Using Your Body's Feedback to Find Your Sweet Spot With Halloween Candy

It is that time of year again. The end of October often feels like it marks the beginning of a three month cultural focus on food and body image. It starts with Halloween, and then a multi-week break to potentially recover from any sugar binges or hangovers. Then comes Thanksgiving, which feels like a societal condoned binge where you’re supposed to overfill your physical body. 

After that is Christmas and holiday parties where you might feel pressure to drink more alcohol than you normally do or eat particular foods that you know don’t actually feel great in your body. And then we end with New Year’s, where you are now made to feel immense shame about all of the possible enjoyable food you ate and memories that you just created with people you love. You're bombarded with messages of how to lose the weight you gained over the holidays, what gyms you should start joining, what physical movement you should be doing, and how to start the new year with a new body. 

Maybe many of you are like me and don’t subscribe to any of this anymore. Thanksgiving to me now feels like time to intentionally not work and spend with people I love. The holidays feel like a reminder to slow down and reconnect. New Year's doesn’t mean much to me except that we’ve moved from December to January. So, as I started to get curious about what I could offer here as a support, I began to reflect on all the kinds of messages that are typically out there at this time.

Most messages before Halloween focus on eating the candy, managing your sugar intake, or saying no to it.

What I find is missing from this messaging is a call to turn toward your body. All of these messages about what you should or should not do when it comes to sugar may come from an embodied place in one person, but land in a cognitive place in your body. This is not something that you have felt in your own body yet to feel safe saying yes or no to eating something with sugar in it.

The first step here can’t be focused on what to do or not to do with sugar, but rather a somatic practice of noticing how your body responds to this food so that you can become aware of the associations that you have with a food that has sugar in it.

So, before you even decide whether to eat or not eat a food, how does your body respond to that food? What sensations, reactions, thoughts, and beliefs show up when you think about eating something with sugar in it? What are you trying to protect yourself from feeling by deciding to eat the sugar or not eat it?

Changing your interactions with sugar, regardless of whether that means eating more or less of it, can’t start from your mind; it needs to come from your body.

Truthfully, there is no right way to interact with sugar. This actually has to be unique to your body and how your body responds to a food with a high amount of sugar in it, based on the context of the situation, what has been associated with that food based on your past memories, and what eating this food in high amounts has protected you from or got you through, and what your brain receives when you eat these kinds of foods. This is going to look different for you because of any past trauma, that includes the trauma of dieting, or navigating a neurodivergent brain.

What I often see is that, based on your beliefs about sugar, your brain will be looking out for the messages that either condone the eating of it or threaten the dangers of consuming it. Your body naturally has a hard time sticking with the unknown. It wants to have an answer so that it can predict what could happen if you do or do not eat sugar so that you know that you will be safe with whatever decision you make. 

But something you may have noticed is that this sense of safety is short term. You decide to eat the sugar and then you’re just left wondering how much you should eat, whether you should eat more, or if that was the right decision. Or you decide not to eat the sugar and you wonder if you're restricting, if this is going to lead to a binge, or if you are depriving yourself of creating memories with people that you love because you’re saying no and if that is setting a poor role model for the people around you. 

Both of these scenarios are still happening from a nervous system that doesn’t know that it is safe to interact or not interact with this food and a brain that is trying to figure out what is going to make you feel the best in your body.

A top down or cognition first approach to this would be to start getting curious about your beliefs on sugar.

Where did those beliefs come from? Who told you sugar was bad? Who told you not to worry about sugar? Where did you get the information that sugar was or was not something to worry about? Where do you sense they got their information from? Do you need to read more research on sugar intake? Who would you trust to provide you information that is neutral and research informed? 

A bottom up or body-first approach to all of this would be to notice how your body responds before, during, or after eating sugar.

Rather than solely relying on information to tell you about your relationship with sugar, you get to discover for yourself, from a place of food neutrality, how foods higher in sugar feel in your body. You can observe any changes in your heart rate, breath, mental clarity, digestion, emotions, bodily sensations, and urges or impulses. Then, from that place of knowing how your body responds to this food, you get to make an informed decision based on how you want to feel and how this food makes you feel. 

You see how there doesn't need to be any demonization here? If you say no, you're not restricting; you're listening to your body. If you say yes, you're not out of control or doing something wrong; you're making an informed decision. 

I know this time of year can be rough with food for many of you. If you're looking for more support during the entire holiday season, there are 4 more days to sign up for the Somatic Eating® Program! At the end of every class, you receive 3 bite sized explorations to practice from week to week so you have something tangible you can be exploring in between classes to navigate things like sugar and holiday meals. You can go to somaticeating.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more and sign up. And if you have any questions, email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime. I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of the day. Bye!