Mindful Eating Strategies for a Joyful Thanksgiving: Nourishing Your Body and Soul Amidst Family Dynamics

Are you feeling the weight of holiday expectations this Thanksgiving? You’re not alone! Join host Heather Carey in this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories as she navigates the emotional complexities that often accompany this cherished holiday. Thanksgiving is a time filled with joy, but it can also bring feelings of overwhelm and pressure, especially when it comes to food and family dynamics. Heather, a culinary nutritionist, shares her expert insights on how to embrace mindful eating practices that allow you to savor the holiday without guilt.

Throughout the episode, Heather emphasizes that you don’t need to be perfectly calm or rested to create meaningful moments with loved ones. Instead, she encourages listeners to focus on one aspect of the day that brings them joy, whether it’s a cherished family food tradition or simply enjoying a slice of pumpkin pie. With practical strategies for staying grounded amidst the chaos, Heather offers valuable nutrition advice on maintaining blood sugar levels and taking micro breaks to recenter yourself. These healthy eating tips are designed to help you navigate the complexities of holiday meals while prioritizing your own needs.

As we explore the intersection of food and culture, Heather dives deep into how our food beliefs shape our holiday experiences. She discusses the importance of embracing the joy of holiday foods, all while being mindful of our emotional eating patterns. This episode is a powerful reminder that it’s okay to prioritize your well-being during this busy season. By adopting mindful eating practices, you can enjoy the flavors of Thanksgiving while fostering a positive relationship with food.

Whether you’re dealing with the emotional resilience required during midlife changes or seeking to empower your menopause journey, this episode is packed with insights that will nourish both your body and spirit. Heather’s compassionate approach to culinary wellness and her dedication to empowering women in nutrition make this episode a must-listen for anyone looking to embrace a healthier, more fulfilling Thanksgiving.

So, if you’re ready to redefine your holiday experience and learn how to navigate the complexities of food and family with grace, tune in to this episode of Real Food Stories. Let’s celebrate the beauty of mindful eating together, making this Thanksgiving not just a meal, but a nourishing experience full of joy and connection!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hey everyone and welcome back to the Real Food Stories podcast. It’s the day before Thanksgiving and if you’re anything like me, you might be walking around with this strange combination of excitement and overwhelm, exhaustion, and a deep desire to crawl under that weighted blanket that you got last year until about January. Now, I’ll just say this truthfully. I’m not going into this holidays floating two inches off the ground in a cloud of grounded, mindful serenity, not even close. But that’s exactly why I wanted to record this episode today, because you don’t have to be perfectly rested to create these rooted, grounded moments. You don’t need to be a Zen master to show up as a grounded version of yourself. And you… definitely don’t need a perfect Thanksgiving to feel connected and nourished. I know how much pressure goes into making sure that the holidays are just so and everyone else around you is happy and something ultimately always goes awry and it’s okay. So today I wanted to talk about how we can stay steady and mindful during a holiday. that is so centered around food, so centered around our family and our expectations, which is a combination sometimes that could even test the calmest person in us. So let’s exhale together and get into it. Now let’s talk about why the holidays feel so big. Let’s start with the obvious. This week is a lot. Even if you love Thanksgiving. The lead-up carries its own kind of emotional weight. I mean, I have been thinking about Thanksgiving for probably a month. I host Thanksgiving almost every year, and I have been thinking about the menu. I have been writing my grocery list. I have been doing all the things for weeks, just either in my head or talking to my daughter or just a million little things that I need to do. Now, that can get emotional. And not also to throw in that the days are shorter, the to-do lists feel long, and whether or not you’re hosting, there’s this pressure to orchestrate some kind of moment that feels meaningful and warm and connected. Even though I’m having my immediate family over some other relatives, it’s not like we’ve never eaten a meal together. But suddenly this feels just more intense and a lot more pressure. And then on top of it, there’s all the just emotional history, family patterns, old stories, old memories of holidays gone awry. The version of yourself you used to be, the version people still expect you to be. It all gets stirred up and layered on top of that. of course, is the food. This is the eating holiday of the year. And not just food as nourishment, but food as tradition, food as emotion, food as memory, food as, I shouldn’t be eating this, or should I eat this? Is it okay to eat this? Or I shouldn’t have eaten that? Even women who have done enormous healing work still feel some of those you Little internal tugs on holidays. It’s normal. It doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. It means you’re human. So before we even talk strategy, I want us all to just name the truth. This week just pulls up a lot. And staying grounded is not about eliminating the chaos. It’s about remembering you have the ability to come back to yourself. even in the middle of what might feel like a storm. All right, so let’s talk about getting grounded and what grounded really looks like and what I mean by that. Grounded doesn’t mean staying calm all day. That’s not the goal, right? That’s not even possible, I think. It doesn’t mean you never get annoyed or overstimulated or hungry or tired. Grounded means you know how to return to yourself. It means you know the feeling of this is too much right now. And you also know what helps you to shift out of that. Now, for a lot of women, being grounded is also about feeding themselves properly. Because let’s be honest, we do not make our best decisions, emotional, physical, or food-related, when we’re running on empty. Midlife physiology is very clear on this. Your nervous system is steadier when your blood sugar is steady. You think better. You’re breathing better. You just cope better. So part of being grounded is in the physical. It’s eating breakfast tomorrow morning on Thanksgiving Day. And even though there’s a big meal later, it’s okay. We don’t need to starve ourselves for 12 hours. It’s about drinking water, enough water, hydrate yourself. It’s about having protein in the morning so you don’t show up starving at 4 p.m. and then wonder why the table suddenly feels like a magnet for all the food. There’s nothing mindful about arriving at Thanksgiving in a biologically deprived state. So let’s try not to do that. Eat your breakfast tomorrow morning, please. This is not about self-control. It’s about self-support. Now let’s talk about what mindful eating can be, and is that even actually possible on a day like the biggest eating day of the year. So let’s talk about the food piece in a way that actually feels doable. Thanksgiving is not the day to try to be perfect, right? This is not the day. This is one day out of the year, and it’s not the day that we’re going to just keep to our food rules and rigid things. It’s also not the day to throw yourself into the quote, I’ll deal with this on Monday mindset. and eat everything so quickly and so hungrily that you barely even taste it. Mindfulness does not mean taking 10 slow breaths before every bite. Mindfulness means being present enough that you actually get to enjoy your food instead of inhaling it while dealing with five conversations at once. It just means slowing down. Just enough that you can hear your body say, hey, that was delicious and I think I’m good now. It means staring at your plate or looking at your plate. You don’t have to stare at it. Just gazing at your plate and just noticing all the delicious food that’s on it before you hit the point where you need a three-hour nap. Now, one of my favorite ways to be mindful on holidays. is to simply take a pause, literally one second. Halfway through the meal, put your fork down and take a breath. Check in with your body and ask yourself quietly, how am I doing? And then I want you to listen. How are you doing? Are you feeling full? Are you feeling like you’re almost there? A good rule of thumb is to stop when you are 80% done with the meal physically, like when you are 80% full with the meal, because it takes your brain about 15 more minutes to catch up with your fullness and just to pause. Now, you’d be amazed how much easier eating becomes when you just give your brain a chance to catch up with your stomach. And then there’s also the permission piece. Because if you go into Thanksgiving telling yourself you can’t have certain foods, you will spend the entire day wanting them. That’s not mindful. That’s torture. Okay? The whole point of these holiday foods is joy and tradition and to enjoy them. So yes, have the things you love. Taste them. Have a bite. Have a bite or two of the pumpkin pie. Savor them. Sit down. Sit down while you eat them. Let them be part of the day, not something you feel you have to earn or that you’re going to have to undo later. It’s not the food that causes the problem. It’s the mindset we bring to it. OK, now for some people, Thanksgiving is not that crazy. For others, there’s you know, you’re having 40 people over and it’s kind of chaotic. So can we find those moments to like just root ourselves down? in the middle of chaos. Now, even if you have three people, there is always a little bit of that, the turkeys are coming out of the oven and getting all the side dishes. And there’s a little bit of chaos. I know this because I have hosted Thanksgiving probably for the last 20 years. So let’s talk about the actual day, the cooking, the people, the noise, the seating arrangements nobody thought through. The aunt who comments on your weight, the cousin who wants to talk politics, the small talk, the sheer sensory overload. Now, groundedness happens in micro moments, not in huge grand gestures. It’s stepping into the bathroom, possibly, and just taking a breath. Or it’s going outside for a minute and letting the cold air hit your face. It’s putting your hand on your chest for one second in the kitchen and just feeling your feet on the floor and just feeling that physical groundedness. For some of you, it might be that quick, quiet moment before the day starts. Coffee in your hand, standing at the sink, just asking yourself, what do I actually need today? This is grounded behavior and mindfulness. Maybe it’s patience that you need. today. Maybe it’s just space. Maybe it’s support. Maybe you need help in the kitchen. Ask for it. Maybe it’s just not skipping meals while you cook for 12, 15 people. And then we want to consider the emotional planning, okay, not just the physical. I call this the refill point. Pick a spot ahead of time. Maybe it’s your porch. Maybe it’s your car. Maybe it’s your dog that you need to go take for a walk. Maybe it’s the guest room. That’s the place you’ll go when you just need to recalibrate. You don’t have to announce it. You can just slip away for a minute, take a breath, and come back. This just helps you to stay mindful and grounded. And finally, I want you to choose one thing that matters to you tomorrow. Just one. It could be the moment you sit down to eat. It could be your morning walk. It could be making a dish you love that you wanted to share with your family. It could be a quiet conversation with one of your children. Maybe it’s the pie that you love to eat every year. It could be your dog that’s sitting under the table. Whatever you want, choose something that just matters to you, that you’re grateful for and you’re thankful for. You get to pick one thing that carries the meaning of the day. Everything else can be good enough, but focus on one thing that really carries a lot of weight for you in a good way. Now, if you’re not feeling grounded, if all of what I’m saying is like, yeah, right, okay, chaos ensues, or there’s a lot of drinking, and there’s a lot of overeating, and it’s just inevitable that it’s going to be nutty. Here’s your permission. Now, this is important. You don’t have to be the emotional thermostat for your entire family. You don’t have to feel amazing to create small pockets of peace. And you don’t have to pretend to have it all together. You don’t have to take care of everyone’s needs before your own, right? That’s having boundaries and being… selfish in a good way. You are allowed to need support, and you are allowed to take breaks, and you are allowed to feed yourself first. You are allowed to leave the table if the conversation turns into a circus. Groundedness is not about being unshakable. It’s about knowing how to recenter yourself when you get knocked off balance. And you’re allowed to be practicing this right alongside everyone. else, no matter how they are acting in the world. Okay, now this is a little just short and sweet, and I wanted to just… pop in with you just for a few minutes because I know that it’s busy. But before I close, I want to offer you something you can take into tomorrow. Take one breath, let your shoulders drop, and you don’t have to make the day perfect. You don’t have to anticipate everyone’s needs. You don’t have to ignore your own hunger, your own tiredness, or your own emotions. You get to show up as yourself for yourself, and you get to nourish your body in ways that support you. You get to move slowly when you want to. You get to enjoy the foods you love, and you get to create tiny pockets of peace in a day that can sometimes feel very loud. You are rooted in yourself, even when the world gets chaotic. And that is enough. All right. Thank you for spending this small moment with me today. I hope Thanksgiving feels a little more grounded, a little more mindful, and a whole lot more nourishing. And you wake up the next day feeling rested and energized and really good about the holiday. Take good care of yourself tomorrow. You deserve it. And I’ll see you next week. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.