I accidentally ate 7,000 extra calories this weekend!
But it’s not my fault! I was over-served!
Did the same thing “happen” to you? Never fear! You do not have to deprive yourself of good food and drink during the rest of the holiday season. And PLEASE do not start running 10 miles per day because that won’t help. The key to feeling good over the holidays is adopting a sustainable strategy. Here are some key facts and some tips on how to succeed.
The amount of damage most people can do to themselves with one giant meal, even if they have seconds of everything, is minimal. Overeating and over drinking by even 2,000 calories for one day may cause some immediate regret: bloating, indigestion, mental fog, and poor sleep. But lasting weight gain or metabolic changes? No.
Metabolic issues DO develop, though, when that one meal turns into a month-long stretch of poor choices. It can start with the long Thanksgiving weekend of “just polishing off the leftovers.” That is often followed by a series of holiday parties in December, gifts of cookies and chocolate, and several celebratory meals and leftovers over the Christmas and New Year’s break. For most people, that means a lot of opportunities to snack on baked goods, load up our plates a second or third time, eat two (or five) desserts, drink a lot more wine than usual, and then wash it down with two (or five) spiked eggnogs. The next thing you know you are fatigued, bloated, achey, and in a mental fog. And, for every 3,500 excess calories you eat, you gain one pound of fat.
Do not worry! This is avoidable and you do not need to skip the parties or the good food and drink. For my patients, over the holidays I recommend just doubling the number of cheat meals they eat. My usual recommendation during non-festive times is that people eat 2 cheat meals per week. We define a cheat meal as eating and drinking more food or different foods - like turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, pumpkin pie, or pancakes - than usual. It does not mean eating a bag of Doritos and a package of Oreos, washed down by a 2L bottle of Coke. Over the holidays, go ahead eat 4-5 cheat meals during the Thanksgiving week and again over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday week. But, during the rest of the holiday season, try to stick to the 2 cheat meals per week.
Each day that you have time during the holiday season, take a fairly quick paced walk in the morning before you take in any calories. This should put you in zone 1, at about 50-60% of max heart rate. This is the fat burning zone. If you walk three miles at that pace, you are burning around 300 calories of fat. The rest of the day, follow your normal diet and exercise routine. This will help keep your metabolism optimized for burning fat and glucose.
The nice thing about zone 1 workouts is that they are easy and they do not make you hungrier. A patient once told me, “I can out eat any exercise regimen you put me on.” But he was happily wrong! He was used to the outdated approach of upping the intensity and duration of his cardio workouts to lose weight. The reason this is ineffective is because increased cardio does burn more calories, but it also makes you very hungry. Maintaining your usual regimen and adding some fat burning zone 1 is much more likely to be successful.
If you use this approach of counting the number of cheat meals, adding in some fasted zone 1 workouts, and otherwise maintaining your nutrition and exercise routine, you should make it through the holidays feeling good, at your normal weight, and not having missed out on the fun! If you do find that you have gained a few pounds in early January, keep the fasted walks in the morning going until you are back at your goal.
