Holiday Food, Guilt, and Stress: How to *Actually* Have a Happy Holiday
The holidays are supposed to be the happiest time of the year, and yet, many people would agree "jingle hell" may be more appropriate than "jingle bell." Delicious treats are everywhere, and yet one wonders, is there such a thing as too many cookies? Family is coming together, including that one uncle who always makes some rude comment about your weight, And a whole smorgasbord of feelings--guilt, shame, anxiety, loneliness, and more--are brought to the table along with the pies and roasts. On this episode: how to navigate all things holiday food, family, and emotions to *actually* make it the happiest season of all!
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Guest
Kori Propst Miller is a health psychologist, clinical coach, and founder of Core Capacity LLC.
The Takeaways
Food, family, and the emotions of the holidays can make this season especially stressful for people.
Food itself is not stressful – it is the way that we are perceiving it that may be harmful.
We can think about our relationship to food much like we think about a good relationship with a person. Is our relationship
respectful?
curious?
open?
Restriction is not a healthy way of relating to food. We know that drastic restriction leaves people obsessed with food.
Black and white thinking about food, such as labeling some things as “good” and “bad,” creates a perfectionist mindset. Instead of striving for perfection and trying to get an “A+”, Kori suggests we should try to get a “C” when navigating foods in the holiday season.
If you find yourself emotional eating, rather than shaming yourself, try to bring awareness to this behavior and figure out what emotions or needs are leading to this behavior.
Ways to self regulate in the stress of the holidays:
Pause and breathe.
Set boundaries with family members about which conversations you want/don’t want to engage in.
Create a support system of people who feel safe and supportive. Lean on them.
Studies
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Juna [00:00:01] Okay, guys. Thanksgiving has passed and the December holidays are approaching. Yup.
Eddie [00:00:05] Tis the season.
Juna [00:00:07] I don't know about you guys, but I'm still recovering from my Thanksgiving food coma.
Eddie [00:00:12] Juna, Same. I love getting together with my family, but I always seem to eat a lot more than I otherwise would.
Juna [00:00:17] So I know the holidays are supposed to be the hap happiest season of all. But I'm going to be honest with you guys, I often find the holidays extremely stressful.
Eddie [00:00:27] Stressful? Like which dessert to eat at Christmas dinner?
Juna [00:00:30] Not exactly stressful. Like, I will probably be eating way more than I usually eat and I'm going to be around foods I'm never usually around and I'm going to be around people I'm not usually around and I'm going to be feeling guilty and stress and it can all just be anything but jolly.
Eddie [00:00:46] Well it's a good thing we're here then, because it's a perfect time to do an episode on holiday eating, holiday guilt and all the other holiday stress.
Juna [00:00:57] On today's episode, how can we approach food, eating and our family over the holidays so that they might actually be holly and jolly? How can we not just survive but enjoy the holidays? I'm Juna Gjata.
Eddie [00:01:10] And I'm Dr. Eddie Phillips, associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
Juna [00:01:14] And you're listening to Food, We Need to Talk, the only podcast that has been scientifically proven to instill the holiday spirit just by listening. So now let's meet someone who is going to help us break down why we might be dreading the holidays instead of looking forward to them.
Dr Corey Probst Miller [00:01:40] My name is Dr. Kori Propst Miller and I am the founder of Core Capacity LLC. I, I'm also a health psychologist and a clinical coach.
Juna [00:01:51] The holidays can be stressful for many reasons.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:01:54] Around the holidays, there's lots of emotion. Theres one thing. And we live in a culture that tells us not to feel and that especially emotions that are uncomfortable or unpleasant need to be kind of avoided or shoved away, that we need to be feeling good all the time, that we need to be happy all the time. Then you have families getting together and every family culture has different dynamics. The dynamic with me and my sister is different than the dynamic when me and my mom. And then you have all the food. And especially if you have been dieting, or maybe you just have some goals around wanting to be more intentional, wanting to be more conscious about what you're eating, for example, you're presented with a lot of choices. Food in and of itself is not stressful. It's how we are perceiving the situation.
Eddie [00:02:53] I love the idea that she says that food is really not the issue. But of course, we're going to spend much of the podcast talking about how food is the issue. But there is just so much to navigate. I know for me, you know, like all my kids are going to be home, which is wonderful and we're going to visit extended family and that's wonderful. Yeah, but there's a lot of people who aren't always together, and sometimes that gets a little stressful. There's all the past dynamics that come up.
Juna [00:03:17] Okay, so it's not just a me thing?
Eddie [00:03:19] No, it's not just a youth thing. You know, I think we all feel some kind of stress. I mean, I'm a little maybe a little bit immune to it as a guy, but I hear relatives commenting on weight and physique. I'm sometimes commented on.
Juna [00:03:33] Really?
Eddie [00:03:34] Yeah. And it's weird. I just don't really know that I need or want to hear it. There's also these comments on what people are eating or what they're not eating, right? And that gets uncomfortable. And as I sort of like look back and I see the reactions.
Juna [00:03:49] Yeah, yeah. It doesn't go over that well.
Eddie [00:03:51] Not always.
Juna [00:03:53] Yeah. Well, Eddie, I love the holiday season. Like, I love decorating. I love Christmas trees. I love the lights. I love the holiday beverages. If you know, you know, shout out Starbucks, sponsor the podcast. I love the candles. But at the same time, I always find myself dreading the holidays.
Eddie [00:04:10] So what are you dreading?
Juna [00:04:11] I just feel like I do all this hard work all year, eating really, really healthily and working out. And then the holidays come and it kind of ruins everything because it's like there's all these meals that you have to eat, food that you don't usually eat. And I feel like people are cooking for you, so you can't say no. And there's desserts everywhere. And it's rude to say no to desserts. And like, there's a lot of family around. There's a lot of emotions. And like, sometimes I want the desserts.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:04:38] That sense of dread, that sense of threat, that sense of fear. What are the memories? Okay. What are the associations? What is my relationship like just with food in general? Is it a respectful, open understanding, honest? Like let's look at it like it's a human relationship. Is it a relationship like that? Or is it a relationship that is very impulsive, love, hate, like on and off again, rigid, contracted.
Eddie [00:05:14] So it's like the food is another person at the table. It's already crowded with lots of relatives who, you know, are navigating each other. But now we've got the food going on.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:05:24] I like to look at our relationship with food like a dance. We can pretend that food is another human. How do we interact with each other? Is it respectful? Is it curious? Is it open? Because ideally, in a very healthy relationship with another human being, these are the traits, right, that are foundational. The dance that we do with food, how we interact with food, the rules we have around food, is it conditional or are there certain conditions? If we did that with a human, would that work very well?
Juna [00:06:00] It can be easy to trick yourself into thinking that your relationship with food isn't that bad. Like I know, especially for me, I used to have a really, really bad relationship with food.
Eddie [00:06:10] Even a few years ago. Weren't you? Like, super restrictive.
Juna [00:06:14] Like, guys, I would not eat any desserts, like, all December, and I would have, like, dessert once at Christmas. And that was my dessert for, like, the month.
Eddie [00:06:22] How did you even choose which one?
Juna [00:06:24] Like, literally, I don't even know. Like, I don't even know how I did it. So I feel like I'm much more relaxed now than I used to be. But at the same time, I feel like it's very easy to fall back into old patterns. And for some reason, the holidays always bring that out of me.
Eddie [00:06:39] So what is it about the holidays?
Juna [00:06:41] I don't know. I feel like there's just a lot of your routines being broken and I thrive on routine. Like I'm meal prep. I eat similar things everyday. I go to the gym every day, and then when all those things are kind of thrown out of whack and you're in food situations all the time with people, you're eating out all the time, you're always eating other people's cooking, but you kind of lose all of your control and it's just like stressful in these situations.
Eddie [00:07:06] You're out of whack.
Juna [00:07:06] Yeah, everything is out of whack. Like, everything is out of whack. So this is what Kori says a bad relationship to food looks like.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:07:13] I would say our relationship with food is very much related to our relationship with ourselves, our emotions, our bodies, our thoughts, our minds. So actions taken might be thoughts like, I can't eat that. I shouldn't be eating this. If I eat this, I can't eat this for this much longer or there's some compensatory sort of behaviors going on. So if I eat this, then I'm going to have to do this much more exercise in order to compensate. So very sort of rigid and restrictive thinking around food labeling foods as all bad or all good instead of food, just being food. And we can make conscious and intentional choices around when and how we eat it.
Juna [00:08:00] So Corrie herself used to actually struggle with her relationship with food. Back when she was a professional dieter.
Eddie [00:08:06] What they have that professional dieters.
Juna [00:08:10] Well kind of. Kori used to compete in physique competitions.
Body Building Judge [00:08:13] Ladies in front of both sides, chef and backup advisor. Thank you, ladies. Back to you both.
Juna [00:08:24] And this is where you basically get super jacked and muscular and then you diet down to a super low body fat percentage and go on stage in a bikini for everybody to literally judge your body like that. That's what the judges are there to do is judge your body. It's my worst nightmare.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:08:38] Holidays for me, too. When I was dieting and when I had a lot of rules around what I could eat, what I couldn't eat, the number of calories that I needed to stick to: proteins, carbs and fats. Right. A lot of stress around it. A lot of planning like what am I going to do in this situation? Am I even going to go to this event that has this food? I need to stand away from the party table with all the food on it, like so many rules and so many things like, okay, here's my strategy.
Eddie [00:09:12] Strategy. It sounds like we're going into battle.
Juna [00:09:15] Well, yeah, I think a lot of times it feels like a battle.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:09:19] I shouldn't be eating that. Oh, my God. This is going to make me fat. This was on my do not eat list. Oh, I only have 30 grams of protein to play with and 50 grams of carbs, and I only have ten grams fat. And trying to do that mental math, how am I going to fit that in like Thanksgiving dinner into that? Okay.
Eddie [00:09:43] You know, what's so interesting about this is that it seems like the restrictions can be both the physical, like she's counting up her carbs, etc., and mental. Juna, you might not be physically restricting anymore.
Juna [00:09:55] Right. Like, I don't think I'm eating too little calories like I used to eat. If anything, I feel like I'm eating more than I used to eat.
Eddie [00:10:00] But there still sounds like there's this restriction psychologically, you're kind of deciding, I can't have this food or that food. And it seems as if it's just as unpleasant as the physical restriction.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:10:12] Our bodies have mechanisms that are safeguards. They protect us. It doesn't matter whether it's physical or psychological or restriction. Your body anticipates threat. It is not getting what it needs. And so it will prompt cravings. It will prompt more thoughts about food and eating.
Juna [00:10:35] Part of the temptation to like go all out over the holidays and just eat everything in sight and kind of overeat a lot more than I usually would is because of what comes after the holidays.
Eddie [00:10:47] The food coma?
Juna [00:10:48] Up. No, the next holiday.
Eddie [00:10:50] Valentine's.
Juna [00:10:51] Day. Okay. Back one holiday.
Eddie [00:10:53] New Years?
Juna [00:10:54] Yes. New Year's.
Eddie [00:10:57] So how does New Year's contribute to the holiday stress?
Juna [00:11:00] Well, I feel like I know in my mind when I wrote you years ago super hard. So like this is my last chance. December is my last chance to, like, go all out eating all these desserts.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:11:12] If we're dieting or we have big concerns about weight gain, we're like, well, it's justified. I can justify stuffing myself because I have New Year's just around the corner. I'm going to jump on that exercise plan. I will jump on the new diet. Yes. That is what creates actually the next binge if we look at the binge cycle. So we have restriction. We're not getting adequate amount of food, so we binge. And then what happens after the binge? Well, we've got to repent, right? We have to punish ourselves in some way. We have to compensate so we vow not to binge again. We vowed not to eat, said food or that much food, or we compensate by whatever it is, laxatives over exercise, you name it. And that starts the cycle all over again. Because it's that restriction and that rigidity that starts the cravings again and that your body rejecting it and being like, No, this is not okay, I need to be taken care of. You have to freaking feed me.
Eddie [00:12:21] Well, you know, younow, the research on how the human body and mind reacts to being underfed goes back a long time. In fact, I believe it's time for.
Juna [00:12:31] Oh, my God, here it comes.
Eddie [00:12:33] A brief historical side note. Cue the music. In 1944, with World War Two raging around the world, some researchers in Minnesota set out to figure out exactly what starvation did to the human body. 36 men moved into the corridors and rooms of the University of Minnesota Football Stadium, but they were not there to play football. They were restricted until they lost 25% of their body weight. Physically, the men became gaunt, perpetually cold, and lost their strength and stamina. Mentally, they became obsessed with food. Dreaming about it. Fantasizing about it.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:13:15] Completely obsessed with food. Recipes. These are men looking through cookbooks, picking out things that they were going to make as a result of restriction.
Juna [00:13:28] Okay. So obviously, we're probably not going into the holidays actually physiologically starving like the men in the experiment. But the point is that restriction can make you more preoccupied with food.
Eddie [00:13:39] Exactly. And this idea of eating bad, eating good. Juna, we've talked about this before, but it really promotes this kind of black and white, rigid thinking about food.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:13:49] What happens for a lot of people is diets promote the sense of perfection. Like this is the way you do it the right way. And there's only one right way. Right? You follow the plan. That's the one right way. Well, that's not life. Anywhere else in life. That doesn't work.
Eddie [00:14:11] I hear the cats in the background there and I just want to point out that regular listeners will know that most episodes we actually bring in some discussion about rats or mice. In this episode, they've all been chased away.
Juna [00:14:25] They've been chased away by Kori's cat guys, no rats and mice in this episode. So if you're pretty perfectionistic of a person.
Eddie [00:14:32] Are you reporting on the literature here? You know.
Juna [00:14:35] Yes. As a strictly scientific use, the literature, definitely not my personal experience. Not thinking in black and white can be really hard. And a lot of the time I feel like with food and either eating perfectly, so I'm getting like an A-plus or I'm at Christmas dinner and I'm like, Well, I might as well have all these desserts. I should just eat everything and then getting an F. But Kori says, what we should aim for is C work,.
Eddie [00:15:01] C Work.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:15:03] C work like the letter. C like grade C average. Because what so many of us have been taught in this culture, diet, culture, fitness culture is A+. Anything less than good, anything less means you're undisciplined and lazy.
Eddie [00:15:23] Instead of eating perfectly before the holidays and then having this free for all at the Christmas table, let's find a way to eat pretty good all the time. There's room for indulgences, even outside of the holidays, and you can say no to dessert during the holidays. It's not one or the other.
Juna [00:15:39] Right It seems like a lot less of a treacherous way to spend the holidays than the way I spend my holidays usually. Now, Eddie, I wanted to shift gears a bit and talk about emotions. The holidays are supposed to be the most joyful time of the year.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:15:53] They have the potential to be very joyful and very connecting and very expansive and open and a very compassionate time. Well, and I think that puts a lot of that's a big expectation. It's a big ask.
Juna [00:16:09] Because at the same time, they can also be really emotionally tough for a lot of people.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:16:16] We get together with family members that we have complicated relationships with. Guilt can be activated, feeling a sense of responsibility for certain things that may not even be ours to take responsibility for. But that's often activated in family situations. Sadness. Loneliness. Fear.
Eddie [00:16:42] Well, sure. You get together with family and it's going to trigger these old feelings that, you know, they're not always that pleasant.
Juna [00:16:48] Right. And a lot of people might not even be with their family. They might be all alone, which is also really tough during the holidays.
Eddie [00:16:54] On top of that, I think this is really a good time of year for doing a lot of reflection. We think about the years gone by, what we've accomplished, what we haven't accomplished,.
Juna [00:17:04] Emphasis on, what we haven't accomplished.
Eddie [00:17:06] It's you mean your list is not done. It's this emotional soup.
Juna [00:17:11] Which can often lead to emotional eating. And potentially this might be part of the reason why we always find ourselves like eating a little more during the holidays. Now, Kori is one of the first people I heard say this idea, and that is that we shouldn't demonize emotional eating.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:17:27] I know that's counterintuitive because everything in the culture tells us, like, you got to fix this. This is a problem. Emotional eating. We need to get rid of it. Why do you do it? To feel better. Mm hmm. The intention is benevolent. It's positive. You are recognizing there's something going on that doesn't feel good and you want to protect yourself. It's like an indicator light going off, letting us know there's something that needs paying attention to.
Eddie [00:17:57] Hmm. Instead of treating it like a behavior we need to avoid, we see this now. I guess it's supposed to be a she's saying, like, a signal that something's up.
Juna [00:18:06] Right.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:18:08] An emotion is like a spotlight. It's like a flashlight saying, hey, this is pointing to something probably important. We don't know yet what a value of yours. Maybe we need to get closer to welcome it. And if we don't welcome them, if we don't invite them in for a conversation, if we don't listen to them, if we avoid them all the time, what we resist persists. It will get stronger.
Eddie [00:18:38] And to be like a little bit more concrete. Maybe it's like those indicator lights on the car. The more you ignore them, the louder they get and they don't just go away. Your car doesn't magically change its own oil or replenish its own gas.
Juna [00:18:50] Right.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:18:51] So I'm working with a client right now who anxiety is her thing that she just feels controlled by. And we likened it to anxiety coming to visit, knocking on her door. And I was like, You don't have to like it. Do you have to like it? Who likes anxiety? Uncomfortable. But what would happen if you opened the door and you said, Hey, I don't want you here. I really don't like you. But I think that you have some things that I could learn. I think you have some things to say. I want to hear them. Come on in. Let's sit down. Let's have a conversation.
Juna [00:19:31] So it seems like the cats also don't like anxiety. They do not want anxiety there. But I just want to say, I want to give a shout out to my therapist, Brian, because he always says when we talk about overeating or emotional eating, he always says instead of getting upset about it afterwards and feeling like so guilty and whatever he said, Juna, you should be curious, why did you feel like you needed to, like, really stifle these emotions? Why why were you feeling this way?
Eddie [00:19:55] Emotional eating. Cure it. It can't be that easy.
Juna [00:19:58] It's not that easy. But I think it's a better approach than like just not understanding what's going on to actually think about like, why am I using this unhealthy coping strategy in the first place? What am I trying to cope with that is so distressing? Mm hmm. So, so far, we've talked about rigid thinking around food and dealing with these difficult emotions. And finally, we have something that we touched on in our last episode, which is being around all that wonderful, wonderful family.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:20:29] All of us grew up in our own little family unit, right? Kind of our nuclear family. And within that family, every one of those people had a specific relationship with food, whatever that looked like and felt like. I am working with a client now who, you know, she recalls her mom not eating with the family like that sends a message. She doesn't recall her mom ever cooking. She can't remember her mom cooking. They never had family meals together. That sends a message. She was taken to Weight Watchers meetings, everything she heard or didn't hear. All of those were messages that she got as a child.
Juna [00:21:13] And of course, there's also not so subtle things that your family might say to you at the holiday table.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:21:19] They've worked with plenty of women who were overtly criticized about the size of their bodies and what they should or should not be eating. Should you be eating that like you're gaining weight or even, you know, their caregivers, like touching their bodies and kind of pinching different areas of their bodies. Messages in that. Right. You're not okay. Your body's wrong. Your body's bad. Your body needs to change.
Eddie [00:21:47] Boy. We've talked about the emotions piece. Yeah, the food piece. Yeah, the family piece. Now, the question is, what are we going to do about all this?
Juna [00:21:57] Okay, that's the million dollar question. And it's exactly what we're going to talk about right after this break.
Eddie [00:22:12] And we're back.
Juna [00:22:14] Where we left off, we were going to discuss what to do about all things that can make the holidays tricky to navigate for us food and body image wise. Now Eddie, I feel like we sound like broken records on this. We've beaten this horse to death, but unfortunately it's just true. Such an important part of getting a grip on this stuff is increasing our own awareness. So let's circle back to that rigid relationship with food for a second.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:22:39] It's getting in touch with and reflecting upon what are the rules behind this fear? What's creating the fear in the first place? What am I expecting of myself? What are the plans? The unconscious ones that are directing my behavior? And just like any plan, you know, ideally we're asking like or we're assuming that this plan might not go as planned.
Eddie [00:23:07] These topics are really fraught.
Juna [00:23:09] Yeah.
Eddie [00:23:10] And they're also kind of squishy. I mean, like like kind of as a scientist, like.
Juna [00:23:15] Right.
Eddie [00:23:15] How do you measure it?
Juna [00:23:17] Like, you can't like when we have blood pressure numbers, it seems like this number is good. This number is bad. But how do we measure your internal state or your attitude? It's just really hard.
Eddie [00:23:27] Which perhaps makes it all the more important for us to do it ourselves. As a doctor, I could measure your blood pressure, but I'm not there inside your thinking to know how you're feeling at the holiday dinner table.
Juna [00:23:41] Honestly, I don't want you inside my body.
Eddie [00:23:44] So ultimately, it sounds like what we need to do is just to shift our mindset and to go for that awareness.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:23:51] So many of us go into moments that can be connecting and enlivening and joyful, and we just bring so much heaviness to them. If I were to approach this with curiosity and compassion, what would I do? Like if I were to soften a bit? Like, it's very hard to be scared when you are softened and when you are approaching yourself gently. Right. What are the expectations that are guiding me right now? And what if I released some of those?
Juna [00:24:26] And a big part of shifting mindset and releasing expectations is, again, going to be it getting outside of that black and white thinking.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:24:34] Coming back to the C work. If I were going to approach this from a place of C work, not A +, this isn't black and white. It's not pass or fail. Life isn't pass or fail. Neither is this. How would I approach this? What are the things that I that I want to focus on? What are the values that I want to get aligned with when I when I do this with my family, with whatever food is there?
Eddie [00:25:02] Another thing we can concretely do at the holiday meal is to take a second to breathe. Juna, we've talked about this in other episodes, but breathing helps to really viscerally calm ourselves down and tap down that fight or flight response.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:25:17] I always tell my clients, You are allowed to excuse yourself. You are allowed to go take a breather. Go to the bathroom. Do a quick self-check in and breathe. Breathing is the quickest, fastest way to prompt your parasympathetic nervous system response. Calm, useful. Your muscles relax. All right. This is all connected. Sends a message to your brain that says, Hey, we're safe, we're okay. We can think more clearly with greater clarity. Okay? And then even if you're not taking a break and excusing yourself, if you're sitting at the table, pause, just pause and breathe.
Juna [00:26:04] Another thing that Corey does with her clients is actually practice how to respond. Being in the situations you know you're going to be in.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:26:12] If my client has family members and they're like, every time I freaking go to this person's house, like, these are the sorts of comments that they're going to make. We will role play their responses. You don't have to respond immediately to any comments made. You can say. I'm not sure. You can say I don't know. You are not obligated to answer or engage in a conversation.
Eddie [00:26:39] Juna, Do you want to try the role play?
Juna [00:26:41] No, I don't want to do it.
Eddie [00:26:43] Good. You're not engaging in this conversation. That's really good. And, you know, maybe this is a big difference people should understand between listening to a podcast. We love having you as listeners and going for some proper therapy. You can go through this role play, but you're still going to be confronted with that uncle. I remember him from the last episode.
Juna [00:27:02] He's going to always says the wrong things.
Eddie [00:27:03] And like, What are you going to do? Instead of coming into the conversation all riled up and upset, we can actually have some responses ready for him for when he says the inevitable wrong thing.
Juna [00:27:15] Right. So shout out to my therapist, Bryan, the third host of this podcast, apparently, who would say to me all the time, like, if, you know, certain people are going to say certain things because they say it every time we see them, basically, then it's like, Why do you continue to give them the power to upset you? Because you know it's going to happen. So, like, why do you get upset every single time? It just doesn't really make sense.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:27:39] We will also role play setting boundaries ahead of time, making things clear ahead of time, sometimes engaging in a conversation before the holiday even arrives. Because I want them to feel empowered going in and knowing that even if they get uncomfortable, they're going to be okay.
Juna [00:28:01] So I'm not really familiar with setting boundaries besides the boundary I set earlier with Eddie, even if I don't want to role play because I'm basically a chicken and I hate confrontation. So I asked Kori if she had any examples of boundaries she had set.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:28:14] So my mother in law loves to cook. I like to make my own breakfast. I don't expect her to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for us. And it's on a time schedule. Like it's valuable for me to be able to eat whenever I'm hungry. And I might say something like, Hey Mom, I wanted to have a conversation with you about when we're visiting. I get hungry pretty early and it's not usually during a time when most people are eating breakfast. So I wanted to make sure it's your kitchen, it's your home. Is it going to be okay if I get up and I have a bowl of cereal or I make myself some eggs? I just wanted to check in with you about that and respect your space. I don't know how she's going to respond, but at the very least, I have shared something that's important to me, and I have also conveyed that I have a lot of respect for her space and her kitchen and her food.
Juna [00:29:11] Okay, here's the thing about setting boundaries. It's all fine and dandy, but, like, I don't want to hurt people's feelings or, like, make them upset. You know?
Eddie [00:29:20] Juna, You didn't that hurt my feelings about my request to do role play? I thought you're just being honest.
Juna [00:29:25] Okay, well, according to Kori, you're not offending people. When you set boundaries, you're trying to teach the person about you. And hopefully, most family members will not want to make you feel uncomfortable, even if they don't agree with what you're asking them.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:29:39] Boundaries are very much meant to share with other people to help them get to know us better. The reason we set boundaries is to potentially create greater connection, and that has really helped me in my life to remember.
Eddie [00:29:56] I think this is pretty profound. At first I thought it was just like, Oh, good fences make good neighbors. But I think just knowing where you can go in the conversation or what I could ask of you, I'll going to check in before I ask you to do a role play, because if you're not comfortable, I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable.
Juna [00:30:14] Yeah, it's probably better to know, right?
Eddie [00:30:16] Yes. And people are not going to ask, right?
Juna [00:30:19] They're not going to like us. What would you you wouldn't know what to ask.
Eddie [00:30:21] So so this is a shout out to everyone showing up at the holiday dinner to maybe proactively set some boundaries. Yeah. And then maybe on the other side, ask people. Ask people, you know, how they're doing. Lots more to discuss and understand here.
Juna [00:30:40] So here's an example I really related to. Kori's mom might make a comment like.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:30:45] Oh my gosh, Kori, you should have seen the lady in the soap opera today. She's gained a lot of weight.
Juna [00:30:51] And Kori is thinking.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:30:53] I don't care. Like, I don't care. And I think that comments like that perpetuate Fatphobia okay, like that's my thing, not her thing. And we've talked about that. She's like, I don't why does that even matter? Okay, cool. I'm not going to convince her of anything different.
Eddie [00:31:16] Of course, not everyone will respond the same to you. Setting boundaries.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:31:20] Some families are receptive. I think my family would be incredibly receptive. My mom has been receptive. Receptive. To hearing "Mom, I would really appreciate it if when we are together, we don't talk about bodies."
Eddie [00:31:38] And other families. Not so much.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:31:41] A lot of people won't respect them. They just won't. And that doesn't mean that we're bad for having them or we shouldn't have them. It means that we really need to sort of reassess how we're going to approach that person, knowing that they, you know, don't respect boundaries.
Juna [00:32:03] Kori says we all need to have like, this tool kit that we take with us into situations like this.
Eddie [00:32:08] Okay. The tools we have so far are having a more open mindset.
Juna [00:32:13] Yeet.
Eddie [00:32:13] Trying to come into the situation with a less restrictive black or white thinking. And now we also have breathing and boundaries.
Dr Kori Propst Miller [00:32:22] I would also say support, like who are the other people around you or person that you could depend on that you could rely on that knows this is difficult for you? Who can support you? Lift you up. Help to ground you? How are they going to do that? Talk about it beforehand. You're going to whip them out of your tool bag in situations where you need them.
Juna [00:32:49] You know what, guys? I think you, Eddie and all the people listen to a podcast. You guys are like kind of my support in situations like this, you know? Oh.
Eddie [00:32:57] Thank you.
Juna [00:32:58] I love you guys. And on that note, we are going to end today's episode. Thank you to Dr. Kori Propst Miller and
Eddie [00:33:09] Her cats.
Juna [00:33:09] And her cats. We will link to her coaching and her website on our website foodweneedtotalk.com. Thank you to Eddie and you guys for consistently being my awesome support to confront he family members. They know who they are. You can find us on Instagram @foodweneedtotalk. You can find me on Instagram @theofficialjuna and Juna Gjata on YouTube and Tik Tok. You can find Eddie
Eddie [00:33:36] Supporting you.
Juna [00:33:36] Supporting me.
Juna [00:33:38] He's the best. He also gave me a ride from the gym to the studio. Food, We Need to Talk is a production of PRX.
Eddie [00:33:45] Our producers are Morgan Flannery and Rebecca Seidel.
Juna [00:33:48] Tommy Bazarian is our mix engineer with production assistance from Isabel Kirby McGowan.
Eddie [00:33:53] Jocelyn Gonzales is executive producer for PRX Productions.
Juna [00:33:57] Food, We Need to Talk was co-created by Carrie Goldberg, George Hicks, Eddie Phillips and me.
Eddie [00:34:03] For any personal health questions, please consult your personal health provider to find out more go to foodweneedtotalk.com. Thanks for listening!
Juna [00:34:13] Happy holidays.
