Festive Fun: Reflections and Resolutions

Music. And welcome to Change Your Relationship with Food, the podcast hosted by me, Kyla Holley.

With many years experience as an eating disorder and bariatric therapist, I know exactly what it takes to help you break free from your diet history and develop a more healthy relationship with food. Please follow this podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing. As we come to the end of 2024, I just wanted to take time to reflect on this year because this podcast didn't exist this time last year. It was an idea that I had on New Year's Day as we came into 2024.

It occurred to me that I had nothing new on the horizon, nothing that was inspiring me, nothing that was different, nothing that I had to learn. I kind of felt like I was in a bit of a rut and I decided to start a podcast.

I just thought it would be useful to impart some of the information that I speak to clients about on a day-to-day basis, but also to try and build a little bit of a community of people who were getting these resources at no cost, but also benefiting and building their relationship with food into the future on a much more stable foundation. And I think we've really achieved that. In September, this podcast won the Best Psychology Podcast in the Women in Podcasting

Awards, which was amazing. And I was so honoured and thrilled to get that. And it was so unexpected as well for what is a very new podcast when there's some very, very established competition out there. So that was a thrill. And that really, really boosted our listening figures and took us into really kind of another level of podcasting. And it made me take it a lot more seriously because up to then, it's just been me in my little home studio chatting away like I am now.

And that really brought it home to me that there's lots of people listening all over the world. And in some places where you really wouldn't expect people to be listening. Let me just go ahead and recognise where some of you are at the moment. So I've just got our statistics for this month, for December, and the majority of our listeners are actually in the USA, which is fantastic. And again, something that I didn't expect.

The next runner-up is Australia, then the United Kingdom, and then Canada, all English-speaking countries, and I completely, I suppose, expected that. But next, this is a shock, Sudan is the next place that people are listening. The next one, Israel, Ireland, India, Vietnam, New Zealand, Turkey, Taiwan, Armenia, Bangladesh, Iran, South Korea, Greece, Ecuador, Ghana, Nigeria.

Saudi Arabia, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Cameroon, Germany, Egypt, Spain, Ethiopia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, Ukraine, Croatia. Iraq, Slovenia, Yemen, South Africa. That's the list. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing that all those people around the world are listening to what I'm producing in my home studio?

It blows my mind. It honestly does. And I want to seriously thank every single one of you for the support that you've shown this podcast. And I also want to promise that better things are coming. We've got some amazing guest lines up. We've already had a few of them this year, but next year we've got some really exciting ones coming on board. People that will blow your mind with what they've realized about their relationship with food.

And I wanted to also talk a little bit about the coming season.

Now, with that list of countries, obviously, not all of you will be celebrating Christmas, but some of you will be. And for those of you that are, Christmas is often a time of stress, I suppose, around food and a lot of pressures on us to have a good time. It's likely that we'll be catching up with family, with friends. It's likely that we will be going to some parties, some get togethers. They've probably already started.

I know I've already had two work events myself and now we're calming down. Christmas is going to be quite calm and quiet for me. But for some of you, it may be a hugely busy time where the expectation of having a good time, providing lots of food, making sure that everybody is catered for. Can cause a lot of stress and a lot of pressure. As we enter the festive season, try to make things easy on yourself.

Bring this back to basics and actually really think about what's going on as far as the pressures that you're under and where that pressure comes from.

The first thing I'm going to talk a bit about is this expectation to overindulge. That idea that you've got to be drinking a lot, you've got to be eating a lot, otherwise you're not having a good time. And I just want to ask you, where does that come from? And if you feel any element of that pressure, ask yourself that question, where does this pressure come from?

Does it actually come from other people saying, oh, come on, don't be boring, have another drink, have some more of these, go on, one won't hurt you? Those sort of peer pressures that we get from others to overindulge, to overeat, to overdrink. Or is this pressure actually internal? Is this something that you feel that if you don't do these things, if you don't eat too much, if you don't drink too much, then you're not having a good time?

Is this something that you've coupled together, the idea of overindulgence equals fun, equals a good time? And do you feel that if the overindulgence isn't there, the fun times are not being had? It's boring. Have you connected the two, this idea that food is kind of very stimulating and you must have it in order to be stimulated? So just ask yourself these questions. This is just reflection.

There's no judgment in here. But if you feel on any level some expectation to overindulge, just sit with that feeling and say, okay, where's this coming from? Where has this come from in the past? Maybe it's not a present expectation. Maybe it's historic, something that you felt years ago, and now it's just become a habit, and you just go into it autopilot at Christmastime. Another thing to remember is in most places that you'll be listening, the shops are only shut for one day. One day.

That's it. And in fact, there's lots of little shops, little what we used to call growing up corner shops, even though some of them weren't on a corner. So I don't know where that name comes from. But, you know, there's this little independent stores that might well be open Christmas morning in case you've forgotten milk or bread or eggs or something like that. But generally, the big supermarkets are only shut for one day. There's no need to panic.

We're not going down into some sort of isolation bunker where we have to survive for months on end. You just have to have enough food in the house to feed everybody for one day. Also, I suppose the other thing to remember is that when the shops reopen on Boxing Day, a lot of those Christmas treats that you've paid for will actually be half price. I often go and get my crackers or in other countries, they're called bonbons.

Those things you pull and they go bang and there's a useless toy and a silly joke inside. I always buy those on Boxing Day every single year because I know it's half price and then they're ready for the next year. So have a think about that. The shops are only shut for one day. There's no need to panic. And as you approach Christmas food-wise and drink-wise, just think about a couple of things. Firstly, nothing should be off limits. This isn't a time of deprivation.

Nobody expects you to sit there in a corner refusing to have a drink if you want to have a drink, refusing a piece of Christmas cake or a portion of trifle or whatever it is that's being handed around at Christmas. You don't have to refuse all these things. But it's also still a time of self-care and self-compassion.

You still are responsible to look after yourself over this Christmas period. Don't let all that go out of the window. So how do you balance the two? How do you look after yourself, but still have all the things you want to do? And just think about long term, not just for the festive season, not just for that one day or that one week or the two weeks you're off work.

Think long term about the effects all my choices will have over this season on my health, on my memories of all these occasions and potentially on my regrets. You know, am I going to come out of this season regretting anything, any of those choices that I made? If you're at an event, ask yourself, how do I want to remember tonight? Do I want to drink so much that actually I can't remember tonight?

Or do I want to have fond memories of tonight? Do I want to actually enjoy the conversations that I have with people? Do I want to be able to say something meaningful and remember those interactions with people? In which case, I probably should put a lid on the amount that I drink. Otherwise, I'm simply not going to remember those interactions and they won't be meaningful.

And especially if I haven't seen these people for a long period of time, it might be nice to remember those conversations and remember those interactions. Ask yourself also, do I want to be suffering tomorrow morning? Do I want to feel bloated? Do I want to have a headache? Do I want to feel nauseous because I've eaten so much and drunk so much that I actually feel horrible the next day or even later that night?

Do I want to be waking up during the night desperate for a drink and taking headache tablets because my head is pounding and I'm dehydrated? Do I want that for myself? And if I don't want that for myself, what plan am I going to put in place to make sure that I don't get those side effects? On Christmas Day, do I want to be asleep on the sofa by three o'clock in the afternoon?

Do I want to have eaten and drunken that much that I just put my head down and fall asleep and miss Christmas afternoon altogether? Is that what I want? And quite genuinely, if that's what you want, if that's part of Christmas and you actually really enjoy that once a year afternoon snooze. Well, great, good on you. But all I'm saying about this is don't enter this with judgment, purely enter it with what do I actually want? Me, what do I want? Not what's expected of me.

What are the outcomes that I want and how am I going to ensure that those outcomes happen? What plans am I going to put in place so that I can have a great time, but I don't go too far. Also, do you want to end the Christmas season, the festive season, feeling that you're now compelled to have to go on a diet because of what you did over Christmas and New Year?

Are you going to feel that you have to enter a period of deprivation, that you have to work out your body to its limits in order to pay for what you did over the Christmas season. And again, if that's the case, work out in your head, does that sound right? Should I be doing this? Should I be setting myself up for that old dieting roller coaster of overindulgence followed by guilt and shame, followed by deprivation? Is that something I want to set myself up for?

Because if you want to break that cycle, you've got to choose where you have to break it. You either don't overindulge in the first place, or if you do decide to overindulge, you decide that you're not going to attach any guilt and shame to it, or you decide that you're not going to take that compensatory behavior, that deprivation. This cycle can be interrupted in either of those stages.

But if you think about how the cycle progresses and you think, well, okay, if I choose to overindulge, am I going to be able to not feel guilt and shame? And if you question that fact and they think, well, actually, I probably am going to feel guilty and shameful, well, then you've given yourself the answer. The answer is not to overindulge in the first place. So why not think about this? Set a few limits for yourself. How are you going to balance it out? How are you going to have moderation?

How are you going to have a good time without that good time lasting for too long and you having to worry about the side effects of that good time? So set a few limits for yourself. Have some strategies, simple things, maybe like alternating drinks. Have an alcoholic drink and then have a glass of water or a soft drink in between. That can easily halve your alcoholic drinking throughout a whole day or a whole evening, depending on what event you're at.

Maybe have a strategy like I will allow myself to have whatever I want, but I'll just have a little bit of everything, a taste. And this is what I tend to do at Christmas. I have a taste of, If I want a taste of something, I'm going to have a taste of it. Doesn't mean I need a whole bowl of it or a whole plate of it or a whole glass of it or a whole anything, but I'm going to enjoy everything.

I'm going to enjoy all the different tastes and interesting things that come my way without having too much of any one thing.

So have a think about all this stuff as we go into the Christmas season. Do have a great time. Enjoy the Christmas season. But remember, it's about the people. It's about family. It's about friends. It's about the people that we love. It's not necessarily about the food, the drink and the presents. They're not the things that we remember. I'm sounding a little bit like one of those cheesy Christmas films now, aren't I?

Which I don't mean to do, but you get the idea of what I'm saying. Have a great time. Enjoy this season with your loved ones, but don't let it turn into that old cyclic pattern that we are well aware of.

I'm actually going to take a couple of weeks off now. I've got a couple of weeks off work, and I've got a lot of things that I'm going to work on in that time. I'm going to allow myself to be completely lazy for probably a week. And then I'll probably get quite bored with being completely lazy because I tend to do that. And I'm actually developing a number of courses for next year, which is one of the exciting things to look forward to.

They're little mini courses, which I'm probably going to call life skills. And they tackle lots and lots of things that we're all kind of guilty of at one particular time or another. Things like people-pleasing, procrastinating, getting anxious about things, worrying about things. So there's going to be a whole series of these just little snippet courses. They don't take long. They're going to be video based.

So you get to watch a few videos and just see me talking through particular subjects and giving you skills that are relevant for those particular problems. So that's what I'll be developing next year. And I'm going to be working on that in early January. The podcast will be back on the 7th of January. So exciting stuff for next year. More guests.

We'll have the life skills courses coming up. More of what I hope you've been enjoying for this past year, because it's been a real learning experience for me and a rollercoaster for me. And I want to really seriously thank all of you for sticking with me over that year and seeing where this has gone. Hopefully in 2025, it will go from strength to strength. And get better and better. Don't forget you can contact me with ideas for the podcast.

If there's anything that you would like to hear me talking about, if there's any particular people that you think I would like to hear their story, or you want to actually suggest somebody that you know to be on the podcast, or perhaps it's you, perhaps you would like to be on the podcast yourself, just contact me at info at acfeb.com. Easy as that. And I really look forward to speaking some more to you all in the following years. Thanks so much for listening. Bless you all. Bye-bye.

Thanks once again for listening to me this week. And don't forget there's links in the episode notes for our six-week course called Change Your Relationship with Food, and also to the workbook and journal which accompanies that course. Music. Music.