Most of us developed our beliefs about our body at the table of our family home, so when you are challenging some of those inherited beliefs, going back home can be challenging in return.
Holidays are times full of joy and festivity and belonging, and they can also be times full of food and body shame, obligation, and unspoken family dynamics. It’s easy to turn into the version of yourself you were as a kid, often feeling reactive and disempowered instead of the grown up, capable, mindful person you are now. Traditions get in us deep, in that core instinctive place, so that even if we’re not spending the day with family, those old family stories are often spending the day with us.
What is healthiest for our bodies is completely dependent on the context of our lives. There have been times of intense stress in my life where emotional eating was actually an adaptive choice. Given the resources I had at my disposal and what my options were for coping, it was actually the least harmful choice I could make. There were some times in my life when all I ate was candy. But now I have learned that if you are living in chronic stress it makes digestion really complicated and I see how eating all that candy was actually the fuel my body needed under those specific conditions. What needed to change was the conditions I was living in, and then my diet adjusted to the new conditions.
There is no “righteous” way to eat. That doesn’t exist. Believing that there is a righteous way to eat will lead to eating disorders. Eating is not a moral choice. Bodies need to eat. The question is just what and how does each particular body need to eat, and no one has the information necessary to evaluate that question but you.
No one but you can sense when your body is hungry or full. No one but you can sense how you feel when you move, how much energy you have, how specific foods make you feel, how hard you’re working, how much pain you’re in. Not even your family. Unless they are a dietician or your own personal doctor with access to your labwork, they don’t know better than you.
It’s easy to say, “just don’t listen to their opinions!” but that’s not really what I mean. (Although, if you find a way to flip that switch, I would also like to know about that.) People will have opinions and if we love them and want them in our life, those opinions can hurt. There’s no way around that unless we want to abandon society and live a hermit life. People are hard to love sometimes, but I still believe they’re worth the effort.
No. Critical opinions and comments from loved ones hurt.
There’s lots of great advice about boundaries out there (let me recommend Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Tawwab), but I just want to tell you that you are still free to disagree. You do not have to take their criticism on and perpetuate it by repeating it to yourself.
There is someone in my life who cannot go a single interaction without commenting on my body or eating habits. I do what I can to avoid them, but for complicated personal reasons I still have to see them regularly. So when they say something about me, I’ve learned to say to myself, “they’re not talking about you, they’re talking about themselves.”
I do really believe this is true. I think the people who are the biggest supporters of diet culture are the ones who live with that toxicity inside themselves at all times. They deny themselves joy and freedom and love out of terror that having a fat body will take away the love and belonging they’ve found for themselves. They are tortured by fear and self hate and conditional love. When they are critical of you, they are really saying how afraid they are that THEY will be unlovable if they are fat.
I know that I have been loved when my body was larger. And I also know that I don’t need to fear losing conditional love. Because I won’t betray myself anymore. I’ll always have my own back. I will be loyal to my body’s needs even if people are critical of that. And that takes a lot of the sting away. Their fear doesn’t have to become my fear, and it certainly doesn’t have to become my narrative.
The really sad thing is that the critical person in my life was ALSO loved when their body was larger. But they can’t see that. They’re still too wrapped up in self hatred to see that they made their fears real. They did lose love as they feared, but it was because of their behavior, not the size of their body. They got thinner and instead of being showered with love and approval as they expected, they lost a lot of closeness in their relationships as people created distance to get away from the criticism and policing.
Food issues come up so powerfully over the holidays, but that’s probably not going to be your body’s only need. You might need to build in time for some solitude, some quiet from sensory stimulation, some time to move your body, some ways to meet your sleep needs.
None of those needs are wrong. Every one of those needs might not make sense to someone with a different experience, and some people might be judgmental about some of those needs. But you aren’t responsible for them. You’re responsible for your body, and your body will reward you for taking care of it.
The holidays are supposed to be a time for joyous celebrations, and no one feels joyous when they are smothered in shame. I hope, this holiday, you can find a way to celebrate your body and relish all it does for you. Even if it’s like going to an office birthday party for the co-worker you hate, go to the party. You’ll at least get a break from work.