Tips For Managing Self-Serve and Buffet Style Events
Attending events with buffets or self-serve food options can be anxiety-inducing, especially if you are struggling with food. When struggling with an eating disorder, disordered eating, chronic dieting, or anxiety around food, these gatherings can add additional barriers to meeting your body’s needs and feeling comfortable at the event while allowing yourself to have a good time with friends and family.
Eating in a social setting can bring up a lot of judgments around food, comparisons between your plate and others, fear of making the “wrong” choice, and intrusive thoughts about how the food makes you feel or look compared to others. Self-serve or buffet-style events can increase the number of external factors affecting our ability to nourish ourselves and partake in mindful eating.
Keep reading for suggestions and insight on planning and managing buffet-style events.
Make a Plan
It may be helpful to make a plan to allow yourself to feel safe at buffet-style events. Talk with your treatment team to plan for a self-serve food event, and even try exposing yourself to a “practice buffet” in a safe environment. This can help you feel prepared for the actual event.
Go With Your Support System
Having a trusted friend or family member with you in settings where you may feel increased anxiety around food is one way to ease your stress at a buffet. Your support person can also help distract you from harmful food or body image thoughts or behaviors.
Tell a Fellow Guest
If bringing a friend or family member to a self-serve food event is impossible, consider telling someone who will attend that you may need help. Allow them to be a helping hand if you need support. It may also be helpful to share with them how you would like to be supported since that is different for everyone.
Bring Skills With You to the Event
If accepting support or help from others does not seem accessible to you, some skills that may be helpful are meal island, which allows you to focus on your plate and not others, or mechanical eating, where you are just focusing on the mechanics of eating and not the actual food item.
Advocate For Yourself
It is essential to be kind to yourself, honor what you can handle right now, and notice what is accessible to you. It may be helpful to advocate for what you need. You might need to change the subject if the conversation centers around food, dieting, weight, or exercise. Instead, you can talk about things you have done this week, vacations you want to go on, your favorite TV show or movie, your pets, or anything that exciting happened to you lately. If shifting the conversation does not work, empower yourself to leave the conversation. You can walk away and return once the topic has changed.
Nourish Yourself Throughout the Day
Ensure you eat adequately before and after a social event, no matter what food options are available in the buffet. Work with your treatment team to ensure you fuel your body before the buffet to feel more at ease around food during the self-serve event.
It is okay if this is a challenging experience. Social situations involving food, especially self-serve food, can be very difficult, and that is why it is so important to ask for support, utilize your skills, create a plan and treat yourself with kindness. Lean into the flexibility of this style of event and use this opportunity to try new foods and explore different flavors. Allow yourself the time to practice these skills, find what works for you, and trust the process. Eating is meant to nourish our bodies, be pleasurable, and help build connections with others.
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This post was written by BALANCE Dietetic Intern, Kaeley Fiorentino (she/her).
Kaeley is a student at Rutgers University pursuing a M.S. in Clinical nutrition while completing her internship hours. She graduated with her B.S in Nutritional Sciences and minored in psychology. She is currently working with the team here at BALANCE as a Dietetic Intern, assisting all staff with the daily operations of the clinical program.
Kaeley is passionate about working with patients with eating disorders, and is motivated to play a large role in all aspects of recovery. Kaeley lives by the philosophy that all foods fit and is a strong advocate for intuitive eating, mindfulness, HAES, and self-compassion. She desires to become a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and serve the eating disorder community in molding their relationship with food, and themselves. Outside of work and school, Kaeley enjoys taking dance classes, being with friends and family, and going to the beach.
