"You don't have to fix the holidays. Just notice them."
Published about 1 month ago • 5 min read • Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge eating, Body image, eating disorder, intervention, Family coaching, colleague supervision, GLP-1
Holiday Information Building: Collect Now, Explore Later
Hi Reader,
For most people, the holidays bring anticipation, familiar recipes, and a table full of people they love. For someone in eating disorder recovery, and for the families walking beside them, that same season can feel like every comfort has been rearranged into a challenge. The food is different. The timing is different. The people at the table are different, and some of them bring opinions nobody asked for.
What is joyous for most can feel threatening for someone in recovery, and that is not a character flaw or a lack of effort. It is a real response to real demands on a healing brain and body.
Most holiday articles in our field offer ways to get through: a plan, a script, a coping card. Those tools have their place. This article asks something different of you. This season, instead of only surviving the holidays, we invite you to study them. We call this information building.
What Information Building Is
"Information building" is the practice of noticing, with curiosity rather than judgment, what happens inside you or your loved one during a stretch of time that holds unusual challenges. You are not fixing anything in the moment. You are collecting.
Holidays are unusual because they stack exposures. In treatment, we typically introduce exposures one at a time: a new food, then a new setting, then a new eating companion. A single holiday meal can deliver all of them at once, along with shifted meal timing, new clothing, travel, disrupted routines, and conversations about food and bodies. That combination is exactly what makes the season so hard. It is also what makes it an extraordinarily rich source of information. Observations that might take months to surface in ordinary weeks can appear in one afternoon.
Why It Matters
The eating disorder brain tends to remember holidays in extremes: "It was a disaster," or "I got through it." Neither summary is very useful in treatment. What helps your nutrition therapist is the texture underneath: which moment spiked the anxiety, which moment brought unexpected ease, which behavior showed up and what came right before it.
Holidays often reveal things that stay hidden the rest of the year. Someone may discover that eating the food is less distressing than being watched while eating it. A parent may realize the hardest part for their child was the drive home, not the meal itself. A person may surprise themselves by laughing at the table and forgetting, for a few minutes, to monitor anything at all. These are clues. Without a record, they tend to disappear.
There is also a practical reason. The holiday season is short. It does not need to be solved while you are inside it. There will be time afterward, on an ordinary day, to look at what you collected with your treatment team and begin shaping future holidays so they become a little easier each year.
What You Can Do: 20 Information Building Prompts
Print the Holiday Information Collection Form below, or use a small notebook or a note on your phone, and jot down a few words about what happened, what you felt, and what you did. If you can't write it down in the moment, write it later. Every bit of information counts. Some prompts will not apply to you, and that is fine. Notice them anyway, because "this one didn't bother me" is valuable information too. Caregivers can use the same prompts to quietly observe what they see in their loved one, and in themselves.
Before the gathering
What do you feel knowing the next meal holds foods you used to love and now fear?
What happens in your body and thoughts when your usual eating times shift or disappear?
How does it feel to know your family expects you to sit at the table and eat?
What comes up as you put on new or dressy clothing for the occasion?
What do you notice when travel or houseguests take away your usual kitchen and routine?
How did the anticipation compare to the event itself once it arrived?
At the table
Which food felt most threatening, and which felt surprisingly manageable?
How did it feel to be served by someone else, or to serve yourself from shared dishes?
What shifted when the meal ran longer or shorter than you expected?
Did being seen eating feel different from the eating itself?
What happened inside when dessert or a second helping was offered?
Was there a moment you felt present, connected, or even happy at the table? What was happening around you?
People and conversation
What did you feel when a relative started talking about dieting or bodies?
How did comments about your appearance or your plate land, even the kind ones?
Who at the gathering felt safe to be near, and what made them feel that way?
Did you notice yourself comparing your plate or your body to someone else's?
Afterward and in between
Did an urge or behavior show up in the hours after the meal, and what came right before it?
When did you feel an emotion that seemed intolerable, and what helped it ease, even slightly?
Where did you surprise yourself by doing something you did not think you could do?
What moment from the holiday do you want to remember simply because it was good?
Writing it down is not an invitation to analyze it on the spot. The eating disorder is very skilled at turning observation into scrutiny. If you catch yourself replaying a moment or grading your performance, remind your brain: I wrote this down so I can explore it later. It is safe on the page. I do not have to carry it right now. Then let it go and turn back toward the room.
Please be gentle with yourself and your loved one. The holidays are not easy, and a hard moment is not a failure. It is a data point, and every data point you bring back moves recovery forward. Recovery is not a straight line, and this season does not need to be perfect to be meaningful. Allow your brain and body to register the positive connections too: warmth, laughter, belonging. Those moments are information as well, and they matter just as much.
If you or someone you love is navigating this journey, the Nutrition Improvement Center is here. Reach out today to schedule an appointment and take the next step toward recovery. When the holidays are over, bring your notes with you. We will look at them together.
Iris Epstein, RDN, CEDS, CAI Registered Dietitian, Certified Eating Disorder Specialist, Certified ARISE Interventionist Founder, Nutrition Improvement Center
P.S. Hit reply and tell me which prompt you plan to watch for first. I read every response.
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