Digesting the Holidays

Whose more stuffed, the turkey or you?

Before you fall into the same holiday over-eating trap consider this – the average Thanksgiving meal is over 3,000 calories!!!  Read on to see how your body responds to the holiday feast:

Minute 1 = your taste buds are excited and send pleasure signals to the brain (I want some more please). As you chew, enzymes in your saliva break down the sugars and starches in the stuffing you’ve just stuffed into your gobbler.

First 5 Minutes = your stomach is frantically working to dissolve food and shuttle it into the small intestine, which will ferry nutrients like fat and protein into your blood stream.

Within 15 Minutes = both your stomach and the small intestine alert your brain – via hormones – that you are beyond capacity. But, if you have eat like a Hobbit – your brain won’t get the message until after you’ve helped yourself to secondsies and thirdsies.

Within the first hour = post desert, your insulin levels have spiked in an attempt to control the sugar that is coursing through your blood stream. Within 30-minutes of eating a salty meal, your blood vessels may become slightly less supple. If your diet is always packed with salty foods, you may develop stiff blood vessels, a risk factor for heart disease.

Thanksgiving Coma

After 1 hour = feeling sleepy yet? Turkey’s get a bad wrap for putting people to sleep. Even though it does contain a sleep agent – tryptophan – and your body does convert this amino acid into the sleep promoting serotonin – it is not the real cause of your zzz’s. The true cause of fatigue – you have stuffed yourself so full, your body is working overtime to digest. So, the body puts you to sleep so it can digest all 3,000 calories you’ve just downed in 1 meal. It is taking all of your body’s energy to digest the food.

Your stomach is also being stretched like a balloon and is pushing against your surrounding organs, possibly making it hard to breath, making your feel achy or potentially nauseous

After 1-2 hours = your liver has converted the food into nutrients that your organs can absorb. If your carb reserves are not full – most of the fat and calories will be converted into short-term energy (if you had worked out before binging, you’d have more room in the storehouse for all those calories). However, most of us have not exercised and you have eaten twice as much as what your body needs for daily function. So, the excess food is being converted into layaway triglycerides and is being packed into the fat cells around the thighs, butt, and belly.

After 2 hours = Breathe a sigh of relief – your stomach has emptied and your blood vessels are back to normal. Just because your stomach is empty and the blood vessels are back to normal, does not mean it is time to start all over again.

 

Before Thanksgiving dinner starts – or better yet – after dinner is finished, go for a walk. Just move a little, help your body digest all of the food and potentially burn off some of the excess calories before it gets turned into mashed potato butt, corn-on-the cob thighs, or turkey stuffing stomach. Remember, this is a great opportunity to slow down, enjoy your family’s company around the dinner table. Take longer than 30 minutes to eat 1 plate of food. Limit how many helpings you have and the serving size on the plate. Thanksgiving is not an excuse to go off your healthy eating lifestyle.  It is an opportunity to practice some self-regulation and be thankful that we have the ability to put food on our plates. Not everyone around the world (even in our own country) has the ability to feed themselves or their own families. Be thankful, by not overeating this year.