really easy to then have that outof control feeling

around food right so explain a little bit more what you mean by that so when

you restrict how does that work CU like when if someone restricts or like I they

don't allow themselves to eat something then what do it sets out this domino effect right of yeah because what's the

first thing that we think When someone tells us we can't do something I want it

exactly and actually K I just was looking this up because I figured there had to be a name for this phenomenon for

this behavior and I found found that it's called the reactance theory in

Psychology um and I don't know if you've seen that in your studies um but I think

it makes sense it's like when we feel that our free choice is threatened even

if it's something we're doing to ourselves um we tend to rebel against that a little bit because we want to

keep our independence and our like free choice and so when we tell ourselves or someone tells us we can't do or have

something then our mind sort of shifts into that's all we can think about or it's at least

bubbling on the top layer of our brain for a long time um and so yeah when we

restrict it gets back into that All or Nothing the Restriction is you can't

have that that's the nothing piece and then at some point we're going to shift

like a pendulum into the All Phase which is I'm going to eat it all um I'm

probably not even going to realize what I'm doing while I'm doing it sometimes or maybe I won't even enjoy it because I

just have that like Primal urge to just eat it all because I've been telling myself I can't have it or I shouldn't

have it and so we get into this like I don't even know what happened or I don't

know what I was thinking or feeling when this like episode of eating too much or

even sometimes binge eating happened right and I love that like when you said um when you whether someone else has

told you not to think about it or you are telling yourself I'm I'm not I'm not

even going to think about that food like I'm just I'm not gonna put out of my mind not gonna think about it what is like that's like saying if I tell you

don't you think about it don't you think about that white elephant don't think about a white outfit right it's the only

thing I can picture in my brain right now right white elephant white elephant white

elephant thinking about that later thanks and that's what Ashley's saying is was

like when you okay like I'm gonna put the food away and I'm not going to think about it oh yes you are yes it's like

it's probably the only thing that you're G to think about or you know you're gonna keep coming back to oh because you

know like I do that too it's like I could really go for pop like fresh pop

popcorn like that it's like I don't know I don't feel like making it and then he sit there it's like but I really want so

like for you know will go by like oh fine I'm just gonna make it it's like

um sometimes you it's like I don't it's just so hard to get it out of there so

what Ashley's saying is when you have a food that you want

you know let's say like at at Christmas time um I make my Grahams Christmas

cookie recipe and they are so freaking good and it's probably the only time of

year I make it sometimes I make them at Val 's too um but they it's a sugar

cookie recipe with nutmeg and sour cream in it so they're like puffier but they

are just so good and um and I've always can't wait you know for Christmas when I

make these and there's no way like and it's the only time so I allow myself to

indulge in them right go ahead that is the only time of

year that I'm going to get them now with that said would it's also easy to overindulge in

them right yeah it's that whole like food scarcity mindset that you're describing because I know I'm only going

to get well there's a couple different pieces to this right like I know that this is the only time I'm going to get

them so I'm gonna feel like I need to eat them all now um

because even if you have them for like a week or if you make a couple batches of them over the Christmas holiday like you

said it's still only a short amount of time and so they're fun they're appealing you don't have them all the

time so we have that like they have that power over us I guess right like we feel

drawn to them because we aren't going to have them again and when we know that that's when food is powerful or is extra

appealing or is extra fun it's when we can have it all of the time and our body

knows that that it's like oh that's not that exciting anymore like for example

oh can can I just interject for a second the other piece of that too is that there's an emotional aspect to it

because my my grandmother's recipe exactly and I have my grandmother's cookie sheets that she baked those

cookies on yeah so there's this emotional connection to it too so like

it just brings up those memories and it's warm and fuzzy and it feels good yeah um so there's I just want to inject

that that there's also you know for especially a lot of special Family Recipes there is some sort of an

emotional connection to that as well definitely and I think there's definitely a thing called emotional

hunger like there's a lot of different types of hunger maybe we'll do a podcast on that also um but that's one of them

is that emotional piece like maybe I'm not hungry per se physically but I know

that I want to feel that emotional connection to my grandmother because I'm missing her and so I'm going to make

these cookies and I'm going to eat them um and one other piece too

is sometimes we can like deal with that food scarcity mindset by having these

Foods round more so the example I was going to share is um we love ice

cream but I just had to throw away a couple what are they come in half gallon

containers or whatever I don't even know um because they were like freezer burnt because we didn't finish them they were

sitting in my freezer since beginning of summer when we bought them and yeah we had some here and there but because we

have it most of the time we didn't feel like we had to eat it all up yeah

there's no urgency like I exactly right yeah exactly but with the cookies they're only around for those couple

weeks so we feel that feeling right like that urgency like you said or I have to

get it now because I'm only going to have them so one way to kind of deal with that is to have these Foods

throughout the year if that's something that makes sense like if you're making them you could make them for multiple

holidays um and Carrie that goes for you you could do that or or not like it's

totally up to you if you feel like it's a real and not I'm not talking to you

specifically anymore Carrie but if if you have recip like car's talking

about make it more often and see how that goes and the more you have it around at one point you might throw some

away because you're like I'm sick of these right which is so opposite isn't it than that what say because they're

like well if I don't have it in the house I won't eat it right right but the truth is real shift in mindset because

what Ashley is saying is the more it is around the less appealing it is going to

be right and with the mindset shift right I think that's the important piece that Carrie was just saying like we

can't just like chips I hear a lot of people talking about not being able to um stop eating chips so they tend to not

buy them or buy like the individual bags and only have them when they can't have more than one like they bring it to work

or something and then they do okay but with that being said we have to work on

the mindset piece because we can't just load up our house with chips and expect that we're going to do something

different we have to like work into that a little bit and so having chips outside

of the house where you can't have like full access is a great way to start

because you can have chips every day and then once you're kind of used to that

and your body's like oh we're going to have this every day they don't have to be quite so scary or quite so like

appealing or powerful to us um then maybe we can have them I just threw a bag of chips away half a bag they were

disgusting yeah same same same yeah yeah and a big piece of that also is trusting

yourself right we've talked about this before um if you don't trust yourself with food there's probably other areas

of your life that you also don't trust yourself with or trust other people with um so that is also mindset work that

that needs to be done um so that's another and but that's a way like Ashley

just talked about like to learn to trust yourself around food is to start with

you know having it so that if it's not in the house have it go out to eat and

have it right yeah and and work on how you think about it going into it

like if you go to a restaurant that you know the menu well and there's something you typically avoid

um is that the right food maybe try something a little bit less like

triggering or scary depends on how you feel because I think sometimes if we just go for it it can end badly and then

we have another bad experience with that so feel that out but if you're comfortable pick something that you

typically wouldn't because you tell yourself you don't need it or shouldn't have it because you can't stop eating it and just go into it with a different

mindset like think about I can have this every time we come here if I want to and

see how that changes like here's another good example I tell people a lot if you are out to eat for a special occasion

with people that you care about um maybe it's a birthday anniversary or whatever and maybe you get a dessert you know a

really fancy indulgent dessert at um the restaurant and maybe you have it by

yourself maybe you share it but think about your thought process and feelings during that

experience usually we're like oh it tastes so good um it's so rich it's

delicious like whatever the thought process might be and then compare that

to the same food or a similar food but when we eat it at

home and the differences between those two times usually when we're having

something like that at home it's almost maybe in secret maybe we eat a lot of it but we

don't even pay attention to how it tastes because we're too busy in our brain saying you can't have this you

shouldn't be doing this why you're doing this um and so we're not getting the

satisfaction from it like we are when we're out and allowing ourselves to have

it because it's special occasion for example right because a lot of times the foods that we deny

ourselves when we do end up eating it it's like we shove it in our faces so

fast we don't even we're not even really tasting it and enjoying it right because

we've been restricting it exactly so like one little exercise um that I've

done before is just take a a square of chocolate your favorite CH

chocolate and put it in your mouth and just let it sit there and let it melt

and close your eyes and just you know use all your senses like what does it feel like in

your mouth what does it taste like what does it smell like and just really um

savor it right like we don't Savor moment enough um and that might be all you need

right versus you might otherwise you might take the whole entire bar um and eat all of all of it at once

right like it it's it's taking the time to enjoy it right and what car's kind of

describing is called mindful eating so if you've heard of that before that's sort of what car's talking about is

being mindful is just sort of like being in the present moment and just describing your observations and the

more you can be present and enjoy the chocolate in this example um the more

satisfaction you're going to get from it on the flip side if you're going into eating the chocolate with I shouldn't

have this you know this other thought process we're not savoring it we're not paying attention to it so we end up

eating way more of it because we didn't get the feeling that we even ate it

right or how many times like well I'm just going to eat it all now so it's gone right and then I won't buy anymore

yep right instead of just just enjoy what you have and you don't have to eat the whole thing right now enjoy it a

little bit of a at a time uh there's so many way different ways to go about it but these are just some ideas um but Ash

so I'm wondering so okay our kids go trick-or-treating and they come home with all this candy there's a lot of different ways to

handle it okay so so for my house I'm

just going to use a personally personal example this is what basically works for us there's a lot of candy obviously

that's just how it is there's candy from when we went trick-or-treating maybe we have some left over from when we bought

some for whoever or whatever there's just a lot of candy going on it's okay don't freak out about

it what I've noticed from my stories and other people's experiences are the more

anxious we are about these Foods around our kids pick up on that and they're

like oh no mom's gonna take this away from us we better eat it all right like

it's going to get restricted on me so I need to eat it all so we're instilling

that fear of restriction in them when we do that so at our house like I was

saying we have the trick-or treat bag or whatever out for a few days it's exciting for a few days we can pick and

choose what we want we can have a few pieces here or there after school after

dinner whatever um and then after those first few exciting days I'll just kind of put it in the cupboard not trying to

hide it just kind of out of sight so if my daughter remembers it and asks for it yeah you can have some um but I just

threw away a bunch of Halloween candy from last year I will and honestly I picked

through it more than she did for the stuff that I wanted um because I ate all the chocolate out of it and there was

just like stuff I don't appreciate in it left um and some of it was absolutely

gross when I threw it away too so I wasn't even gonna right bother with it and it's that whole like not restricted

piece that we're talking about it's out we can have it when we want so it's not exciting and not to mention she will

share it with me like I don't really have to ask for Stuff she's like oh do

you want some like what do you want or she knows what my favorites are and she offers me some and people that are

restricted would not probably do that right they want keep it off

themselves because they're used to it not being available to them right or not

either not being available to them because of someone else's rules or because of the rules that you've put on

yourself right can't or shouldn't um yeah no I love that and I and I know

this those of you that are listening to this it sounds so like you probably so I

know some of you are saying there is no fraking way that's gonna work no I can't trust myself I'll just eat it all y but

again it begins with that mindset work knowing that you can trust yourself you can have this anytime we live in a very

in a country we can go down to the store and buy any of that candy anytime exactly and it might take a little while

and it might be really hard at first it's not it might not be the way you want it to be the first time um or even

with your kids this first time I think what's important is to let them trust

their bodies too when we're talking about your kids because um you know if

you let here's the other piece it's like the flip side right like yes we can have it whenever we want and that doesn't

necessarily mean we're going to eat the whole bag of kitkats or whatever at a time

if we're allowing oursel to enjoy it because are you really enjoying it after like 10 pieces how are you feeling I my

belly is GNA hurt and that's your choice like if you want to keep going after

that because it tastes so good you are going to understand the consequences of

that yeah and I think it's a good lesson for kids too yes I remember when my one

of my sons um I don't know he was probably seven or eight and we had gone

to Dunkin Donuts and he wanted to get two Boston cream donuts and one of those

cookies and cream milkshake drinks or whatever and he's just this tiny little

thing and he shoved he stuffed his little body full of all of that we

stepped out of Dunkin Donuts and he proceeded to to barf all over the side right there but it was a lesson for him

to realize and he looked at me and goes I guess I shouldn't have eaten all that

right yeah and now he can trust himself like yes I want to try all of those things and maybe I'm not going to have

them all at the same time like maybe I'll still purchase all those things maybe I'll save one donut for later

maybe I'll only drink part of my shake instead of the whole thing like that's the part of the trusting your body that

we're talking about we know what our limits are and yes we want to tr try all

of the things all of the Halloween candy all of the exciting food that's at the holidays treats Savory dishes whatever

and we can know what our limits are so when we're starting to get full we can say okay I'm gonna take a break here

because my belly is starting to get uncomfortable and I don't want to eat more um and I know I can have some later

right right like people there are doggy bags like you know box them up and take it home if you're at someone's house for

the holiday or um actually I talked about this like you know if sitting in

front of a holiday spread and there are if there are family dishes that are primarily made that time of year um and

you want to indulge in those or have those um and you know like then maybe

the common foods that you have regularly throughout the year like mashed potatoes you skip so that you can comfortably eat

the special occasion goodies I always tell or encourage people to

kind of like before you even pick up a plate go look at it go look at what's

out there if it's a buffet if it's a whatever just scope it out and pick the

foods that you really want to have and skip the ones like Carrie said that we can have anytime because you're you can

have them any time and they're not as exciting to you probably either right like you don't have to have it just

because it's there yeah and sometimes we equate like in our heads okay like a a turkey dinner is you know the turkey the

mashed potatoes and gravy and stuffing right and it's it's it this this I don't

know like a habit or a vision in our head that they just all naturally go together right the

expectation right um and that's fine if that's does and that's what you want um

but what we're saying is if there's like some special dishes it's like oh I'm definitely going to have some of that

but I'm not sure I'm going to have room or just take smaller amount of all of it right yes that's what my plate usually

looks like it's like a tiny spoon of this and a tiny spoon of that but of everything right like what there's no ra

one way to do this right or wrong there not anything like that it's what is going to work for you right exactly and

taking away that feeling of urgency right and other and a couple other

things that can help too are when we are getting stressed about holiday stuff

like we talked about at the beginning maybe our meal planning is out the window because we haven't had the time

to even think about it and so we're just winging it all the time so if we go into these things a

little bit more um I don't want to use the word well-nourished but I can't really think

of a better way to say it like if we're fed on a regular basis and we go into

all of these food experiences when we have been eating

consistent it's going to be a lot easier for us to deal with and I don't necessarily mean

like the healthiest meals on the planet but just having eaten enough on a

regular basis over the past couple weeks beforehand it's going to be a lot easier

to make those choices and trust yourself yeah well our brains just work

better when it's F fed right exactly so you know if you're someone who um and

I've certainly been guilty of this um in the past banking your calories right

you're going to bank your calories so you're not going to eat all day long because you have a holiday party in the evening so you're GNA Bank your save all

your calories up for then well by the time you get there um you know you're so

hungry and you're tired and you're cranky and anything and everything looks good exactly it's no wonder that this

happens to us because if we're not eating all day we're starving by the time we get to

this food party or whatever I like that food part we're starving like there's no way

that we're gonna have rational decisions going into that because we're so not wellfed like we need to eat

during the day to be able to make those um more rational

choices yeah because another part of this right is um if it's maybe a swankier party and you have a black

dress and you want to fit into it it's all it's all these different things right um that that come into it um oh we

could go on and on yeah we could just wear what's comfortable first of all we it's comfortable nobody's hopefully

paying that close of attention to what you look like they're worried about themselves um which is again another

whole story for a whole another day and you don't want to be worrying about your

outfit the whole time you don't want your outfit cutting into you the whole time to remind you how miserable your

body feels in that outfit and then that dictates what your food choices are like

it's this whole cycle it is for sure yeah and then you

you don't you haven't eaten all day so now you're at the party and you're not going to eat anymore either because um you know your your outfit

might get too tight or yeah ah the things we do to ourselves

yes H anything else I don't know we said so many

things I guess the bottom line is like changing the mindset about the food

like we can have this anytime we want and one thing that people might be wondering I realize that we haven't even

said anything about it is like well won't I gain weight if I eat these types

of foods over the holiday season or allow myself to have them on a regular basis or you know shift our mindset to

what you're telling us yeah um I think I was doing some

research last holiday season on holiday weight gain and based on studies that

people have done in the past it's only what was it like 2 lbs average weight

gain or something like that but that's not even the point like our bodies

change we can enjoy these experiences and those experiences often include food

and that's okay you're not going to make or break your health or nutrition with one meal

or holiday season of enjoying yourself yeah and be careful you know

then you see headlines like okay well maybe it's only two pounds but every holiday season if you gain two pounds

and over you know five years at 10 extra pounds like first of

all to in order to gain a full pound of let's say fat okay that's 3500

calories right extra and so really really what you're

probably gaining because over the holidays they tend to be more like

simple carbs and higher Sal yeah so it's alcohol let's not forget that alcohol

it's probably a lot of water weight because it's hard to eat um that many

extra calories so quickly right and like we were saying if you're restricting yourself and then you're like quote

unquote overdoing it and not feeling comfortable every time you go to a party or every time there's food around

because you haven't been eating to save room for these Foods then we're eating too much at once

and that's not comfortable and that can definitely you know change things for

your body so eating regularly including the foods you want to include on a

regular basis instead of like not eating and then we're going to end up overdoing them overdoing it like that pendulum

effect we talked about um that isn't very

helpful right awesome this was a great conversation I'm sure we will get into

it again yes maybe talk about some other aspects of it yes for sure um but we

would love to hear what you think um what is your experience with this uh do you have any questions maybe what's

worked for you yep would love all of your comments um so let us know yeah and

where can they find us ash oh we're everywhere um we're on Instagram and

Facebook and we have a Facebook group um and all of the links to that stuff are

in the show notes so you can go find us um on Spotify if you're listening on

Spotify there's a cool like Q&A section so you can put questions or just comments um right on each

episode it's pretty cool yes yes yes awesome yeah all right well until next

time yes love you latte love you [Music]

latte [Music]