How to Stop the “All or Nothing” Spiral this Thanksgiving

You know the pattern: you’re doing so well with your nutrition plan, following the “rules,” until something happens like a stressful event or a holiday. Then, when you go a little off your plan, you throw in the towel and swing completely in the other direction with overeating or binge eating. Eventually, on Monday or on New Year’s Day, you’ll get “back on track” and recommit to your plan.

You’re either on plan or off plan, following a diet or eating everything in your path. But you don’t have to live in these “all or nothing” terms. There is a middle ground. And that middle ground might be the key to preventing holiday weight gain, emotional eating, and developing a guilt free food relationship.

If you want to stop gaining weight over the holidays, dieting in the New Year, and feeling guilty about this “all or nothing” cycle, today’s article is for you. Keep reading as we explore:

• Why supporting your health goals over Thanksgiving is key to avoiding food guilt
• Why you feel out of control and how to stop emotional eating
• Holiday weight gain and healthy holiday eating have nothing to do with willpower
• How to overcome emotional eating and find the middle ground
• How to stop food guilt, starting with this Thanksgiving

Continuing to Support Your Health Goals

If you’ve done well with establishing new healthy habits and routines this year, Thanksgiving is a time to put them to the test. Can you continue your healthy behaviors over Thanksgiving weekend and through the rest of the year?

Imagine yourself maintaining your health goals, even with large meals, more sweet treats around, and increased social gatherings. What does that look like?

You may need to make some adjustments to prioritize yourself, such as:

• Getting to the gym three times per week for the rest of the year, instead of five
• Saying no to some events to prioritize the most important commitments
• Deciding the foods that you are most looking forward to, enjoying them, and saying no to the rest in favor of nourishing foods that make you feel good

Staying out of the “all or nothing” mentality requires getting more comfortable in the middle ground by letting go of perfection and deciding what’s good enough. If you backslide from a goal, it’s not the end of the world; you can keep going forward.

This strategy isn’t just about how to prevent emotional eating or how to avoid holiday weight gain; it’s about building resilience and realistic, sustainable, and life-long self-care.

Why You Feel Out of Control Around Food

Let’s face it, emotions and eating are forever linked. Your first experience with food was emotional; it was likely tied to love and comfort.

The emotional eating definition encompasses eating for emotional needs rather than true hunger. It becomes a problem when you decide that your food-related behaviors are no longer serving your health goals and want to make a change. When you feel out of control around food, it may be time to get support and dig deeper into this area.

You may feel out of control around food for many reasons, such as:

• Your body isn’t getting all the nutrition it requires, and it’s trying to fill the gaps
• You are restricting (using willpower), and then biology overrides your best efforts
• You are choosing foods that increase your cravings instead of satisfying your hunger
• You are not feeling your feelings and using food as a coping strategy

Reasons Why Your Behavior Has Nothing to Do with Willpower

Emotional eating has nothing to do with willpower. Willpower is a finite resource; you can use it short-term to push through life situations, but it’s not a strategy for healthy eating over the holidays or long-term weight management.

When you follow a restrictive plan and deprive yourself of what your body needs, it requires willpower, but it’s not sustainable. Willpower runs out. If you must use willpower with food, you’ll likely swing out of control at some point. You swing from all to nothing, feel guilty, get back on track, and do it again. See the pattern? Now, let’s talk about a different way.

Navigating Temptation Without Total Restriction

Here are some strategies for getting off the “all or nothing” rollercoaster and experimenting in the middle ground:

• Eating when you are hungry, stopping when you are full
• Understanding your personal nutrition needs, balanced meals, and how different foods feel in your body
• Learning to feel your feelings and build tolerance for discomfort
• Understanding your cravings and that they aren’t an emergency
• Catching your patterns and consciously making a different choice

This way of relating to food (and yourself) can feel uncomfortable and scary at first, as the “all or nothing” patterns are deeply ingrained. However, the more you practice your new tools and strategies, the easier and more automatic they will become. Next Thanksgiving, you won’t have to give eating healthy over the holidays much additional thought.

Enjoy Thanksgiving Food Without the Guilt

You can enjoy Thanksgiving food without gaining weight over the holidays or feeling guilty. It’s totally possible! You don’t have to white-knuckle your way through the holiday either; the most significant shift required is a mindset shift, away from “all or nothing” thinking and towards self-compassion.

In addition to navigating Thanksgiving with a new mindset, here are some healthy holiday eating tips:

• Have a plan. Don’t blindly go into Thanksgiving (or any holiday event). Take one minute to think about the situation and develop a plan. This might look like enjoying your favorite slice of pie after the meal, but not sampling everything on the buffet.
• Practice mindfulness. Enjoy your meal slowly. Use your senses. Chew each bite. Allow yourself to enjoy the meal and company.
• Put it in perspective. One meal won’t derail all the effort you’ve put into your health over the last year. Enjoy the meal and return to your foundational habits afterwards.
• Don’t punish yourself. Eating a big meal doesn’t require extra exercise to compensate. Treat your body with love and kindness, always.
• Don’t focus on weight. If the scale goes up after Thanksgiving, it’s unlikely that you gained pounds of fat in just a day. It’s normal for the scale weight to fluctuate after a large meal because of salt intake, bowel changes, and other factors. If the scale stresses you out, take a break from it.
• Choose your environment. A lot of times we make food choices based on the food environment around us. If you don’t like the food choices, change them.
• Let go of guilt. Guilt can perpetuate the “all or nothing” cycle, and letting go of guilt can help break it. If you didn’t like a food choice you made, take the note, and move on. Use the information to inform future decisions.

How to stop emotionally eating or getting off the “all or nothing” train doesn’t mean restriction, willpower, or perfection. Allow your desire to change your food behaviors to be the doorway to discovering a middle ground that works for you. If you gained weight over the holidays and want to develop new strategies as we move through December and into 2026, reach out to Lizzy Swick Nutrition.

We can help guide and coach you through your struggles with emotional eating, body image, “all or nothing” thinking, as well as how all your hormonal concerns fit into the picture. You don’t have to navigate it alone, and you can move away from guilt and into food freedom.