Another simple and excellent strategy to increase your exercise is to pick up a fitness tracker and walk 7,000-10,000 steps a day. Not only will this offset holiday weight
gain but it will also help limit the dangers of excessive sitting. A brisk
walk after your meal has several significant benefits. First, it will get you
away from the food, making it less likely that you'll help yourself to seconds or overindulge in dessert upon your return. Second, while supporting your digestion and metabolism, the physical activity will help to lower your blood sugar levels and insulin (i.e.
the fat-storing hormone).
Besides upping your exercise quotient, there are plenty of other actions you can take to not only prevent holiday weight gain, but even to lose weight during the holidays if you need to. For starters, eating
only when you're hungry will go a long way toward avoiding unnecessary weight gain. You can also cut down on excessive gorging by eating a healthy snack and drinking a full glass of water
before heading off to dinner.
Previous research
6 has shown that eating a bowl of broth-based soup before a meal is likely to result in your consuming 20 percent fewer calories in total (including the soup). Healthy fat will also help you to feel full while simultaneously stimulating your metabolism. So snacking on some olives or nuts, before helping yourself to all of the starchy sides and desserts, may help you keep your total food intake in check. Macadamia nuts are particularly useful as they are high in fat and low in protein.
- Tap away sugar cravings. Make no mistake: highly processed foods – cookies, cinnamon rolls, bread, crackers, boxed stuffing, and more --are engineered to be more or less addictive.
When you eat sugar, it triggers production of your brain's natural opioids -- a key ingredient in the addiction process. Your brain essentially becomes addicted to stimulating the release of its own opioids as it would to morphine or heroin. One way to help "reprogram" your brain so you don't feel powerless to resist unhealthy foods is with the
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).
When your body's energy system is disrupted, you are more likely to experience distractions and discomforts related to food, and more likely to engage in emotional eating. Instead, if you engage your body's subtle energy system with EFT, the distracting discomforts like food cravings and hunger pangs often subside.
- Try intermittent fasting. It takes about six to eight hours for your body to metabolize your glycogen stores and after that you actually start to shift to burning fat. However, if you are replenishing your glycogen by eating every few hours, you make it far more difficult for your body to actually use your fat stores as fuel.
Intermittent fasting is an umbrella term that covers a wide array of
fasting schedules. As a general rule, it involves cutting calories in whole or in part, either a couple of days a week, every other day, or even daily. The
fasting schedule I recommend and personally use is to simply restrict your
daily eating to a
specific window of time, such as an eight hour window. You really only need to maintain this daily eating schedule until your insulin/leptin resistance improves and your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol ratios, or diabetes normalizes. After that, you only need to do it if and when your insulin/leptin resistance returns.
Fasting triggers a variety of health-promoting hormonal and metabolic changes similar to those that occur when you exercise. Shifting your body into fat burning mode is also one of the most effective ways to eliminate sugar cravings. The reason for this is simple: when sugar is not needed as a primary fuel, your body will not crave it as much when your sugar stores run low.
Bear in mind that starting
intermittent fasting right during the holidays may not work all that well. This is something you need to start incorporating, slowly, ahead of time. But once your body has made the shift to using fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel, it may be one of the best ways to avoid the holiday overindulgence trap altogether, as you will not be fighting against ravenous sugar cravings at the mere sight of the dessert table.
If you get started now, you may stand a far better chance at making it through Christmas and New Year's without adding extra pounds, for example. You don't need iron willpower or enormous levels of self-discipline to maintain this eating schedule. Yes, you will get hungry, but your hunger will be appropriate and you will be surprised at how much less food will completely satisfy you once you regain your metabolic flexibility and no longer need to rely on stored sugar in your body for your primary fuel.
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