You can’t enter the store without candy being front and center right now. I call this time of year the Holiday Trifecta- the candy addition.

 What is the Holiday Trifecta????

The Holiday Trifecta is the 3 months between October 1 and December 31st.

Where we’re inundated with food that is different than what we have during the rest of the year.

There’s a lot of concern this time of year about:

• Overeating
• Emotional eating
• Gaining weight 

All of the food issues this time of year leads to dieting in January. These 3 months set up up to overeat!!!!! 

Sometimes we’ll go into this time-period with kind of an abandon:

1. I’m just going to eat all I want to eat this  holiday.
2. On January 1st, I’m going to diet and lose all the weight. 
3. I’m going to regain “control over food” at the first of the year. 

I encourage you to think about this all differently.

There are these strong messages that you can’t control food.

Those messages show up during the holiday time because it feels it can feel kind of out of control.

The message come January one the way you are supposed to control it then is to diet.

We have that binge diet cycle going on, that’s hard to get out of, we also can get the message that we can’t stop eating once we start, which reinforces the idea that we shouldn’t even start eating.

If we do eat these things that we think are bad, that then we’re feeling out of control. We think we shouldn’t be eating it in the first place. Also, we know that eating is super pleasurable.

It’s been the way that we’ve coped with different issues in life- through eating.

1. If we’re happy
2. When we’re excited
3. At times of sadness
4. Feeling lonely.

The holidays can be some of the greatest times for coping with feelings. 

Another occurance over the holidays is the sheer amount of special foods. These special foods come out once a year. Right now it is candy and soon enough it will be the next set of special foods.  

The candy can show up at work, school and when our children trick or treat.

It is all over the place. 

Once a year we often feel obliged to buy the bags and bags of candies. 

This is the one time of year that candy consumption is huge and socially acceptable.  We allow binging on candy on Halloween, and it is very normal to engage in that behavior.

This time of year the special foods come out the ones that show up once a year. 

There’s a big lookout for the release of the Pumpkin Spice Latte, which Starbucks puts out only this time of year. It’s for a short period of time. If you want to have it, it’s one of those foods that’s going to go away at Starbucks. This is brilliant marketing because it gets you wanting this thing. And then you might have a lot of it because you know, you’re going to be deprived of it for the rest of the year, that kind of idea of it’s a restriction for the rest of the year. So when it comes out, you might tend to binge these things like a pumpkin spice latte.

The binging can happen becuase the food only shows up a short period of time, it is tasty AND it has fond memories.

There are other special foods that we bring out this time of year:

• Holiday cookies
• Cheesecake
• Turkey
• Gravy
• Ham
• Lots of foods we don’t have the rest of the year.

We binge on them, because we don’t allow ourselves to have them any other time of the year. 

When we allow ourselves the holiday foods throughout the year, they lose their hold on us to binge them. 

We know through the research about habituation is that the more we’re allowed to have these foods, that the less they have control over us.

Literally, if we allowed ourselves to have candy, turkey cheesecake throughout the year they wouldn’t have such a draw for us this one time of year. We wouldn’t be binging on them because they wouldn’t have that big of a grasp on us. 

It’s interesting that at a local fitness center, one of the things they’re doing in the month of November is a “no candy” November. You win a prize at the end of the month if you don’t eat candy. And I thought that was interesting because that once again goes to the idea of restricting ourselves from certain foods because we can’t control them.

If we are in this kind of group setting, then we’re buying into the idea that I need to restrict candy because I can be out of control with it. And it’s interesting to me that so many people buy into that mindset of “I need to eliminate a type of food, because I can be out of control with it.” They didn’t say, let’s eliminate soup or let’s eliminate salad or let’s eliminate apples, because there’s good/bad concept associated with candy. 

Consider and wonder, if you are falling into that kind of mindset of, “I shouldn’t have any more candy.” 

There was trick or treating the other day and now there’s all this leftover candy. I know people that will sell it to the dentist, who then send it to troops overseas, which is kind of a nice thing to do, because they deserve as much a sweet treat as anybody. But there’s also this idea that you need to get rid of the candy because you can be out of control with candy. 

Maybe what makes you out of control with candy is that you deny yourself of it. 

It’s just a different way of looking at it. And it becomes more in alignment with the intuitive eating idea that we talk about here. We know from research is that we binge that there’s a diet/binge cycle that happens. 

Here is a way to look at what happens:

Diet/Restrict leads to Binge leads to Shame leads back to Diet/Restrict: it is a cycle

Think of this cycle as a circle where you start dieting/restricting, because you do not like how your weight or how much you have been eating. Then, at some point, you binge, because you have been deprived. This binging leads to feeling shame (I have myself, I am mad at myself, or I am afraid I will gain weight).

The only way we know how to deal with the shame is to go back and diet/restrict. We think this will solve the problem. And we start the cycle all over again. What I want to do is help you get out of that dieting binge cycle, because it just is a circle, it goes around and around and around. 

It and it’s becoming harder and harder to notice what are diets because they’re touted as being healthy a healthy lifestyle, a healthy way of eating. Generally, those are code words for diet and restriction. 

The other thing we know about binging and how to start noticing when this is going on is that we start to look at food is good and bad. This is good food, this is bad food, this is what I should eat, this is what I shouldn’t eat.

There’s a right food, there’s a wrong food, there’s healthy food, there’s unhealthy food.

And we, we think that if we eat these certain foods, that the outcome will be that we’ll get fat. You think you must avoid this bad food, because you’ll get fat from it. Or I’ll feel bad about my body, or I’ll be out of control, and I can’t stop. We tend to want to keep that bad food out of our out of being in front of us.

I was just so earlier just talked about that fitness center that’s having a contest to not eat candy all month. That is because they’re calling candy, bad food. And what we know is that when we start calling it bad, ultimately, we’ll want to have it because calling it bad and not having it is a form of restriction. And we’re ultimately going to have it. 

What I look to do with people is to help develop this idea of peace with food and this way of being a peace with food. And it’s very, very doable. So, let’s talk now about what we can do to get off of this holiday trifecta of candy being a bad food where we can’t have it or we can’t have it around. What I want you to do is to:  

1. Start being curious. If you want to have candy right now, wonder what’s going on? Am I really wanting it and I responding because I’ve not allowed myself to have it before? Is it that I’m scared about it? Am I concerned about having it? Am I sneaking it and trying to not let others know that I’m eating and begin to have this kind of inquisitive style about what you are thinking of eating most, especially when it is the “bad food”, the “wrong food”, the “unhealthy food”, the “fattening food?” There is this idea that our society has put forth that that we believe then gets dealt with come January one through a diet. And if it really got dealt with, we’d never have to go on a diet on January when again. The diet would be done. That’s not how it works, because the cycle keeps being a repetitive cycle. One thing to do is to be curious to help you get off of that diet/binge/shame cycle. Ask yourself a lot of questions.
2. Prioritize having pleasurable food, eating foods that you love, eating foods that are yummy, tastes good and feel lovely in your mouth. eating what you love, can be scary. I know you are concerned that you will get out of control. If you’re allowing yourself to eat pleasurable food, you’re not going to be binging, because you’re allowing yourself to have pleasurable food. People will think that if they eat pleasurable food, that it means that every day they’re going to have whatever sweet things or cookies or whatever thing that they think they binge on all the time. And what we know through our research on habituation is that the more you’re exposed to the food and allowed to have it, if you want it, the less you want it, because it will be one of the many types of food you can have throughout the day. Then it is not that big of a deal. 

The holidays can be a time of peace and joy, especially with food. If that does not seem possible you can join us in our Emotional Eating Solutions Self Study Course. It is super affordable and available now. 

Want to learn more about Holiday Trifecta: Candy Edition? You can listen to the full version on our podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim.

 Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor, Speaker, Podcaster, and Inspirational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She is the author of the book Feed Your Soul Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food and the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discovery Your Inspiration. 

You can find Kim on her podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim and you can find it on all podcast platforms. 

Determine if you are an Emotional Eater by signing up for the free Am I an Emotional Eater Quiz at https://kimmclaughlin.influencersoft.com/FYSU-EE