Creating Your Post Holiday Somatic Eating™ Plan
In the US, we just celebrated Thanksgiving, the day where restricting your intake all day and then overeating and binge eating is normalized as something you just do on this holiday.
The day after a holiday, after potentially eating a lot of food, there may be an urge to not eat. This impulse can arise for many reasons.
Some may be:
Still feeling full the morning after
Worries about your body's health
Fear around weight changes
Trying to navigate bodily discomfort with more ease
If a part of you believes eating the amount of food you did was harmful to your body and/or is going to make you gain weight (which is assessed as a "bad" thing), your nervous system moves into the Sympathetic Nervous System or Fight or Flight response.
Your body will let you know it is in a Fight or Flight response through:
Feeling tense
Face flushing
Heightened senses
Breathing more quickly
Feeling an urge to escape
Cold and clammy hands and feet
Difficulty communicating and verbalizing how you're feeling
Increased awareness of what is going on around you or difficulty concentrating
Your body is perceiving that there is danger and needs to protect you from it. To try to facilitate a sense of safety and control over the situation, you may come up with the solution to just not eat. Food is the danger and the answer is to avoid it.
Yet, no matter how much you ate yesterday, your body still needs food today.
At some point, the response to not eat, which perhaps made you feel safe for an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, is going to start to feel threatening to the body as your hunger cues start to rise more and more.
You might try and hold on tightly to that sense of calm and regulation you first felt thinking about not eating today and to try tuning out to your hunger cues. At this point, the body will take over and a binge can occur so the body knows it's going to get what it needs.
If the original impulse here is to support you in feeling safe, regulated, and cared for, instead of not eating today, make an eating plan ahead of time.
Your Post Holiday Somatic Eating™ Plan can look like this:
The day after a holiday, eat regularly. This means eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at regular intervals throughout the day.
Instead of eating nothing, eat foods that support you in feeling the way you want to feel in your body. For example, if you want to feel light, assess what foods will create the sensations you're looking to feel.
Stay connected to your body. Let your body know it's safe and that you will not abandon it. Check in with your body regularly throughout the day and feed it nourishing words.
Move your body in some way. Moving your body releases endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine that can support navigating anxiety with more ease. You get to decide what physical movement is going to support you in feeling connected. This might be taking walk, stretching, yoga, or something more rigorous like lifting weights, taking a run, or riding a bike. The bigger intention here is to support your body in feeling good, not to punish yourself for eating.
After each meal, engage in an emotional satiating act that supports you in feeling safe. This could be meditating, calling a friend, playing with a pet, journaling, or listening to music.
What's more important is how you show up for yourself AFTER the holiday is over. What you ate or didn't eat is done. Whatever happened with food was the best decision you could have made. Now is crucial to support your body in feeling attended to, cared for, and safe. Your body needs you right now to let it know everything is alright.
As a reminder, my Intro to Somatic Eating™ mini course is on sale for 50% off until the end of the day on November 28th, tomorrow. If you would like more tools in your eating toolbox, this mini course will offer you three new Somatic Eating™ tools to support you with creating a new relationship with food.
Keep being gentle with yourself at this time of the year and I'm here for you every step of the way. Email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime!