The year-end holidays are a time to gather and celebrate with loved ones—and to enjoy rich, delicious foods. But for many people, these special meals come with anxiety and guilt. In a recent survey by Orlando Health, 39 percent of U.S. respondents reported worrying about how much they eat during the holidays. And a quarter agreed they should skip meals to “save” calories before a feast such as Thanksgiving dinner.
The messaging we absorb about health and the holidays—especially surrounding diets and weight loss—is often misguided, says Sara Riehm, a registered dietitian at Orlando Health. Riehm guides clients through a six-week lifestyle program to further their health goals. She sees firsthand how counterproductive our go-to ways of thinking about health and weight loss can be, particularly during the holidays. This time of year she spends a lot of time helping people build more effective and healthy ways of approaching situations where they’re surrounded by delicious foods that might not be the best for nourishing their bodies.
“It's not necessarily restricting or cutting out all of those foods,” she says. “It's creating a balance so that we still get to enjoy our holiday but also keep our health in mind.”
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Scientific American spoke with Riehm to learn more about how certain dieting misconceptions can harm us, what tips can help us navigate the holidays and what to do when New Year’s resolution time comes.
[An edited transcript of the conversation follows.]
Why do many people feel anxious about what they eat during the holidays?
I think a lot of people feel very uncertain and nervous because, in the past, holidays have included a lot of overindulging. I have a lot of clients who are trying to learn how to improve their health, but then when a special occasion like this comes along, they’re not really sure how to handle it because it’s a unique circumstance. And in particular, it’s a circumstance where you’re almost encouraged to be over the top and overindulge. It’s a time when a lot of people end up feeling out of control. But I personally love starting with clients around this time of year because I get to help teach them and walk them through this holiday season in real time.
Why might this focus on holiday eating—or anxiety about it—be counterproductive?
Stress can definitely contribute to weight gain just by itself. When we have higher levels of [the stress response hormone] cortisol in the body for longer periods of time, such as during the holiday season, that can definitely contribute to weight gain. So in the context of weight management, that can be counterproductive to what we’re trying to achieve.
Then there’s the toll that focusing so much on food takes on our mental health. There are so many other things that we should be experiencing or thinking about during the holiday season. At their core, the holidays are supposed to be joyous times of celebration—of gathering, gratitude, gift giving and celebrating our loved ones. I try to emphasize with my clients to focus on what they want to prioritize during the holiday season: “What are the things that are actually important to you during this time of year?”
What if health goals are one of those important things?
I recommend trying to create a balanced plate by leaning into the vegetables that are on the table. Oftentimes there’s some sort of salad or a roasted vegetable or even a green bean casserole; those are some of the more nutrient-dense foods that we can consume. They’re nourishing our body but also still leaving room for the other delicious foods that we want to have. Believe me, I’m still making room on my plate for mashed potatoes and mac and cheese. But I’m also considering how I can best nourish my body in this situation.
Another way to stay on track with health goals is getting a little bit of movement. I’m not necessarily suggesting going to the gym as a family or doing the Turkey Trot. But studies have shown that even doing a two- to five-minute walk immediately after you eat can improve insulin sensitivity, which could be really beneficial for anybody that might be managing insulin resistance.
I also recommend thinking about what foods you want to prioritize. For me, I know that I can get mac and cheese and mashed potatoes all year round, but my grandmother only makes derby pie on major holidays. So because I know that I’m trying to stay focused on certain health goals, I might cut back from the mac and cheese and mashed potatoes, save a little bit of extra room for the derby pie. And that’s how we still create that balance.
If it’s important to me to build healthy eating habits but also not to miss out on enjoying grandma’s pie, how do I keep these “special occasions” from derailing my progress?
It’s all very individual; it depends on where you are in your health journey. Ideally, you have this baseline that you've created of healthy habits, so having one slice of pie or one cookie is not going to change much. Without that baseline, however, it can be really hard to come back to that. I encourage my clients to engage in a cycle of “plan, act, reflect.” As much as you can, try to plan for unexpected situations as we come upon this holiday season. Reflect on what’s gone well in past years and what hasn’t. If, in the past, we overindulged—and that left us not feeling the best in our body or maybe with higher lab values that we weren’t happy about—then we can plan for how we want to handle this upcoming holiday season. “What can we do differently this time?” Then we can act upon that plan as best as we can for next year.
Continuing to engage in this cycle of “plan, act, reflect” keeps those less-than-ideal situations or decisions from becoming, for lack of a better word, “relapses,” where we fully revert back to our old habits. I have found in working with clients that that’s one of the more powerful strategies so that we can release some of our suboptimal decisions and still move forward in a positive, productive way.
Many people believe they should skip meals to “save calories” before big holiday dinners. Why do you not recommend that?
When we restrict food like that, it’s counterproductive to our health goals because it’s very, very difficult to make healthy decisions when we’re hungry. It’s going to be difficult to make those balancing decisions that we talked about before. Additionally, when we restrict, we also have a tendency to binge. How many times have we been in a situation where we’ve gotten a little bit too hungry, and then we’ve eaten a little bit too much, and then we don’t eat for a while, and the cycle perpetuates itself? We get into this cycle of restricting and binging, and for certain people, that can become a very serious issue.
So I don’t recommend it. It’s not healthy. It’s not a way to balance your nutrition. What I would recommend is to go ahead and have some small meals or snacks throughout the day leading up to your main meal. Leave room for your favorite foods on Thanksgiving, on Christmas, during the holiday meals. But don’t starve yourself, right? Don’t create this situation that sets yourself up for failure when you’re trying to maintain these health goals.
The survey found that one in three respondents believed they needed a “detox” or “cleanse” after the holidays. Why don’t you recommend this?
The best way to move forward, if you feel like you have overindulged or made a suboptimal decision or a decision that you don’t like, is to acknowledge it and reflect upon the factors that led to it, come up with a plan for next time and then move on. That is the biggest advice I have. Don’t dwell on it. Compensatory behaviors like juice cleanses and overexercising—or even to go so far as purging with vomiting or laxative pills—that bumps up very closely against disordered eating behavior. If you find yourself engaging in that side of that type of behavior, please be very honest with yourself and maybe seek some support. Evaluate why you feel like you need to do those things because they can be dangerous types of behavior if you continue to engage in them.
But you also need to recognize that we don’t need to do all that. We can enjoy a meal on a special occasion that comes around once a year and then move on with the rest of our journey. I say it so many times: the same way that one healthy meal is not going to change your life, neither will one unhealthy or “less than great” meal. So release it. That’s my biggest piece of advice: acknowledge it, and let it go. The same way that people say, “New year, new me,” break that down even smaller: “new day, new me” or even “new meal, new me.” Put in the work to figure out why you made that decision [you’re unhappy with] so that it doesn’t continue to happen, but then move on.
How do you help people reframe their relationship with food so that it is less adversarial and punitive and more accepting and flexible?
I don’t think I can succinctly answer that, to be honest, because this is what I spend six-plus weeks counseling people about. It’s heavy stuff. It’s people’s relationship with food. It’s the psychology behind nutrition. [At its core], it’s diet culture, which places the value of thinness above all else. When we break it down and we think about why we think about foods with morally charged words—good, bad, clean, dirty, cheat—it’s because of diet culture. That’s how, as a society, we’ve been conditioned to think of it. As somebody in my position, I’m trying every day to try to dismantle it. Because it is so not true. I desperately try to get my clients to think of food in a neutral way, to give them freedom, to take the power away from food—because it is, at the end of the day, just food. It’s just a way to nourish your body.
One of the concepts I like to teach is a nutrition spectrum. I try to have people think of foods as “always” foods, “sometimes” foods and “rarely” foods. “Rarely” foods are the ones we’re having as treats. Maybe they’re high in saturated fat, sodium, sugar—those more inflammatory nutrients that we know are not great for our health and can be connected to some of those cardiometabolic diseases that we’re trying to avoid. Then in the middle we have “sometimes” foods. Maybe they don’t have those health risks associated with them but aren’t the best way to nourish our body either. The vast majority of our foods are going to fall in that category. Then “always” foods are the most nutrient-dense: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, plant-based proteins such as beans, peas and lentils. Things like that that are super nutrient-rich, so we want to have them all the time.
If we can lean more toward the “sometimes” and “always” side of the spectrum as often as possible, we’re doing okay. So when we think about Thanksgiving and the holidays, think about where your food is going to fall on your spectrum and try to lean more toward those sometimes and always foods. And you can have a rarely food because it’s a holiday and those happen rarely!
One last, very important question: What is derby pie?
Oh, let me tell you about it. Derby pie is a Kentucky delicacy that my grandmother, who’s from Louisville, makes. It’s basically pecan pie, but it has chocolate and bourbon in it. There’s a lot of corn syrup in there, too—it’s indulgent. And it is so good, and she only makes it twice a year, on Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is my thing that I always make room for.
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, you can contact the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders helpline by calling (888) 375-7767.