Eat big without gaining weight during December

Hey there,

Navigating food around the silly season can be challenging. You may have been on a diet and want to finish the year off strong or you just want to watch your waistline.

Did you know that most of the weight you put on in a year comes from the Christmas season?

If you eat way too much food on one day, you can just decide to not be concerned about it and get back to your normal eating patterns the next day or next meal.

Sure, if your goal was fat loss you may not reach your goal for that week, however you don't need to feel disappointed in yourself at all!

The issue comes when you are surrounded by social events featuring a buffet of food every week or a couple of times a week such as Christmas parties, friend and family gatherings and so on.

Some women have reached out to me asking what they can do to help them stick to their body composition goals coming into the silly season where parties and events are happening regularly.

This is what we are exploring today in Bolder Women.

But before we dive in ...

A message from the Strong Woman Project

The Strong Woman Project is launching in DECEMBER!

This new program is for committed women who want to make a real change to their health, body, and life. This program helps create a fat burning machine with beautiful lean muscle as your armour.

It is based on the science of protein leverage and the new 2023 guidelines for active women going through perimenopause and menopause.

It utilises the Protein Pulsing Protocol and Resistance Rep Adaptive System and helps women develop a new mental shift by creating habits that really make the difference for fat loss.

The whole idea can be summed up in four main points.

1. Eat Amazing: Being stronger opens up the food options to include things you thought were off limits! Muscle is your armour; it protects you and soaks up energy from the food you eat. This includes cakes and donuts.

2. Feel Amazing: Have confidence in your body and being able to wear what expresses you.

3. Do Amazing: Hike to the top of a mountain, bike ride in nature, lift heavy things, whatever adventures capture your spirit.

4. Live Amazing: Being strong provides hidden health benefits that improve health span, which means you don’t decline as you age.

Right now, you can join the ‘early bird’ list and get a founding members discount when we launch.

Deep Dive:

Let’s explore some guidelines for the party season at an event with finger food, buffet or a more formal sit-down occasion.

Guidelines for navigating finger food at an event or party

The biggest advice I can give you is always eat before you go. Have a protein rich meal with vegetables or salad so you don’t arrive at the party absolutely starving and reaching for every single platter that goes by.

This is key!

When that platter comes around, choose the lighter options such as vegetable sticks and chicken skewers instead of the deep-fried food or mini burgers.

Try and not position yourself near the buffet so you keep mindlessly snacking!

Keep to 2 or less alcoholic drinks or mocktails and drink water in between.

Guidelines for navigating a sit down event

Its a good idea to have knowledge of the menu before you get there. You can either find out the menu online or ask the organiser what type of food will be available.

Decide beforehand what food you are going to eat.

This is key!

If possible, choose lean protein and fill ½ your plate vegetables and salads.

Don’t snack on the bread that is served, look to see if there are olives or vegetable sticks.

Keep to 2 or less alcoholic drinks or mocktails and them drink water in between.

Deeper Dive

Lets take a look into some science because it is fascinating how we can manipulate how our body stores energy, through hormones, exercise and our gut microflora.

The Art and Science of Insulin Control

You'd never even know you had a hormone called insulin if we didn't learn about it from science ... because you can’t see it or measure it easily ... but it's there, working away in your body, unseen and unheard. The good news is that you can use insulin to help you manage a big food binge.

The goal is to minimise a spike of insulin in your blood stream, and we can do this by reducing high jumps in blood sugar.

We don't want a heap of glucose just hanging out in our blood because it's actually toxic. Our body knows this, so it tries to get rid of it by sending it to different cells like muscle, liver, and fat cells. The goal is to prevent too much glucose from going into fat cells since it gets turned into fat.

How do we slow avoid blood glucose and insulin spikes?

Pairing food helps to slow down the digestion of glucose into the blood stream which will avoid a huge spike in glucose and insulin.

Pair carbohydrate and protein

Pair carbohydrate with good quality fats

You may be at an event where there is fruit, therefore aim to pair it with some nuts or nut butter if you can. Or you may have some lean turkey meat paired with cranberry sauce and vegetable sticks.

Activate GLUT-4 with Brief Muscle Contractions 

This one is really interesting.

GLUT-4 is another secret weapon we can use to help overeat on delicious food at an event minimising fat gain. Put simply, GLUT-4 acts like a pump to send calories into the cells, and so the more we have open, the more glucose we can store in our cells.

But we don't want to store energy in our fat cells, and so we want to stimulate the GLUT-4 to start working on our muscle cells, because that way, the calories will flow into muscle cells and not fat cells.

So, how can we open up the GLUT-4 receptors on our muscle’s cells?

Easy ... we just have to use our muscles and the best way to do this is just before a meal, and about 90 minutes after a meal. The easiest way to activate our muscles is with air squats, wall presses or even go for a walk.

There has been a lot of research and review papers (eg: Flores-Opazo et al 2020) studying GLUT-4 and glucose uptake into the muscle cells after exercise.

So, what can you do? You can start with 60-120 seconds total of air squats and wall push ups immediately prior to eating main courses. You can actually do these in the bathroom if you want some privacy!

Do another 60-90 seconds approximately one and a half hours after finishing the main courses, when blood glucose is the highest.

If this doesn't take your fancy, then you can also take a long walk after the meal.

Increase your NEAT

On the day of your event aim to increase your non exercise activity thermogenesis, quite simply get moving and do more steps.

Plan to go for an extra walk in the morning or throughout the day. Take the stairs rather than escalator. This will help increase your energy expenditure on that day to make up for the extra food you will consume.

Train on the day you of your event

If possible, I would try and fit in a workout on the day that you are attending an event. Train with intensity and work hard.

This will mean your muscles can soak up the extra glucose like a sponge. Perhaps you can workout early in the morning if your event is a lunch or do a lunch time exercise, if your event is at night.

Balance Your Gut Microbiome to cultivate fat reducing gut flora

The makeup of our gut microbiome determines how we harvest energy from the foods we eat.

Two primary strains of bacteria have been found to influence fat absorption, almost regardless of diet: Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes.

Lean people have more Bacteroidetes and fewer Firmicutes; people with high levels of body fat have more Firmicutes and fewer Bacteroidetes. As these people lose weight, the ratio of bacteria in their gut swings confidently over to more Bacteroidetes.

This could take some time, but you don't need to wait to act. There are a few things you can do now to cultivate healthy and fat-reducing gut flora:

1. Eat the rainbow of vegetables daily. Think lots of colour! Try some new vegetables each week. This provides a mixture of fiber and phytonutrients for the good gut bacteria to thrive.

2. Increase fibre (all types) 25-30 grams a day. Aim to get this through a mix of fibres including insoluble fiber (bran), soluble fiber (oats, beans, apples, psyllium) and resistant starch (cooled potatoes).

A good guide is trying to get in 30 different plant foods a week, for example chia seeds, almonds, nut butters, fruit and vegetables.

3. Consider probiotics and prebiotics.

Prebiotics are fermentable substrates that help bacteria and thrive. In this category, there is inulin and fructo-oligosaccharides, commonly referred to as FOS.

You can get inulin through supplements and whole-foods such as garlic, onions, leeks and chicory. These foods are all high in inulin or FOS content.

Probiotics are foods that contain good live bacteria and provide health benefits. Products that contain probiotics are greek yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, miso and kimchi.

Though the research is preliminary, introducing pre- and probiotics together in the diet could have beneficial effects on allergies, ageing, obesity and a range of diseases.

One potential benefit is particularly fascinating, given our focus on GLUT-4: both inulin and FOS improve calcium absorption, and calcium absorption promotes the activity of GLUT-4.

So, give your good bacteria an upgrade!

Bite Size Snacks

MEME of the Day

The menopause catwalk

Summary

The holiday Christmas period is the challenging time to managing food choices if you are trying to avoid weight gain over this period. Establishing some guidelines when you are at an event or dinner is a great way to help your future waistline, while still enjoying a drink or two.

Reflection (to ask yourself)

What events do you have coming up? Are you able to find out what food is going to be served so you can be prepared? Can you eat a protein rich meal or snack before you go?

The Team at Bolder Women

How’d we do with the newsletter this week?