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Overeating at Holidays and Parties
The Saints won a great game yesterday and while they were doing it we consumed copious amounts of chicken wings, pizza, nachos and beer.
Congrats to Drew Brees and the Saints, Superbowl Champs.
And then I got to thinking about how often people in north america (and I’m sure all over the world) get together to celebrate various events and holidays with large feasts.
This is just a short list of event that involve a significant degree of overeating:
1. Thanksgiving
2. Christmas
3. Easter
4. Halloween (not a formal dinner, just way too much candy and chocolate)
5. Superbowl
6. 4th of July (USA) July 1st (Canada)
7. Your birthday
8. Your significant others birthday
9. The birthday of anyone in your family
10. Aug 1st long weekend
11. New Years Eve
12. St Patricks Day (Beer, lots of beer)
13. Any long weekend in the summer that I haven’t mentioned
And I’m sure there are many other days that are special in your yearly routine that I haven’t even mentioned here. Most social gatherings around holidays and big events usually revolve around some sort of feast. If you attend these holiday gatherings and partake in the feast then you probably eat well above your BMR for that day.
Lets say you had 15 big overeating events (like the list above) per year. If you overeat by a total of 1500 calories on the day of each event, and went back to eating at BMR maintenance for the rest of the year you would still likely gain over 6 lbs of fat each year.
And in reality I’m probably being conservative. In many cases every single weekend of the year has at least one big night out of eating for many people…but I’m sure you get the point.
Every time you have a big eating day, you have to offset it with a small eating day otherwise those extra calories will be stored as fat and never be burned off. It’s just simple accounting and budgeting that most of us forget to do.
So like I said in yesterdays post, today is about a 1000-1100 calorie day for me, and tomorrow will be the same. This should offset the extra calories I ate at our superbowl party on sunday.
John
4 Responses to “Overeating at Holidays and Parties”
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February 8th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Just simple accounting!
February 8th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
The nice thing about your example is that you’re left with about 350 other days in the year to offset those binge days. On a run-of-the-mill, typical week day, with a little will power and some physical activity, it’s so easy to offset those binge days. By just paying a little bit of attention and being conscious of what you eat on those days, you can enjoy the festive days with your family and friends guilt free!
Keep up the great posts JB.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
John
Here’s a question I thought of today. When you mention your BMR on this site and the Adonis Lifestyle, you usually quote a number around 1800 calories. However, when one types in “BMR calculator” into google, several calculators come up that take the amount of activity into consideration when calculating BMR. For instance, these calculators would take your BMR of 1800 calories and factor in an activity level of “Moderate” and come up with something like 2300 calories/day. What do you think of factoring in the amount of activity that one performs? Should one do it or should one just figure the plain BMR and why?
February 15th, 2010 at 1:07 am
John Barban – Overeating at Holidays and Parties…
Weight Control – Holidays and parties are when most people overeat. It might just be that most weight gain is simply a result of these events….