So You Ate a Lot for Thanksgiving and Now You’re Heading Straight into Christmas Cookie Season…

Let’s be honest, you can ‘detox’ from Thanksgiving all you want, but the reality is that you are looking Christmas Cookies in the face just a few days later.

As a food-focused society we cycle into the unimaginable — eat a lot, detox, eat a lot, detox, eat a lot : Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years we stay on a vicious cycle and lots of companies make big money from this fact. BUT what if it were different? 

What if instead we focused on other activities around family time. The food focused society is just continuing to breed eating disorder behaviors and I so wish people would start standing up to the tradition of big giant meals as the crux of the holiday — why not something else? 

Want some ideas? Here you go: 

1. Have a classic Christmas kick off movie — make some simple trail mix + hot cocoa and have people over for the cinematic adventure. 
2. The football game? Maybe soccer? Maybe volleyball — what sounds fun to your family? Grab pizza for the crew and indulge on your family’s competitive side and get some fresh air and vitamin D while you’re at it. 
3. Scavenger hunt. This is one of my go to ideas! I come back to it incessantly. You can make your own or grab an idea from Pinterest. 
4. Still want to do something food related — have a bake off! Everybody take a classic recipe, split into teams, and have fun. 

As someone who has been in the fold of eating disorder recovery in certain seasons over the past decade, it’s an important conversation to have about how we got here in the first place. What is it saying about our western culture that meals seem to be the end all be all? That it’s every man for themselves? Or the fact we just don’t want to stretch from the ‘normal’ and ‘comfortable’? 

I believe we can be a healthier and more wholesome community if we started balancing the scale of how our time is spent in these big moments. 

Think of the generations to come. How do we want them to live their lives? Do we want them so focused on sitting around a table eating together, or do we want to know we are helping set them up for serving together on the holidays, or inviting friends and family for a friendly competition, or baking together for neighbors around the town. What kind of legacy and traditions to we want to help set up? 

We are meant to have an impact, and we were made for a purpose so are our actions setting that tone? 

I think we should be collectively asking ourselves that question a little more often.

Agree?