It’s that time of year again! Every November, I’ve shared my latest and fan-favorite “healthy holiday recipes.” I’ve accumulated enough over the years to make a cookbook, which you can find here.
I share the same recipes every year, and there’s a good reason for it. It all stems from my personal unhealthy relationship with food. I share these so you can “break the cycle” for yourself and help cultivate a better relationship with food for your children.
Food shapes our nervous system in powerful ways. The holidays are an especially vulnerable time for our relationship with food, given the magnitude of the emotions, social connections, and the feast that ties them together.
If love makes food better, what could be more loving than a health-conscious meal?
If you’ve followed my newsletter for some time, you know that the majority of the recipes I share are healthy spins on familiar comfort foods, southern staples, or holiday classics. The reason for this is entangled with my own unhealthy relationship with food.
Strange words from a nutritionist, but it’s a core reason I was so drawn to this career and why I’m so passionate about it. For myself and many clients I’ve worked with, food is far more than just fuel. It’s a social event, a connection with others, and a labor of love. Especially the holidays!
Unfortunately, many of us grew up with more emphasis on the experience itself rather than the healthfulness of the foods shared. Holidays are a prime example of this, with their feasts of colossal proportion.
Classic staples we all love around the holidays often include multiple varieties of white bread, starchy/cheesy dishes or casseroles, and at least six different desserts.
While this might seem like a great thing, especially for children, it plays a monumental role in the development of our nervous systems response and relationship to food. We have the ability to use these times to cultivate health (or unhealthy) relationships.
How Food Shapes Our Brain
The holidays are the best time of the year – tons of food to eat ad libitum, plus the positive experiences associated with them. It’s the perfect recipe for an unhealthy relationship with food.
Nervous system development is driven by experiences during childhood.
- Positive emotions let us know that something is “good.”
- Neurochemicals are released to reinforce the relationship.
- The entire experience is integrated into memories via neuronal pathways that drive us to repeat the action that led to these feelings or seek out events where basic needs were fulfilled (food, love, connection, etc.).
This includes sights, sounds, tastes, the environment, time of year, and so on.
When a major part of this experience is a massive influx of hyper-palatable, processed foods, they become a key component of the memory so that we’re motivated to seek out the same experience in the future.
It becomes encoded in our nervous system and shapes who we are, the people we surround ourselves with, our behaviors, and our choices throughout the rest of our lives.
Irresistible Temptations?
Is it starting to make sense why we find ourselves engorging in foods around the holidays, why we end up gaining an extra 5-10 lbs despite promising ourselves “not this year,” or why we sometimes get lost in comfort foods when emotionally triggered?
When your entire psyche and nervous system develop with a strong, intimate, and emotional connection with food, it’s not always as easy as “just changing your habits.”
Certain foods and events elicit powerful emotions for some of us, like comfort and security. This drives us to partake in behaviors that don’t always support our health.
But this “programming” doesn’t have to be our fate. We have to first acknowledge that we have a sense of agency in the choices we make. We can still enjoy this time of year just as much but with healthier alternatives.
Breaking the Cycle
My toxic relationship with food was how I was able to change the dynamic.
For years, I couldn’t understand why these habits had persisted for so long. Why were parents feeding these foods to children during such formative developmental years? Why wouldn’t parents seek out this knowledge?
Then, I studied functional medicine and realized I had it all wrong.
It wasn’t bad parenting. It was a broken system – a lack of knowledge. Inaccessible information and predatory marketing from food companies have led to poorly formed relationships with food.
We didn’t intend to form irresistible cravings for hyperpalatable, processed foods. Instead, food companies decoded how our nervous system is driven and activated in response to sugar, salt, fat, and certain textures. They’ve exploited our natural biology for their financial gain. These foods are literally designed to make us form unbreakable bonds with them. When you add intense positive emotions on top of them, a lifelong struggle with food can ensue.
This knowledge isn’t taught in school; it’s not intuitive because processed food hijacks our nervous system, and it’s the opposite of what’s advertised on TV.
Holiday feasts and homemade pies come from compassion, love, and good intentions. Loved ones would never feed us things that could harm us if they knew. It’s not just the taste. It’s the entire experience that’s enhanced by tasty food.
I fully empathize with how difficult the internal battle can be. We want to make our loved ones happy – and delicious food does, in fact, bring joy to people. But how can we serve mac-and-cheese, Christmas cookies, and homemade pies now that we know how harmful it can be to our health and especially the nervous system development of our children?
This is why I do what I do. I write this newsletter with reconstructed recipes to “break the cycle.” Replacing these emotionally-charged foods with a healthier version has been transformative for my own health and the health of many clients.
You Can, and Should, Still Enjoy Food.
You and your entire family can have a wonderful holiday experience with all of the tasty foods that we anticipate and enjoy. But it doesn’t have to have a harmful impact on your mind, body, and health.
We are all well aware of the powerful influence that delicious food can have on our emotions and how experiences are enhanced by good food. We can experience this with clean, healthful foods.
I can’t think of a more loving way to prepare a meal than one that’s made with health as the priority. And when it tastes good, the positive experience inmeshes with powerful nutrients that your brain and body recognize.
In eating this way, you begin to rewire your brain circuitry toward a healthier relationship with food. You train your body to desire more healthful foods, you improve your and your loved ones’ health, and you nourish your body and your relationships. What’s more rewarding than this?
