This Thanksgiving, a little PSA that doesn’t involve more food rules:

1. Don’t save your Calories for Thanksgiving dinner. Eating breakfast & even a little snack will keep you from getting irritable/hangry & eating wayyy too fast later. If you’re not listening to your body in the morning, you won’t at dinner time either.
   

2. Move your body because it’s part of your routine, or skip your workout because it’s a Holiday. You do not have to punish your body or earn your food.
   

3. Practice positive body and food talk — inside your brain, and outside. Don’t comment on other people’s bodies or plates, don’t talk about your diet, don’t mention it when someone starts with pie or goes for seconds. You can be mindful without being mean.
   

4. Be present & thankful— for the food, the hands who prepared it, and your body for getting to eat it. Slow down and savor the moment, engage in conversation, have more pie than you “think” you should have, and move on when the moment’s over.
   

5. Resist the urge to overcompensate the next day by restricting foods, throwing away the leftover pie, or doing extra cardio. This is what keeps you stuck, ruins your relationship with food, your body, and exercise— and keeps you from seeing the results you THINK it should get you. The all-or-nothing, “F— it” attitude is your biggest enemy, not the whipped cream.
   

I know you’re tempted to “save your Calories” for pie, knowing that you’re about to go HAM (pun intended) on Thursday — or maybe you’re so busy cooking and hosting, it’s easy to forget to do the one thing that will keep you sane:

Eat breakfast. Depending on when dinner is served, have a snack too! You won’t be listening to your body later if you’re ignoring it now.

As a Nutritionist, I’m actually not going to tell you to eat protein first, or to only have one slice of pie. 

Instead, I want you to fuel yourself earlier in the day, be fully present, and I want you to notice when the diet-culture thoughts start— even days before.

The “F— it, I’ll start the diet after New Year’s” or the “got to run the Turkey trot to make it worth it…”

This is the mindset that’s been keeping you stuck year after year.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t run the Turkey trot, but maybe it needs a rebrand: “Huffing for Stuffing” is not sitting right with me, ha!

The guilt and subsequent compensatory behavior is why dieting doesn’t work. It’s why you are so stressed about food when the Holidays come around… and why you go from 0 to 100 after January 1st.

What if this year, instead of being trapped in your shame spiral, we practice real gratitude: for the body that is able to taste yummy food, for the loved ones who spent days preparing that food, and for your life that deserves your full attention—not hyperanalyzing every ingredient.

What if you went on a walk to gather your patience and boost your endorphins and conversational skills—instead of “burning it off.”

What if you ate breakfast and a light snack so you don’t arrive famished and ready to eat a small child—and you can choose what you actually want to eat instead of what your hanger gremlin wants.

What if you practiced self-compassion and positive food talk, where you can actually enjoy the sweet and savory dishes you get to eat this time of year?

What if you fully accepted that you will probably “overeat” and feel very full, and that it doesn’t mean as much as you think it does?

What if we didn’t weigh ourselves Friday morning to “see the damage” because that’s not how fat gain works?

What if you practiced holding boundaries around family members who want to comment on bodies or plates… and learned to redirect and ignore them completely?

What if you, yourself, learned not to repeat the same phrases you heard growing up: “once on the lips, forever on the hips” and learned to not talk about your recent intermittent fasting or the fact that beef tallow is better than butter or that sugar is the devil… it isn’t helpful to anyone, especially today!

What if you work out this week because it’s part of your routine… not because you have to to feel like you deserve to eat?

Idk. Just food for thought.

Also, help your host clean up :)

The Peak Fitness and Motion Team