Holiday Dieting

Stepping on the scale after a couple days of holiday/vacationing binge eating is probably the worst idea for anyone trying to lose weight.

It's a mental problem, not a physiological problem and here's why.

1lb of body fat is roughly 3,500kcal.  REMEMBER THAT.

Let's assume if you were to go ALL OUT on binge eating hardcore to the max tomorrow at a social event and you ate 5,000kcal OVER your maintenance (that's a lot btw, like 7000-8000kcal total depending on your current size and activity level).

Let's also assume ALL of those delicious calories goes straight to your butt, chin, and belly fat cells. and NONE OF THEM goes to your muscle (impossible btw)

5000kcal / 3500kcal = 1.43lb of fat.

If you step on the scale and you gained more than 1.43lb of your pre-thanksgiving weight, you are bloating and carry excessive water weight and this is extremely common!  It's not all fat!  in fact, i'd say it's maybe only .2 to .3 pounds of fat and the rest is water weight.

So don't freak out, give up, and feel like a loser.

Go back to the gym and go back to eating less this weekend like nothing happened.

here are some good quotes from leangains and lyle mcdonald on how to deal with holiday festivities.

"Limit choices, not amounts".

"Studies show that when people are presented with multiple food-choices, they eat more. In fact, calorie intake during a buffet scales almost linearly with the amount of different foods to choose from. If I offered you unlimited amounts of turkey and cheesecake, you'd likely only eat so much of it before you felt "full" and satisfied.
However, if I threw a third food into the mix, like potatoes or chocolate pudding, you'd end up eating a lot more - even if you weren't a fan of potatoes or chocolate pudding in normal circumstances. Humans are wired a bit funny and some behaviors are maladaptive in our environment of excesses. Having a taste of everything was a good strategy during our evolution, since it protected again micronutrient-deficiencies.

By "mentally limiting" the food choices you allow yourself, i.e. only eating that which you absolutely love and crave, can be a very effective strategy in regulating calorie intake without feeling deprived. Remember, you don't need to taste of every damn food or treat that is offered. Stick to that which you truly enjoy eating and skip the rest."
- Leangains

"Make Better Bad Choices - Lyle
A lot of people fall into a dreadful trap over the holidays, figuring that if they’ve eaten a little bit of junk food, clearly they’ve blown it and might as well retire to the corner with the entire tray of fudge and eat themselves sick.

Maybe it’s something small, a slight deviation or dalliance. There’s a bag of cookies and you have one or you’re at the mini mart and just can’t resist a little something that’s not on your diet. Or maybe it’s something a little bit bigger, a party or special event comes up and you know you won’t be able to stick with your diet. Or, at the very extreme, maybe a vacation comes up, a few days out of town or even something longer, a week or two. What do you do?

Now, if you’re in the majority, here’s what happens: You eat the cookie and figure that you’ve blown your diet and might as well eat the entire bag. Clearly you were weak willed and pathetic for having that cookie, the guilt sets in and you might as well just start eating and eating and eating.

Or since the special event is going to blow your diet, you might as well eat as much as you can and give up, right? The diet is obviously blown by that single event so might as well chuck it all in the garbage.

Sound familiar? Yeah I thought it might. The above is amazingly prevalent and exceedingly destructive. Extremely rigid dieters fall into a trap where they let events such as the holidays become a problem because of their own psychology. They figure that one piece of dessert has ruined all of their hard efforts so they might as well eat ALL the dessert. Which is, of course, nonsense. Say that piece of dessert has a few hundred calories, or say 500 calories. In the context of a weekly plan that is calorie controlled with training, that’s nothing.

Unless the person lets it become something. They figure 500 calories is the end of the world and eat an additional 5000 calories. Instead of just taking it in stride and realizing that it’s not big deal, they make it a big deal with their own reaction.

Simply, don’t do that. Realize that there is only so much damage you can do in the short-term. At the end of the day, what you did for one meal that week simply doesn’t matter if the rest of the week was fine. Not unless you make it."
-Lyle