‘Tis the season to eat, drink and be merry, but what’s with all the scrooge-ness around food once the Yule Log gets fired up? When constantly tempted to indulge during the holidays, all or nothing thinking can creep in, but with a quick mindset shift you can enjoy grandma’s cookies or a champagne cocktail without the guilt or snug jeans come January.
“Understand that all or nothing thinking is a human trait,” explains Sherry Pagoto, PhD, Associate Professor at University of Massachusetts Medical School. “This is built into us to look for danger so we don’t do something that might get us hurt or killed. In our modern age, we take it too far and apply it to all behaviors. The good news is that once you know about it, you’re halfway to avoiding it. The key is to look for it by watching your self-talk.”
Eating an extra piece of pie is far from life-threatening, but it could be “dangerous” to your goal of not gaining those extra 5 holiday pounds. If you want to enjoy being social without overeating and then vowing to over-exercise to make up for it, learn to drop the self-inflicted negative talk that sets off the all or nothing mindset.
When helping her clients develop a healthy relationship with food, Alexandra Jamieson, CAPP and author of Women, Food and Desire, constantly sees these trigger words come up with her clients: always, never, failure, perfect, ruined, impossible, terrible, furious and awful; as in:
“I already failed, so I might as well keep eating.”
“I’ll never eat another bite of sugar.”
“I’m terrible at being healthy, why even bother.”
“All or nothing thinking happens when one unhealthy decision makes you feel like the whole day is ruined, so the rest of the day involves more unhealthy decisions,” adds Dr. Pagoto. “Well, I already ruined the day with a donut at breakfast, so might as well just eat dessert and have an extra glass of wine!”
The more we polarize our thinking around wellness, the more it can lead us to disordered eating and over-exercising. It keeps us focused on what we’re doing wrong instead of what we’re doing right, which sets us up for failure because it demands us to be perfect- and perfection is a pipe dream.
The problem with trying to be “good” all the time is that as soon as you tell yourself you can’t have something, you want it 100X more and that leads to not just joining in on one holiday cocktail or indulgent dessert, but then thinking you have license to eat and drink “all the things.” So one 300 calorie piece of pie turns into an extra 2000 calories of other random things you ate…just because.
How about this year you let go of all that black and white, good and bad talk and instead shift your mindset with these 3 simple steps:
- Notice when you’re falling into the all or nothing trap and take a few breaths to decide how you want to act. If you have a pattern of depriving yourself and bingeing then allow yourself that slice of heaven and move on. If you’re about to hoover the dessert table after eating just two cookies, then stop and breathe before you do. Remind yourself that you didn’t “ruin” anything and decide how you want to feel one hour from now, knowing that the answer isn’t “gross and stuffed in a sugar coma.”
- Move into the gray area of “a little bit” and stick with it. Becoming less rigid is a first step away from black and white thinking. Figure out what it is that sets your taste buds on fire and eat a piece of it and then stop. So yes, eat those two cookies and be done without guilt.
- You’re only one meal away from getting back on the wellness bandwagon. If you overate at one meal don’t let it turn into a day of bad choices. Remember that the next time you eat is a chance to make a healthy choice instead.
Realize that one day of splurging at a holiday dinner or even a few days off from the gym during a vacation truly will not make a difference in your overall health and appearance, and that’s definitely something to be merry about!
