Holidays and coping with excess eating and drinking

So you are enjoying the Easter weekend away from home with family. Normally, you are fairly good at sticking to your healthy eating plan on weekends, with the exception of a few pieces of chocolate cake on occasion.

But this is different, this is Easter (insert the appropriate holiday name in here - Christmas, Spring Break, Thanksgiving, etc). Aunt Suzie from Cape Town will bring some of the best nougat from the waterfront market, your farmer dad brings a nice fat sheep, your mom baked some special pudding, and the kids twisted your arm to bring along a packet of chocolate eggs for the egg hunt. Of course, everyone is eating and socialising together on a weekend break like this one, which makes it so much harder for you to stick to healthy and avoid fattening foods.

Now that is the REAL world.

So what do you do?

You indulge. Yup, that's right, you eat some of that nougat, you take a piece of barbecue mutton and eat it, and you go ahead and have a chocolate egg. Heck, you even have a glass of wine. But note the word ONE, A PIECE, SINGLE serving, etc. Yes, while your cousins are competing to see who can finish your mom's delicious pudding, and your overweight uncle stuffs chocolates down his throat, you eat a small portion and you enjoy the taste, the texture and the overall experience.

Why? Because you planned for a cheat in your weekly eating plan. You were extra careful eating healthy this week, you diligently did your exercise programme, and added a session or two extra on your spin bike, so that when the time comes, you can indulge freely knowing that you 'paid it forward'.

Of course, knowing my own experience all too well, restricting yourself too much can often turn you into a raging eating machine when someone innocently puts down a piece of birthday cake in front of you. If you allow yourself a special treat now and then, this is less likely to happen, and you are able to get back on track fairly quickly.

Having a 'controlled cheat' also breaks the mental monotony of a fat loss eating plan, and the added carbs helps the body regulate the hormones required to drive fat loss.

A general rule of thumb that I follow in my own life and eating plan is to have a cheat day once a week. However, I am careful to ensure that my overall calorie balance remains negative, for weight maintenance. If you maintain weight at 1800 calories per day, and you have a binge weekend that exceeds 6000 calories (not that hard to reach in one day, trust me!) for example, you are destroying 3 days of hard work, so it is just not worth it.

So focus on quality, not quantity. Eat with the heart and mind - enjoy the piece of chocolate, eat it slowly, taste it properly. Gobbling it down indicates emotional hunger, and leads to overeating and guilt, more overeating and more guilt - a cycle that is hard to stop.

Happy Easter. Cherish this time with family and friends, and have your controlled cheat so that you stop dreading the next family event and instead turn it into a precious memory.