How To Bounce Back After Holiday Excess!
Festivities Overload?
Whether you’ve overindulged in holiday meals, candies, cakes, pies, drinks and more or you gave up working out too, don’t fret. These simple tips will get you right back on track by healing and repairing all of the ‘damage’ done.
First, the very worst thing you can do right now is to go low-calorie. It is vital to add in quality calories – protein, healthy fats, antioxidants and fiber. Generally, many choose low-calorie foods that do not optimize cellular health as a first response. Even worse? These foods crank up the insulin and glucose.
Remember, food is information to our cells. So use the tips below to bring back balance and you’ll very quickly be back on track.
1. Eliminate Refined Foods. Your body is crying out for real nourishment, nutrients that will allow it to function optimally. Eat a small fiber and protein-rich meal such as salmon and roasted broccoli. Salmon is high in protein, healthy fat, antioxidants and broccoli is nutrient-rich, high in fiber and activates the mother of all antioxidants: Glutathione. Both food choices will also re-balance your blood sugar.
2. Add Healthy Fats, particularly fats high in omega 3 fat such as salmon, sardines, fish oil, grass-fed meat or dairy, will help to reduce and reverse cellular inflammation as a result of the excess. Healthy fats to include: fatty fish, avocados, nuts, seeds, whole eggs (omega 3), olive oil, macadamia nut oil, avocado oil, MCT oil, chia seeds, flax seeds. A handful of nuts gives you fat and protein to also slow digestion, keeping blood sugar balanced – very important to optimal health.
3. Add Supplements to help support your healthy change. There are supplements that can reduce and reverse cellular inflammation which is what happens after holiday excess. Examples include:
⋅Turmeric or for a more therapeutic effect, curcumin. The health benefits are powerful.
⋅Chromium Picolinate is excellent to help return your blood sugar back to normal quickly by promoting more insulin sensitivity – again, key to optimal health overall. Most people are deficientin chromium.
⋅Berberine is an herb or root that not only has powerful health benefits, but is excellent in helping to prevent and return high blood sugar.
⋅Magnesium is critical. Magnesium plays a role in reducing inflammation and cellular energy production via our mitochondria. When we eat unhealthy, toxic, refined sugar and other refined carb-laden foods, we literally damage our mitochondria. We need healthy and robust mitochondria in order to thrive. Sadly, most individuals are deficient In this precious mineral and days of unhealthy eating damage our energy source. The good news is that taking a bio-available form of magnesium will get you back on a health cellular track.
⋅Vitamin D3 – Another supplement that helps to reduce inflammation in the body by regulating the production of inflammatory cytokines and inhibiting the proliferation of pro-inflammatory cells. Remember that days of excess equals inflammation.
⋅All B Vitamins – B vitamins work metabolize carbohydrates more effectively so that the carbs we consume contribute to our sustained energy level and healthy brain function instead of getting stored as fat.
⋅Fish Oil – Fish oil helps to reduce carbohydrate cravings and to control your appetite by enhancing insulin sensitivity.
4. Drink Water. Drinking water can help flush out the excess glucose in the body. Additionally, sugar creates an acidic environment that can impair enzyme function and decrease your body’s water storage capacity. Your body needs to dilute the large amount of sugar which is necessary to metabolize all the extra sugar. Drink half your body weight, in ounces, of water daily. For example, if you weight 120 lbs, drink at least 60 ounces of water a day. Mild dehydration that comes with eating sugar and refined carbs impacts cellular function. Without enough water, cellular function slows not allowing enough energy for you and more.
5. Add Cinnamon to Your Diet. Cinnamon can improve your body’s ability to metabolize and use carbohydrates (sugar is a carbohydrate). Cinnamon also induces the feeling of being full (satiety) to prevent continued overindulgence of sugar and the after-meal spikes in blood sugar and insulin that result.
6. Exercise Eliminates the Toxic Effects of Holiday Excess. Research shows that exercise may blunt the negative health effects of sugar. During exercise, your body burns sugar (glycogen) and improves insulin sensitivity – a key marker of optimal health. Remember that any type of movement will help. Add in any form of resistance training, or weight training, has the greatest effect. Muscle is literally a storage depot for excess sugar in the body. The more muscle, the less glucose circulating and the more insulin sensitive you are. Exercise also returns the physical energy that excess sugar can deplete.
7. Avoid Added Sugar. Be vigilant about avoiding added sugar to your diet. Look at the ingredient list on products to determine if they contain added sugar. Watch out for packaged foods, they tend to be high in sugar – whether sweet or savory. Instead, get sugar from natural sources, such as low-sugar fruits (berries, green apples, kiwi, grapefruit). You can also try healthy sweeteners such as monk fruit sweetener, erythritol, allulose, stevia. Others such as sorbitol, maltitol, and mannitol may cause bloating and gas but won’t effect blood sugar.
8. Intermittent Fasting can provide a therapeutic effect to quickly reset your insulin and glucose levels. When you are not eating, whether for 8 hours, 12 hours, 16 hours or more, you are flattening the insulin and glucose in the body. This gives your system, cells time to improve, clean house and much more. You also activate certain enzymes, hormones changes that help clean-up the excess induced during the holiday season. 12 hour fasting example: dinner at 7pm and breakfast at 7am = 12 hours of fasting. Four big benefits of Intermittent Fasting in just 12 hours: 1. Improved Brain Health 2. Enhanced Detoxification 3. Reduced Inflammation 4. Weight Loss/Management.
These tips will immediately help you to optimize your health so that you can go on to live a healthier and happier life with a leaner body, better gut health, heart health, improved mood, improved brain health, immunity and much more.
You know the old adage “Just Do It” Let’s go!
© 2023 DLS HealthWorks, LLC.
Lori Shemek, PhD, CNC, health and weight loss expert is the best-selling author of How to Fight FATflammation! ‘Fire-Up Your Fat Burn!’ The Beginner’s Guide to Intermittent Fasting and The Ketogenic Key!