The holidays can be a difficult and challenging time—especially if you’re navigating body image challenges, recovering from an eating disorder, or trying to shift away from chronic dieting. Thanksgiving in particular tends to bring together two intense ingredients: food and family dynamics. If you find yourself feeling dread instead of gratitude this season, you’re not alone.

Here are therapist-backed tips to help you protect your mental health, honor your recovery, and move through the holiday with more ease and delicious food.

Discover how food restriction affects more than your body. A therapist explains how dieting and control around food can limit joy, connection, and freedom in your life.

In this post, we’ll explore what a non-diet approach means, why it matters in therapy, and how it supports your overall mental health and wellbeing.

People with body dysmorphia become fixated on specific aspects of their appearance, spending hours each day thinking about these perceived defects. Common areas of focus include skin imperfections, facial features, hair, body shape or muscle size. What makes this condition particularly challenging is that others typically cannot see these alleged flaws or view them as insignificant. Meanwhile, the person with BDD experiences genuine distress and believes the imperfections they see are equally obvious to everyone.

The restrict-binge cycle is one of the most common — and most misunderstood — patterns in eating disorders and disordered eating. If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in this exhausting loop of “being good” with food only to end up binge eating later (“being bad”), you are not alone. As a therapist who specializes in eating disorders, I see this cycle play out in clients of all ages, genders, and body types.

Stop labeling food as "good" or "bad"! A therapist breaks down why food isn’t a morality issue and how shifting your mindset can bring peace to your plate.

When we take a closer look at “strong, not skinny”, this mantra can still uphold some of the same toxic ideals as the "thin is in" mindset—just in a different outfit.