237 – Healthy & Balanced Eating During the Holidays with Jessi Jean

Food is such a beautiful part of life. It’s a way of connecting with others and bringing enjoyment to your life. Unfortunately, we live in a world that makes it difficult to have a healthy relationship with food. We are met with the pressure to look a certain way, a lack of education about how to truly nourish our bodies and mixed messages that encourage both excess and deprivation — neither of which are healthy!

The holidays take this struggle with food and body image to the next level. We might miss out on a celebration or connection with our family because we’re filled with guilt and fear around food or we might lose control and later regret the way we lost sight of our goals for ourselves. It’s a frustrating cycle that takes all the fun out of this beautiful season! 

So, in preparation for this season of feasting and celebration, I’m bringing back the lovely Jessi Jean, who is an eating psychology coach and such a grounding voice on how to have a healthy relationship with food. In this episode, Jessi talks about what a healthy relationship with food looks like, how to check in to make sure you have a balanced relationship with food and strategies for keeping that balance throughout the holidays (good news: pie is still on the menu!). 

Listen to discover:
 

• The importance of your mindset going into a holiday food scene and how to prep your mind
• Tangible strategies for feeling in control of your eating (while still celebrating!)
• Her “future pacing” hack for eating intentionally at the holidays
• How to respond to a “food pusher” and how to pull yourself out of a binge 
• Questions to ask to check in on your relationship with food

As Jessi says in this episode, it’s not what you do with food that’s the problem; it’s how you feel about it. The important thing is to stay in touch with what’s important to you, tune into all your senses and truly enjoy the experience of the holidays! 

“We can’t control what our loved ones are going to say. We can’t control what they are going to do. But we can control our reaction and our response.” – Jessi Jean

“Practice being unapologetic in your decisions with food.” – Jessi Jean

“You teach people how to respect you by the way that you respect yourself.” – Jessi Jean

“When you take something away, there’s the thinking that there’s a lack and that triggers something inside us.” – Michelle Chalfant

“Anything we do that is guilt and shame and fear based…we take a good thing and make it toxic.” – Jessi Jean