Out of all the things you are putting on the naughty list this December, make sure foods aren’t one of them.

This time of year is wonderful, except for when diet culture crashes the party and tells you not to enjoy your holidays so you don’t “fall off the wagon” and “ruin your bikini body”.

First things first, your body’s job is not to look good in a bikini.

Now that’s out of the way: did you know that, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, the average person actually gains less than a pound over the holidays? And, even if it were more than that, we need to stop assuming that gaining weight is inherently bad or something to fear.

The real gain we need to fear is how much revenue the $70+ billion diet industry makes off of this narrative that the holidays are scary and the new year is a perfect time to “get back on track” with a million products, diets, quick fixes, and even surgeries that are endlessly advertised to us.

If the holidays trigger food fear, shame, or thoughts of dieting in the new year, let’s talk about why diets don’t work and why you don’t want to label foods as “naughty” or “nice” this holiday season.

The first problem: statistics show that one to two-thirds of dieters regain more weight than they lost on their diets within the next four to five years. This is because dieting is not a long-term sustainable solution, and can actually cause significant health problems due to putting your body under too much-prolonged stress, eliminating essential macro or micronutrients, or just not being realistic for your lifestyle.

Dieting also doesn’t work because your body is really smart. Your body knows what weight it feels best at, and where your quality of life is best, even if that doesn’t align with where you think you look best. This phenomenon is described by “Set Point Theory”, which is a weight range that your specific body prefers, and will adjust your metabolism to maintain. So, for example, if your body likes to be 150 – 160 pounds, but you think you want to be 130, you can override your body and get down to 130 temporarily through dieting, but ultimately, your body will fight to bring you back into the range it feels best, maybe even swinging further in the other direction.

The third problem is that when you label food as good or bad and you put certain foods off-limits, your brain can actually start to crave that food. This is just one reason why diets that ask you to eliminate certain foods or food groups don’t work. You are more likely to feel out of control with a food that is, or has been “off-limits” or on your “naughty list”.

Think of it like when you were a little kid and you’re told you can’t have the cookies in the cookie jar. Chances are, that’s all your brain is going to think about and want. One minute you’re telling yourself you can’t have the cookies, and the next, you’re climbing up on the counter when no one is looking to snag one. You tell yourself you’ll just grab one quickly before anyone notices, but when you open the jar, you realize that you may not have another opportunity to have these delicious cookies again. So, what started as “I’ll just have one” turns into grabbing several, “just in case.”

By changing how you think about that food, increasing access to it, and reducing the scarcity mindset, over time you will feel more in control around that food, and not because you are controlling that food.

For example, if holiday parties aren’t the one time a year that you get to eat these foods, you don’t feel the need to eat as much of them as you can, as fast as you can, before you can’t have them again for another year. You can enjoy your holiday meals, treats, and festivities without feeling like you’ve fallen “off track.”

The fourth problem is that having such a narrow definition of “good” foods that one holiday is able to derail you (see what I did there) makes the track harder to stay on, promotes binge eating behaviors, decreases the quality of life, and increases the risk of developing an eating disorder.

You also need to stop thinking of your diet as a track. According to Oxford Language, a “diet” is really just “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats,” and it’s likely that your definition of what foods are “good” or “bad” probably originates from arbitrary diet culture rules that change every few years (like how fruit sugar is “bad for you,” unless it’s in a $12 smoothie and sold as a juice cleanse).

Here are some mindset shifts to help take away some of that holiday food stress…

Think of nutrition as weather and climate, rather than an all or nothing, naughty or nice mentality. All places have a climate, and they all have variations in weather. Your climate is what the weather’s like the majority of the time.

For example, when I think of San Diego’s climate, I think 70s and sunny year-round.

That doesn’t mean there are never cold or rainy days, because having variation in the weather is necessary to sustain the ecosystem and climate, just like having variation in your diet and life is necessary for both your mental and physical health.

Similarly, you can think of the food you regularly eat and buy as your “climate” and the food that you eat on holidays as the “weather.”

The holiday “weather” isn’t going to become your new “food climate” unless you’ve created a climate that is hard to survive in for prolonged periods of time (like eliminating or restricting food groups, calories, or life experiences).

If you see holiday food as a treat that you are only able to eat once a year, this can lead you to binge or feel out of control with that food, which can then lead you to think, well, I already “broke” my diet so may as well give up, or to just “start over” (maybe even more strict) in January.

If you are able to remove all emotional attachment from the food it also helps you make more clear and confident decisions around what you want to eat and why.

Also, remember that you didn’t “break” anything, so you don’t need to “fix” anything. You don’t need to start a new diet, “earn” your food through exercising, or eat less to make up for it.…just go back to eating and moving in ways that feel good.

All foods serve a purpose. They’re not good or bad, they’re just food. Chances are, if you’re eating a big holiday meal, it probably means you get to see people you love.

Those people deserve your attention and energy way more than your food does, and especially more than diet culture does.

Remember that foods aren’t naughty or nice, and neither are you for eating them.