Hasta La Gadget!

Thanksgiving is a time of feasting and family; outsized in not only i’s portions, but in its expectations of familial harmony. And while it’s a holiday to celebrate the bounty of our blessings, for many — particularly disordered eaters — it can be a stressful reminder of psychological and behavioral patterns that are hard to break under the best of circumstances.

“People need to be mindful that holidays are an evocative, associative time because they are such particular days,” says Geneen Roth, author of Lost and Found and Women Food and God. “And so it becomes easy to say things like, ‘Last Thanksgiving, things were better.’ For example, if you’re not in a relationship and you really want to be and you once were, then unfortunately, what can happen is that your mind can start in on you — you can build an unhappy story about the holidays that can lead you to eat. We tend to build stories and the stories we build often lead to feelings that lead to eating.”

“Freudians would say that people who eat compulsively are literally swallowing their problems — they’re reverting to the earliest, simplest stages of gratification: putting things in their mouths,” says Andrew Getzfeld, PhD, an adjunct professor of psychology who specializes in eating disorders at New York University.

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