Tips to Avoid Weight Gain during the Holidays
Tips to Avoid Weight Gain during the Holidays
Hi everyone - here are three quick tips to help you avoid excessive weight gain during the upcoming holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. These three strategies can be used by almost everyone to enjoy themselves while minimizing increases to their waistline and bodyweight. Plus, these three tips I’ll discuss are free and easy to implement.
These strategies are more important now than ever. Americans are at an all-time low in overall health, with bulging waistlines and soaring bodyweights. A recent study published in Time magazine even found that about a third of Americans report eating fast food almost every day!
Amazing foods, but not all great for the waistling
Eat Plenty of Protein for Satiety
First, make sure that you eat plenty of protein on the day before, the day of, and the day after your holiday feasting. For most women, I would suggest eating at least .50 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight ; for most men, .75 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. Thus, a 150 pound women would have a goal of 75 grams and a 150 pound man would have a goal of 150 grams. A high amount of protein around the holidays will help satiate you, keeping you fuller throughout the day, and - hopefully - reducing your overall hunger. In addition, protein helps stimulate your metabolism via the thermogenic effect of food - with as much as 30% of the calories from protein being used by the body just to digest the protein itself! So the more protein you eat, the less likely you are to binge too much on sweets, chocolates, and other holiday desserts, helping you avoid weight gain during your holiday celebrations.
Sleep Off the Calories
Second, try to get a good night’s sleep the night before your holiday eating and the night of the big holiday meals. At a minimum, shoot for seven hours, with eight or even nine hours, being even better. During high-quality, deep sleep, the body regulates the production of many different hormones that affect appetite, will power, and eating behaviors. For example, when you get 8+ hours of good sleep, your cortisol levels are lower and more consistent the following day. Cortisol is widely known as the ‘stress hormone’ - when it is lower throughout the day, you are less likely to seek foods high in sugar and other bad carbohydrates. In addition, blood sugar levels rise dramatically after a night of poor sleep and/or too little sleep, which can also lead to poor food choices during the day. So a good night’s sleep before your holiday feasts can actually help you avoid gaining weight during the holidays by stabilizing your cortisol and blood sugar levels.
Now, a good night’s sleep after a big, unhealthy holiday meal can also assist you in preventing excess fat gain. When you eat a very large meal, especially one high in refined carbohydrates like cookies and other desserts, your hormones tend to get out of balance: insulin levels rise sky high in an effort to store all of the excess calories you ate; leptin increases drastically and signals to your brain that you’ve had enough to eat; and other hormones are released throughout your body to compensate for the excess sugars, fats, and total calories you eat during holiday meals. If you get plenty of deep sleep the night of your holiday celebrations, you provide enough downtime for your body to reset those hormones to normal levels the next day. Conversely, if you don’t sleep enough, those hormones may stay dysregulated the following day, increasing your chances of more poor dietary choices and excess weight gain.
Plan Ahead and Stick to Cheat Meals - Not Cheat Days
Third, set a limit on how many ‘cheat meals’ you’ll have during the holidays. So, instead of eating foods that are bad for you - such a pumpkin pie, hot apple cider, Christmas cookies, and things like that - throughout the upcoming holiday season, plan ahead of time how many free meals you’ll have around Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and any related holiday parties. For example, you might set a limit of no more than seven meals around the holidays to eat anything you want: Thanksgiving dinner, lunch on Black Friday out shopping, the holiday party at work, your neighbor’s holiday party, Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas Day lunch, and New Year’s Eve dinner. Planning ahead, you can eat and drink whatever you want at those seven meals and then eat sensibly at all your other meals for the rest of November and December. With this kind of strategy, you’re not depriving yourself of any of the fun and delicious foods, but you’re also not eating irresponsibly for the vast majority of your meals. And over the long run, seven cheat meals around the holidays will not lead to any noticeable changes to your waistline or body weight.