The average person gains 2.5kg over Christmas - but it's not just down to greed. Dietician Dr Susan Roberts reveals the hidden psychological triggers that trick us into over-eating...
Not only turkeys fatten up at this time of year. It’s shockingly easy to gain 2.5kg or even 5kg in the three weeks between early December and the start of the New Year.
The result is not just a few extra inches around the middle but also an overwhelming sense of disappointment because, in retrospect, the enjoyment we got from those extra calories is pretty paltry compared to the long hard slog of taking them all off again.
Of course, avoiding the festive binge isn’t impossible, but there’s a lot more to it than just vowing to count our calories.
The real challenge of Christmas isn’t the food we eat, but the circumstances in which we eat it.
On Christmas Day alone, we eat about 3,000 calories more than we need with the first chocolate eaten at 8.39am (according to recent research).
This isn’t just down to greed — it’s a natural human response to a particular set of triggers.
The huge amounts of food prepared cause unconscious overeating — the sight and smell of it sets off metabolic signals of hunger and expand our stomach so that we need to eat more to feel equally full.
And then there is the food itself.
The defining characteristic of traditional festive items — the bacon-roasted turkey, butter-laden stuffing, potatoes cooked in goose fat, Christmas pudding with brandy cream and rich fruit cake topped with marzipan and icing — is that they’re extremely high in calories and very low in fibre. In other words, you have to eat huge amounts of them before you feel full.
Unfortunately, the challenges don’t stop there.
That huge variety of food on the Christmas table is part of what makes Christmas dinner special, right? Wrong.
The sheer luxury of choice means that most diners eat an extra 400 calories simply tasting all of the delights on offer.
And you know that lovely big crowd at the dinner table?
Well, according to research you can add another 35 calories to your intake for every guest settling down for the festive lunch — with, say, 11 guests at the table, you’ll probably eat an extra 400 calories without realizing it.
Eating in a group relaxes us, and the sight of other people tucking in encourages us to do the same.
These ‘social facilitators’ of overeating are so effective at increasing our mealtime calorie count that nursing homes — where weight loss is often a problem — are starting
Research also reveals that having music playing when you eat means you’ll consume an extra 100 calories on top, as it takes your mind off being careful about what you eat.
And all of this is before the traditional evening spent in front of the box, complete with favourite snacks in hand. This adds at least another 140 calories.
And then there are the after-effects of that delicious meal. Studies show that, even if you try like crazy to keep calories down to usual levels on Christmas Day, you will be hungrier and eat more at the next meal.
Again, this happens because our nervous system is activated by the sight of the delicious looking food in front of us (it’s true that we eat with our eyes), and this causes our digestive system to speed up.
This results in us digesting food faster, meaning that we will have an empty stomach again, all too soon.
It may seem unfair and counterproductive today, but what nutrition scientists call the ‘second meal’ effect served us well during earlier times when our genes were evolving, because it made it possible to have multiple meals on those occasional times when an abundance food was there for the taking.
Today, the negative cycle of having one great blow-out meal and then not being able to snap back to more sensible-sized portions happens because those delicious high-fat and high-sugar foods, which don’t fill us up as fast as fibrous foods would, speed up our metabolic rate.
This then triggers hunger pangs at the next meal making it hard to resist — no matter how much we ate at the last meal.
It’s the reason you can go out for a slap-up meal in the evening and despite rolling into bed feeling uncomfortably full — and promising you won’t eat again for a week — you wake up starving. So the slippery slope starts, and is continued as party after party gets in the way of avoiding overeating.
But enough of the doom and gloom. Keeping the weight off at Christmas isn’t an impossible task.
Although we can’t get away from our instinctive eating behaviors, we can learn to control them.
If you are the one in charge of making food, arming yourself with some basic knowledge about the produce you’ll be eating — and consigning the very large plates to the back of the cupboard — will ensure you can step onto the scales come January 2 and feel good about it. Or at least not feel too bad.
Even if you’re dining out and feel uncomfortable asking your host for changes, there are some easy invisible ways to control your natural biology and cut down on all the ‘unthinking’ calories eaten.
So put a nice thin picture of yourself up on the fridge to keep weight control in mind, and use these five simple tips — based on my effective ‘I’ diet weight control programme, to help yourself.
1. BE PREPARED
Even if you’re not the one cooking the Christmas meal, you don’t have to be at the mercy of your host.
One surefire way to limit overeating is to add 100-150g of a really high fibre cereal like All Bran to your regular meals (some people like to sprinkle it on salads for a crouton effect, or you can just have it with milk for an extra course) for two days before the overeating starts.
Rather than eating smaller portions in the run-up to Christmas to ‘bank’ calories — which is exactly what will cause bingeing later — give yourself this meal-booster to gain fullness and control.
You won’t be hungry when you sit down, meaning you can enjoy a couple of days of rich food but you’ll automatically want to eat far less.
2. SKIP THE BORING STUFF
Every festive meal has some high calorie things you don’t particularly care for, so save your calories for the foods you really do love.
By not looking at, smelling and especially tasting even a single bite of the mundane items — my list here would include crisps and other non-special starters and snacks, any Christmas cake that is not homemade, and mince pies unless they come from Marks & Spencer or your mum — you avoid revving up metabolic hunger signals unnecessarily.
As for work parties and other events where the food is simply all-round poor — have something satisfying such as high-fibre cereal with milk or an apple to eat before you go, and keep a glass of soda water or tonic in your hand for a calorie-free option (alcohol is full of ‘empty’ calories that will pile on the pounds before you’ve even eaten a single sausage wrapped in bacon).
Not wolfing down the canapes at five of the ten parties you’ll attend between now and January 2, is much easier than you might imagine.
The trick is, not to get started. By avoiding the first bite, you prevent the metabolic signals of hunger, that rev up when you put food in your mouth, giving you an appetite for something bigger. It is the easiest way to cut excess calories — and poundage — in half.
3. MICRO-MANAGE THE TABLE AROUND YOU
Surreptitiously controlling your food
So as you take your seat at the Christmas table, bear in mind that short, skinny neighbours will serve themselves smaller portions and tempt you to eat less than tall overweight or athletic ones.
If you can’t choose to sit next to somebody who only weighs eight stone, keep the high-calorie foods and alcohol moving down the table, making sure that none of it ends up within reach.
If you’ve ever found yourself sitting near to a bowl of crisps and unable to ignore them you’re not alone.
Numerous studies have shown that how close you are to food determines how much you load on your plate, so even simple steps like this can be a big help.
4. RECOVER CONTROL THE VERY NEXT DAY
Yes, we have the metabolic effects of feasts like Christmas Day that make us ready for another good meal all too soon (with those high fat foods speeding up our digestion and increasing our hunger levels), but that doesn’t mean you are helpless. The key to nipping negative cycles in the bud is doing recovery activities in the right order. Although cutting out high-calorie treats starting the next day might seem like the right place to start, in fact this superficially easy route frequently leads to failure because you get hungry and then cheat.
Before you know it, you’ve eaten more than you would have if you’d just stuck to your usual routine.
The key here in my clinical experience is to satisfy yourself before the hunger kicks in and that means eating filling, fibrous foods before your stomach starts rumbling from hunger.
Put yourself on a high-fibre regime the very next morning — high-fibre cereals, bean dishes and low-carb, high-fibre breads are the best for giving you that feeling of all-round fullness — and see how quickly you lose the urge to overeat.
5. THROW OUT THE WELL-INTENTIONED FOOD GIFTS
Yes, I know your best friend or sister-in-law would be offended if she knew that you tossed her box of luxury chocolates in the bin, but if she doesn’t know she can’t mind.
Controlling your own food — the food that you buy and bring into the house yourself — is much easier than the free stuff other people hand over.
So do yourself a favour and, unless the food is something healthy like a fresh, fragrant loaf of homemade wholemeal bread, be willing to consign it to the rubbish (or pass it on to someone else) and pat yourself on the back for being tough.
In the toxic food environment we live in, controlling your weight takes real effort and the more you can take control of food in the immediate space around you, the easier it will be.
