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Showing posts with the label Thanksgiving tips

Breaking the holiday restrict-binge cycle

The holiday season is here and it's filled with family, friends and.....food.  Without a doubt, food is a significant component of every holiday. For anyone who suffers from an eating disorder or an unhealthy relationship with food and the body, this can be a challenging time of the year.  You may not realize it but the holidays bring several triggers that could lead to disordered eating and exercising behaviors. Often times, stress, overwhelm, people pleasing, travel, toxic relationships/family members, uncomfortable conversations and finances can bring on uncomfortable feelings. In order to lessen those emotions, it's easy to resort to food restriction (or dieting). And with restriction often comes binge eating. Overeating from time to time does not mean that you have a binge eating disorder. Fundamentally, binge eating is different from overeating.  Signs and symptoms of binge eating include:  Eating a large amount of food in a short period of time (ex. over 2 ho...

4 tips for a satisfying Thanksgiving feast

Overeating and overdrinking. This doesn't sound healthy, right? For many, Thanksgiving is a day to surround yourself with family and friends, all while consuming a smorgasbord of food in a short period of time. Although "a day of giving thanks for the blessings of the harvest and of the preceding year", Thanksgiving is a holiday that makes it socially acceptable to binge eat. Regardless if you have a meat or vegan feast, Thanksgiving is known to be the holiday in which you have the permission to indulge and eat with reckless abandon. But knowing how binge eating and overeating makes you feel, is it really worth it to eat until you are stuffed on Thanksgiving?  Maybe because I've spent the last 25 Thanksgiving's as a vegetarian, but this holiday doesn't make me think "food" but instead, "family." I think back to many Thanksgiving holidays with my mom and dad, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin and grandparents and it was always a fun time to...

Surviving Thanksgiving as an athlete

For an athlete-in-training, there are many challenges around the holidays, especially when it comes to staying consistent with training and healthy eating. Your frustration is not well-understood by your non-athlete family members but your training buddies understand that a routine disruption disrupts your goals and makes it difficult to get back on track.  So what's an athlete to do?  Do you put your training on hold and say "oh well" to healthy eating, every time there is a disruption to your routine?  Do you become stubborn with your ways and begin to remove the distractions from your life, even if it means pushing away your family and close friends....maybe even quitting your job, because it takes up a lot of your time and energy? What's an athlete to do. While it's not necessary to put your training on hold for an extended period of time or avoid your family in order to get in every minute of your prescribed workout, it's impo...