So 'tis the season of rampant consumerism and terrible songs on loop in celebration of the birthday of a guy that was essentially the David Blaine of 2000 years ago, but his tricks were apparently so good, people are still going on about them. There are however, some good aspects of this holiday season; time off work to relax, see friends, enjoy time with your family and most importantly stuff delicious food into your fat face until you are uncomfortably full, then repeat hours later. While most people don't have 5 kg of extra fat on their Christmas list, that seems to be pretty much what they get every year. What this article will hopefully share with you are some strategies that you can use (along with some willpower) to make sure this year you can have a lean Christmas (in the good sense), as it's not 'bulking' if you are just getting fucking fat.
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| Jacked Santa said all you're getting for Christmas is the gift of "Stop being a little bitch" |
For most people the 24th - 31st of December become an absolute physical shit show, where the most activity they get is repeatedly lifting copious of food and alcohol from the table to their mouth. While short overfeeds can actually be very useful in the war on fat (as explained in a previous article). Week long food binges are not. When you overeat a whole host of processes are triggered in your body; insulin levels rise which decreases the mobilisation/oxidation of fat and increases the storage of nutrients as fat/glycogen/muscle. Parasympathetic nervous system activity is increased, which means you feel relaxed and sleepy and probably can't be bothered to move. Thyroid hormones (T3 and T4) are released in increased quantities, this will serve to temporarily up regulate metabolism as your body attempts to burn through the piles of food you have just eaten. Thermogenesis will increase due the the thermic effect (TEF) of all the food you have just eaten; ever had meat sweats after eating half the turkey? That's TEF. As we can see, not all of these things are bad, thus is why short bursts of overeating work. It is when overeating becomes chronic (say, for a week) that the negative aspects such as high insulin and down-regulated fat mobilisation will become real issues. Furthermore, adding alcohol to the gamble can really start to mess with things as this will down-regulate both carbohydrate and fat oxidation, meaning pretty much everything you eat will go straight to storage.
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| Turns out Santa has a pretty sweet deal |
This leads us to my first tip: endeavour not to eat big and drink big on the same day.
Preferably, keep the alcohol consumption low in general, but I know for many this just won't happen. Instead, when you are sitting down for your big Christmas meal, keep in mind that if you want to get stupid drunk with only your family as company, you are fucking weird. Also keep in mind that if you are drinking, all those delicious calories are going to end up on your belly/ass/hips/chins/bingo wings/eyelids ...you get the idea. Most will then probably be going out for drinks with friends on some other day in the festive period (Boxing Day Pub Crawl, anyone?), if this is the case, I am not going to tell you to moderate consumption (other than don't kill yourself), moderate your food intake instead. Luckily, I have already written at length about this here. In general, eat loads of veggies and lean meat, keep fat intake very low throughout the day and only eat a moderate amount of carbs at least 3 hours before you plan on drinking. Then when you are getting boozy, preferably drink low-calorie drinks, don't eat during/after drinking, just hydrate well when the night is done and go to sleep.
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| Andreas Cahling has no time for binges like you weak people. |
On to the second tip: Do some exercise around your food binge.
This tip is split into two, the first option is preferable but is potentially not feasible on Christmas day. The second option is your back-up plan and the only thing stopping your from implementing that is pure laziness. Option 1 is to perform a glycogen depleting workout prior to your food binge, the best way to deplete your glycogen stores will be an intense, hi-rep weight lifting (15-20 reps) workout, hitting as many major muscle as possible in your workout. This glycogen depletion will mean that your muscle's "fuel tanks" are running low, as such, a large portion of the approaching food-gasm will end up re-fuelling your muscles, rather than sitting on your waistline. Now, I realise that this is impractical for most people as not everyone will have the time or facilities to perform such a workout on Christmas morning. Enter Option 2; around half an hour before and an hour after you inhale the same amount of calories that the entirety of Ethiopia has consumed this year, perform 60-90 second contractions for a few major muscle groups. I'd recommend something like a set of squats, a set of push ups (or a scaled back version) and a set of inverted rows. This will only take a few minutes but will serve to active so-called GLUT4 receptors in your muscle by moving them to the surface. GLUT4 receptors are responsible for directing glucose after ingestion, by performing these brief exercises you are able to preferentially direct the food you eat towards your muscles and lesser so towards your belly, albeit with less efficacy than if you took option 1.
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| Sure he's old and fat, but he has the right idea |
Tip number three: Try to minimise the insulin response from your meal.
There are a few ways to do this, the first, best and arguable easiest is to primarily eat meat and veg with lesser quantities of starches and sugars; meat is the best part anyway, you can disagree if you are content with being wrong. By not going too overboard on the starchy and sweet stuff, your insulin won't go too mad, which will go a great ways to limiting the amount of fat you store (if any). Another strategy is to have a planned first meal which is high in protein and fibre, but not fat or simple carbs; this lets you take advantage of the "second meal effect". This refers to the fact that following a high fibre meal, a subsequent meal will have a lower glucose and insulin response as well as less effect on triglyceride levels, all of which are beneficial if you wish to remain jacked and pale (because, really, who is tanned at this time of year?). A third strategy which is easy to implement is to drink green tea throughout the meal, this has a two-fold effect; first the green tea flavanols serve to improve your response to secreted insulin. Second, the caffeine serves to speed up the transit of food through your digestive tract, whilst this isn't optimal when we want to extract all the nutrition from our food, but when we are hugely overeating, a degree of incomplete digestion serves as a convenient damage control strategy. A final strategy is to consume citrus (grapefruit, lemon or lime) as part of your meals, as these foods serve to decrease the insulin response of a meal, probably the easiest way to do this is to squeeze half a lemon in every cup of green tea that you should already be drinking.
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| Anyone who thinks that potatoes come close to being the best part of this meal should be sectioned |
Tip number four: consider implementing intermittent fasting on the days around your binges.
I have previously discussed intermittent fasting at length. When implemented the day after a food binge, IF just feels pretty natural as you will probably be a disgusting bloated mess, so a morning of not eating, just drinking water and giving your digestive system a rest is probably exactly what you feel like doing. You can also implement a longer than normal fast as a means of calorie restriction to help offset the huge calorie surplus on binge days. As an added bonus a fast will also serve improve insulin sensitivity, which will play into tip 3.
So there you have it, a few dietary tips to reduce the impact of the holiday spread. So Merry Christmas, Happy New year and don't get too fat.
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