Navigating Nutrition During the Holiday Season
Article by Aoife Burns
Christmas and the holiday season are full of joy and cheer, and they often bring plenty of opportunities to indulge in delicious food and drinks while catching up with loved ones. While it can sometimes feel tricky to navigate nutrition during this time, by the end of this article, we hope you'll feel reassured and confident in making choices that work best for you over the coming weeks.
Mindful Eating and Fullness Cues
Mindful eating is a practice that encourages being present, fully engaged, and aware while eating. This approach allows you to tune in to how enjoyable the food is and how satisfied you feel afterwards, whether that satisfaction comes from the taste or from being aware of your fullness cues. By slowing down and focusing on the experience of eating, you can better enjoy your food and help to prevent over-eating.
While the holiday period can be busy and you might be rushing from one thing to the next, it can be a time when we appreciate our food a little bit more and take the time to eat at a table with loved ones. This makes it a great time to practice mindful eating, so here are some tips:
Slow down: It takes roughly 20 minutes for our food to pass from our mouth to our stomach and for our stomach to send a fullness signal to the brain. Slowing down how quickly we take in food can therefore prevent us from eating more than we need.
Avoid distractions: Try not to eat in front of the TV or while using your phone, instead focus on enjoying your meal. Can you taste the sweet tang from the cranberry sauce versus the more savoury flavour from the gravy?
Tune into your hunger and fullness cues: Before beginning a meal, pause to assess how hungry you truly are. Tune into your body’s signals while eating too, taking a second to notice how hungry you feel half way through your meal.
Home Cooked Meals with Friends and Family
Home-cooking and preparing meals from scratch is one of the easiest ways to ensure you eat well at any time of the year. When we prepare meals ourselves, we often eliminate highly processed ingredients, high in salt and sugar. While holiday feasts often centre around indulgent dishes, including healthy, homemade options can provide a more balanced approach to nutrition.
We can also be more conscious of our portion size. Try adding the vegetables to your plate first and know that you can always come back for more later or save what you don’t finish.
Cooking can also be used as a time to bond with our friends and family, creating new memories. If you have little ones why not get them involved in mixing all the stuffing ingredients together or making and decorating some gingerbread biscuits.
Aim for Variety
There is now a lot of research showing that including a variety of plant foods in our diet is brilliant for our gut and overall health. The American Gut Microbiome Study (2018) is one of the biggest studies conducted to date that looks at the relationship between diet, health and lifestyle. One key finding was that participants who consumed 30 or more plant-based foods per week had a more diverse microbiome than those who ate fewer than 10.
A healthy and diverse microbiome has been linked to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity and Type 2 Diabetes. So another easy way to have a balanced approach during the holiday season is to aim for a more diverse range of plant foods. This could be simply embracing the rare occasion that you might eat brussel sprouts, adding extra herbs like parsley, thyme and rosemary to your sage and onion stuffing, or poaching pears in different christmas spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves.
Speaking of mixing things up, it’s good to rotate a glass of water in between drinks if you’re enjoying something alcoholic too.
Enjoy the Company and Give Yourself Space
One simple way to help maintain balance during the Christmas period is by focusing on the experience of being with loved ones rather than solely on the food. By shifting your focus to the conversations, laughter, and connection, you can enjoy other aspects of the holidays that go beyond just what’s on your plate.
This is also a time to allow yourself to enjoy treats and engage in festive feasting activities—food is one of the ways we celebrate and create memories together. While it’s important to maintain good habits, it’s equally important not to be too strict with ourselves. Being healthy is not just about our physical health, but also about recharging our batteries and taking care of our mental wellbeing.
Navigating nutrition during the festive period doesn’t have to be stressful or overwhelming. By embracing mindful eating, checking in with your hunger and fullness cues and focusing on home-cooked meals, it will be easier to maintain a balanced approach to holiday eating. The holidays represent only a short period of the year, so it’s worth remembering it’s the long term habits that improve our health, not the short term ones. Listen to your body, enjoy the present moment and most importantly, be kind to yourself during this festive time.
References
British Dietetic Association (BDA) 2023, Mindful Eating, Available at:
https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/mindful-eating.html
Miquel-Kergoat, S. et al. (2015) ‘Effects of chewing on appetite, food intake and Gut Hormones:
A systematic review and meta-analysis’, Physiology & Behavior, 151, pp. 88–96.
doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2015.07.017.
McDonald, D. et al. (2018) ‘American Gut: An open platform for citizen science microbiome
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Dosh, L. et al. (2024) ‘Probiotics, gut microbiome, and cardiovascular diseases: An update’,
Transplant Immunology, 83, p. 102000. doi:10.1016/j.trim.2024.102000.
Pillai, S. et al. (2024) ‘Exploring the gut microbiota: Key insights into its role in obesity, metabolic
syndrome, and type 2 diabetes’, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 109(11), pp. 2709–2719. doi:10.1210/clinem/dgae499.
Aoife Burns is a Registered Associate Nutritionist and holds a BSc in Nutraceuticals in Health and Nutrition and a MSc in Human Nutrition. She is passionate about helping educate people on all things food and nutrition, and does so through her work and instagram page; @aoifebia.