The holiday season is notorious for its sweets, treats and once a year foods.
I coach people every year on how to stay the course to get to their goals BUT how to enjoy their favorite holiday treats at the same time.
Did you know that 98% of Custom Fitness members are able to maintain or improve their health (weight included) during the holidays because they stick with their programs through that time?
It’s true!
One of the biggest issues people run into around the holidays is what I call “Food Banking”. That simply means that they skip a meal or two in anticipation of a great meal coming that may have a few more calories than it should…..sound familiar?
Here’s the problem though, when you skip a meal to indulge later, you create an imbalance in your blood sugar which can lead to fatigue, irritability, mind fog and more.
The body really craves balanced blood sugar all day, every day. When it’s not balanced, it starts to look like a swing on a playset. First it moves a little, then more and eventually it’s so high it could wrap the bar.
For your body this means times of higher physiological stress and more of the hormone cortisol being produced to mitigate the stress as well as a myriad of other chain reactions going on.
When you skip a meal, you’re almost guaranteed to overeat at the next meal due to your brain’s “just in case” mechanism that wants to make sure if there’s a famine that you store up as much as you can.
What does that mean to you? Well, first you’ll feel crummy for over eating (possibly both physically and mentally) then your body will store as many calories as it can for future use and those, my dear, go straight into your fat cells.
It doesn’t stop at that first meal either. It can take several days to rebalance your body after skipping meals. And when it comes to hormones (which are also unbalanced by the changing blood sugar levels), well that can take much longer.
So the moral of this story is simple. EAT.
Eat regularly. Eat well. And stop skipping meals so you can eat that “something special” later.
For my clients, I recommend eating balanced meals regularly throughout the day … even on a holiday like Christmas!
I also recommend that they eat some veggies before going to the “main event” so they aren’t ravishingly hungry at the start. This gives them room to eat an appropriate portion of their favorite foods, yes, even their favorite desserts, without causing an upset in their blood sugar.
The magic here is, when you are consistently eating well and balanced over time, your body will be much better at sifting through the garbage to keep only what is needed…ie. less weight gain, better health and still on track!