Halloween Habituation!

During this season of holidays (the time right after Halloween and with Thanksgiving and winter holidays approaching), a helpful practice to feeling more peaceful around certain foods is to include them with meals and snacks as you would any other food. This helps us to reach a point of habituation, which is a non-associative learning, and the psychological definition is “the diminishing of a physiological or emotional response to a frequently repeated stimulus”. So the stimulus is food, the response is eating. This habituation particularly with food increases as we have repeated exposure with certain foods. This is in part due to the fact that with sensory specific satiety, our senses become satiated (aka habituated) if they continuously experience the repeated stimulus.

• Leftover Halloween candy mixed into yogurt

• Pumpkin or apple pie served with eggs and a meat/meatless alternative of your choosing for breakfast after Thanksgiving

• Having foods that you know you enjoy but may feel challenged by at Thanksgiving such as mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese or stuffing with meals leading up to the holiday

• Christmas cookies with milk or a milk alternative for a snack

• Eggnog added to coffee or tea

• Making a challah French toast to enjoy throughout the Hanukkah season

• Having a Kwanzaa inspired meal at home before the holiday celebrations to practice checking in with hunger, fullness and satiety around favored foods such as collard greens, jerk chicken, fried okra, candied yams or gumbo

What other ideas would you add? There are so many delicious holiday foods that can mean tradition, love, and comfort to you and your households - let’s not forget that food is so much more than the sum of its nutritional parts!