It’s easy to get off track during the holidays if you’re dieting or trying to maintain your weight. Delicious dishes and sweets are beckoning from every direction. The temptations are so outrageous that you may need to know how to get back on track after overeating?
Keeping up the healthy eating habits and the daily exercise routine gets more and more difficult. Here’s the thing to remember: Most everyone falters at some point or another, and some a lot more than others.
A “slip-up” probably shouldn’t be considered a relapse! A single day of overeating isn’t going to get you back on the obesity list. And if it makes you feel better, a couple of days won’t hurt either. Not if you know how to get back on track after overeating, that is.
Here’s How to Get Back on Track After Overeating
1. Eat Breakfast
Even if you wake feeling full, make yourself start the next day off with a good, healthy breakfast. Not only will this reseat your metabolism, it will also help you get back into the eating healthy mindset.
2. Drink Lots of Water
Staying hydrated is important to good health and losing weight anytime. But drinking water will also help you feel full the day after a binge. When you’re staying hydrated after overeating you won’t be as tempted to keep on overeating the next day.
3. Stick to Your Scheduled Exercise Regime
Even if a light workout is all you can manage, it’s vital for getting back on track, and is certainly better than no exercise at all.
Getting up and moving will get you feeling much better, while reinforcing your mental and physical commitment to your weight management goals.
4. Eat a Salad for Lunch
In a typical salad the water content of the vegetables will go along way towards keeping you hydrated.
The low calorie lunch that’s high in water content will also help you over that groggy, sluggish, food hangover from eating too much.
Another plus of eating a salad for lunch is the mental and emotional reinforcement from making the decision to get back on track and eat healthy.
5. Have an Afternoon Snack
Eating healthy foods and snacks keeps your metabolism going, which you need to continue burning calories. But that’s not all an afternoon snack can do for you; it can keep your metabolism from crashing and actually triggering another overeating binge.
Try a handful of nuts and a piece of fresh fruit for something delicious and nutritious for your afternoon snack.
6. Avoid Eating Out Today
if you cook dinner at home you can control what you eat and how it’s prepared. Try for broiled fish with roasted veggies with a whole grain such as quinoa or barley. This gives you nutrients without all the processing and super large portion sizes that are part of eating out.
It’s a lot easier to eat healthy when you prepare the meal yourself, and a nutritious and healthy meal will definitely help both your mind and body get over a bout of overeating.
It’s the decisions you make over time that will keep your weight under control.
Experts suggest:
Before heading out to a holiday event is to think about what’s behind the reasons you tend to overeat at this time of year.
That’s sound advice! If you think about it, there’s probably a lot emotions, memories, and plain old habits that are at the heart of the urge to eat, eat, eat during the holidays.
This time of year may bring up many feelings— some good, some not so good.
By reflecting on what triggers you to overeat, you can take steps to keep indulging from becoming excessive.
What to Do the Day After Overeating
First of all, overeating isn’t the end of the world whether you’re at a special occasion or any other time.
It’s important for me to remember that my goals are just that! Goals. And goals are something to work toward accomplishing.
Weight loss goals are not something to create guilt, shame, and feelings of failure when there are set backs.
However, after going on a binge eating affair or just overeating at a get together, it’s vital that you get back to business as usual as soon as possible.
The longer you wait, the more difficult it is to get back to your more healthy eating habits.
You’ve got to get back on track right away, and these are three vital points to remember after overeating:
- Don’t waste any time in guilt or shame. What’s done is done. Instead of trying not to think about it, try going back over the whole eating affair in your mind and taking full responsibility for your actions.
- No skipping meals to “make up” for what you ate. The easiest thing for me to do is think, “ok, I ate all those calories yesterday, I will now make up for it by eating nothing today.” The better and most appropriate way to handle the day after overeating, is to simply get back to healthy eating, not “making up for it.”
- Keeping up the good work. Don’t let yourself fall victim to the idea that one mistake means you must now blow off your long-term goal of healthy eating and losing weight. That’s the thinking that get’s you nowhere, except back to where you started.
Just remember that a day of falling off the wagon isn’t a total setback to anything. Instead, get back to focusing on your accomplishments and long term goals.