Food Fear – Post Christmas Crisis

‘Run for 12km to burn off all the Celebrations you ate’. If you haven’t seen a post similar to this, then is it even Christmas?

In the run up to Christmas there is an excessive amount of fear mongering in relation to food, alcohol and exercise. This isn’t particularly necessary or helpful. There is always a massive increase in content related to nutrition and exercise, a lot of which likely coming from coaches trying to make business for January. With an increase in content, there is also an increase in harmful or misleading information.

How do I Lose my Christmas Weight?!

First of all, lets address a couple of things. Christmas is a time for enjoyment and indulging with family and friends. If you’re anything like me, you ate a lot, drank a lot, and exercised little. In the past, I would have been quite harsh on myself and felt a lot of guilt, but over the last few years I’ve had a shift in mindset for the better.

Let’s say you have indulged excessively for 10 days over Christmas. The reality is you probably haven’t gained much body fat, probably 2-3 pounds at most if you really went for it.

The number you’re currently seeing on the scale is probably a combination of a slight increase in body fat, but primarily an increase in water weight. Within 1-3 weeks of returning to your regular, healthier habits, you will likely return to your baseline weight.

Try not to feel shame for your behaviours over Christmas. The time has now passed, so focus on reintroducing healthier habits going forward that are going to have you in a position this time next year that you will be proud of.

Small but effective behaviours such as daily walks, going to the gym regularly, reading for 10 minutes every night, or incorporating more fruit and veg into your meals will have large compounding effects if you perform them consistently for the next year.

Social Media Fear Mongering

A massive pet peeve of mine is the infographics which display pictures of food, with an example of what type of exercise you need to do in order to burn off the amount of calories in that food, an example of which can be seen in Figure 1.

It is toxic and does not promote a healthy relationship with neither food or exercise in the general population. It is unhealthy for the general population, but even more so for those who may be recovering from an eating disorder. Imagine working so hard to improve your relationship with food, and then being bombarded with these images which are reinforcing the previous negative thoughts and experiences you had around food and exercise. It could be massively triggering. It’s also not just Christmas when these pictures are posted. They’re posted at any time of the year where you may have a spike in calorie consumption, such as Easter or Halloween.

Figure 1 (Image from Dorset Echo)

These images can be extremely misleading for the general population or for those who don’t have a basic understanding of nutrition and exercise physiology. This is not your fault, but rather the fault of the so-called expert taking advantage.

The thing is, you do not just need energy for exercise. You need energy (or calories) when you are sleeping, sitting, eating, standing, working and so on. Your body needs energy to survive and thrive, not just to punish yourself with physical activity. For example, the average individual burns roughly 70kcal an hour while sleeping and 110kcal an hour while sitting, although there is a lot of inter-individual variation here. If you were to do absolutely no exercise for 24 hours, you may burn somewhere between 1,500 - 2,500kcal, depending on your body size and composition. If you ate everything in the above infographic, that comes in at just below 3,500kcal. Do this every day for a week over Christmas, and you might gain a small amount of body fat. You ate lots of nice food and had a good time with loved ones, which in my opinion is probably a good trade off for a couple of pounds - once these behaviours don't extend into the following weeks.

Exercise is a Privilege, not a Punishment

Exercise or physical activity shouldn’t be something that is seen as a punishment, or something you do to burn off your Christmas binge. If you have the ability to exercise freely, without impairment, you are in a privileged position. You should be grateful that you have the ability to exercise.

Stop saying ‘I have to exercise’, start saying ‘I get to exercise’.

That small reframe can have a big effect.

In saying this, exercise should almost always be included in plans for individuals who want to improve their body composition, because it is an extremely useful way for increasing energy output. This doesn’t have to be painful exercise; it should be something you enjoy and could see yourself doing for the rest of your life. Realistically if you think ‘Ugh I have to go for a jog to burn X calories now’, it’s not going to be something you can sustain long-term. If you shift that to ‘I am a runner, I get to go outside and run, I am privileged to have a body which allows me to run’ it may help with the initial ingraining of the habit. However, if it is something you truly hate (hating something and finding something difficult are VERY different), then maybe you should look at a different mode of exercise.

Conclusion

If you take anything from this blog, it is to not feel shame and guilt for your Christmas antics.

Use the next few weeks to start slowly building positive habits, not make extraordinary and drastic changes.

Use exercise to celebrate what your body can do and set goals for yourself, don’t use it as a punishment for eating food that you enjoy.

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.” – James Clear