Worried about weight gain during Thanksgiving?? Don't! Listen to what Marc David has to say..

    Last week I was contacted by CNN so they could get some "expert" advice on how not to eat like a pig when eating your turkey. Every year for the last several decades, some major news outlet asks me such questions around Thanksgiving as if they've never been asked before. Seems that too many people are worried about eating too many calories, which would mean too many extra pounds, which means too many subsequent days of punishing exercise and food prison. What a conundrum. We're trying to celebrate the "discovery" of America, which we didn't really discover, by giving thanks for such bountiful amounts of food, which we feel guilty about eating. I wonder if the pilgrims were as concerned about fitting into those cute colonial clothes as we are about fitting into our yoga pants.

So, when the young smart eager-to-learn interviewer at CNN asked me what the best strategy was to limit our appetite around the holidays, I had one rather un-profound answer:

Don't.

I went on to say that I felt we needed, as a culture, more ritual. But the healthy kind of ritual. The type of ritual where we can stop the work, slow down, feast, feel, discuss, giggle, pontificate, resuscitate, inebriate, integrate, and above all else, celebrate. Far too much time is spent in the American way of chasing after more. Yet more never seems to be enough. Giving thanks is a rather odd notion in the material times we live in. Some of us have so much access to so much food that we've become enslaved to our fears of eating, our fears of body fat, and gripped by the massive illogic of media images that would have our women looking like fashion-conscious starvation victims, and our men looking euro-slim and cash heavy.

Ritual can heal us. The human psyche loves repetition, loves eternally returning to a happy and holy place. Thanksgiving is as good as it gets. Calorie-count another time. Give thanks for food, for love, for life, for your body, for what you have right now. Healing happens when love is present. Metabolism gets hotter when we relax. Digestion is empowered when we feel pleasured. And food increases in nutritional value when it's shared with others.

Thank you for your continued friendship and camaraderie and support. Though we likely haven't met, I believe you and I are enthusiastic about and committed to the same positive messages about food, nutrition, health, and Life. The world needs so much healing. Lets give thanks that we are fortunate enough to be up to the task. And for one day, and at least one day, lets celebrate the Journey.

 

My warmest regards,

 

Marc David Founder & Director Institute for the Psychology of Eating 303-440-7642 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              303-440-7642      end_of_the_skype_highlighting info@psychologyofeating.com www.psychologyofeating.com