“A narrow valley between hills or mountains.” “The action of eating a large amount greedily; fill oneself with food.” The term gorge can be defined in many ways as nouns or verbs. Regarding overeating and indulging in decadent food, the term “gorge” can fit our status appropriately during the holiday season.
The holidays bring a tradition of food usually not seen in other parts of the year. “Comfort food” is a theme filling social media headlines, store specials on shelves, and traditional family recipes. Why call it the sweets, breads, and chocolates we make at home for our friends and family comfort food? I suppose it involves applying warm, rich, and filling food to alleviate the frosty, damp, and dark climate present during these holiday months before the winter solstice. Not only does comfort food present itself in our homes but also our workplaces, children’s schools, or holiday gatherings. We swim in an ocean of holiday comfort food during these last two months of the year.
Don’t get me wrong, I reserve a special place in my soul for holiday comfort food. Pumpkin cheesecake, buttery mashed potatoes, and monkey bread have a magnetic attraction to my plate when I happen to be in the same room. I’m sure many people have an intimate relationship with their comfort food of choice. However, let’s shed some light on the term “gorge” and ensure we don’t fall into that narrow valley of engulfing holiday treats whenever they cross our line of sight.
Indulging in copious amounts of our holiday treats can significantly dampen our health. Climbing out of a downward spiral of engulfing candy canes, panettones, and Hershey’s kisses can be a challenge if we fall into a hole of partaking in too many pleasures. Two methods we recommend throughout our nutritional consultations with our personal training clients is to practice mindfulness about portion size and food absorption properties our bodies experience on days of physical activity.
To avoid overeating when these holiday food experiences are present, focusing on handful portion sizes is an effective tool to mitigate the effects of gorging ourselves when that meticulously decorated holiday plate gets dropped off by one of our office workers. Limiting yourself to no more than a handful of food in one sitting can set a rate-limiting factor on the volume of food consumed in a short period. In addition, this tactic helps delay the conveyor belt-like action of shoveling food into our mouths when those holiday cookies and chocolates are begging us to mosey across the room to get our fill.
Understanding the body’s metabolic state is another potently effective tool to manage the effects of consuming sweets. The body enters an insulin-sensitive state after performing rigorous exercise. This means bouts of exertive exercise such as a Yoga class, Pilates class, or resistance training session, during a personal training appointment, allow the body to utilize insulin for muscle function. In the case of muscles being stressed via rigorous exercise, the muscle cells allow insulin to bond onto damaged sites of muscle and absorb sugar throughout the bloodstream. This sugar acts as an energy source within the muscles to grab onto free-floating proteins and amino acids to repair the damaged site of muscles caused by skillfully designed exercise-induced muscular stress. However, lack of exercise does not develop this interaction. Therefore, a lack of physical activity and exercise decreases the likelihood of muscular interactions with insulin. This allows insulin to go to the next best thing: our fat cells. Therefore, adhering to exercise compliance during this excellent holiday food tradition is critically important during times delicious and irresistible treats surround us.
To sum up, if you’ve exercised, you’re better off having a controlled number of sweets. However, if you have not exercised, those tantalizing holiday treats have the potential to cause more harm than good and send you plummeting down the gorge of overeating. Granted, in a perfect world, we shouldn’t consume treat items more than three times per week. However, let’s be realistic with the currency of the situation. This holiday spirit and sharing an overabundance of decadent food are only present once a few times a year. So, let’s enjoy ourselves a little bit. Just make sure to understand what the effects of overindulgence and falling into the comfort food gorge can do to our health and fitness.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com, or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
