Holiday Eating Tips
You’ve come to the right place for holiday eating tips. After all, today is Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Or the Fourth of July. Or National Life Insurance Day.1That’s on May 2nd, stop acting like you forgot!
But alas, not for everybody.
Some of you live in Canada, England, and other made-up places.
Even though America is the only country that matters, I’m sure you people from your little insignificant lands celebrate holidays too.
What holidays?
How the fuck would I know?!
Imagine me, in America, the light of civilization, giving a fuck about learning about your backwards customs!
The audacity of you!!!
Anyway, regardless what pagan holidays you observe, I’m sure the same temptation exists for you to escape the day-to-day monotony of your wage-slave life by engaging in a special day set aside for food debauchery.2Well, really for communion and remembrance and other shit, but who are we kidding here?!?! But seriously, if you’re into knowing shit, the sociologist Robert Bellah made an interesting argument about how certain holidays like Thanksgiving and Memorial Day are nothing more than the ritual aspect of America’s civil religion.
Other than rocket scientist advice to be a social shut-in and avoid holiday get-togethers or simply eat in moderation when you do attend (DUH!), how can you survive the holidays without becoming a more 3-D version of yourself?
Well, there are many other things you can do to enjoy yourself in the company of friends, family, co-workers, and others you have to pretend to like while thinking to yourself how badly you wish those motherfuckers would be considerate for once in their lives and just do the world the favor of dying already.
To find out those other things you can do to eat healthy and avoid holiday weight gain, all you have to do is check out these four pointers!
ONE
Get a few winks, at least seven hours of them.
Lack of adequate sleep and a smorgasbord of food is a recipe for disaster of epic proportions because of sleep’s impact on the hunger controlling hormones leptin and ghrelin.
When the body is sleep deprived, ghrelin (responsible for the feeling of hunger) increases and the production of leptin (responsible for satiety) decreases. That means that if you don’t get enough sleep the night before a big holiday blowout, you’re not only more likely to eat more food but also choose items higher in fat and calories because of the increased appetite and feeling of being less full.
TWO
Don’t go to a holiday shindig on an empty stomach.
Skipping meals to make preparatory space for Auntie Sheila’s famous chitlins and Cousin Joe’s stuffing (made with the top secret family recipe, of course) is calling for trouble.
Not consuming your necessary calories throughout the day, especially slow digesting fats and protein, means that you’ll be hungry later, resulting in you overeating and indulging in food you probably wouldn’t otherwise be stuffing your face with, like Cousin Joe’s top secret stuffing.3Wanna know the secret? The bread cubes are soaked in bacon grease that’s been reused over and over again since the Truman administration. I know, but that FLAVOR, though!!!
THREE
Train a large muscle group like back or legs ahead of your scheduled holiday gorging.
An intense workout can have two bonus effects besides destressing you before having to put on your fake smile and drag yourself to the National Life Insurance Day bash at your boss’s home that you’re only attending in order to brown nose at the last minute for that promotion that’s sure to go to Marcus, your hated office rival and the company’s top policy salesman.
These effects of weight training?
Oh yeah, that’s right, weight training!
Well, for starters, weight training revs the metabolism. In what’s known as the post-exercise calorie burn, intense physical activity results in the body burning calories well after the bout is over. Second, weight training has a profound effect on insulin sensitivity. Insulin is the hormone responsible for where nutrients go, directing them for use as immediate energy or shuttling them off for fat storage. Taking your ass to the motherfucking gym as part of your holiday feast pre-gaming increases the likelihood that a large portion of your meal(s) will refill lost glycogen stores in the muscle cells instead of the food finding its way to your love handles as a constant reminder of that one time you ate out of anger as you cried into a massive plate of food in front of everybody at an office party at your boss’s home after discovering you were not only going to be passed over for a raise but also terminated at month’s end.
FOUR
Stop giving a fuck about other’s opinions.
What this means is you could always be one of thoooooose people who brings their own food in Tupperware to social functions because they obviously don’t care about everyone whispering about how much of a wacko they are for taking their health so seriously.
Yeah, one of thoooooose people.
Be like them!
There you have it.
The winter and summer holiday party seasons aren’t grounds for you to fuck up your fat loss or become a bigger tub of lard if you’re bulking.
What you’ve been given are a number of holiday eating tips you can use to limit the damage and stay healthy during the holidays.
So do those things, you!
By the way, before I completely forget, Happy Whatever-The-Fuck-Day-It-Is to you!!!
Glossary: bulk, calories, dietary fat, gym, hormones, intensity, metabolism, moderation, summer, workout