November brings chilly days with less sunlight than we’re used to in the summer months. Adjusting our clocks back one hour sets the tone for the official start of stepping foot into the winter months. Driving home from work, embracing a naturally lit street powered by the sun is now replaced by the glow of dim street lights. What was once a bright, warm environment transforms into gray-toned, cloud-covered skies. As the world turns, creating a cooler setting for Northern California, we can expect to see our fair share of rain, mist, and fog for the next few months.
This cold and rugged winter environment, combined with the lack of light, introduces a few challenges society regularly adapts to. The lack of sunlight encourages people to stay inside more, under the security of the lightbulbs inside their warm, dry houses. The idea of staying inside and bundling up under a blanket, grabbing a cup of hearty and comforting soup, and flipping on one of our favorite holiday flicks on streaming devices can be a nostalgic and refreshing experience as what we used to do as children coming home from school on a rainy winter day. However, being confined to the activities inside our homes introduces a potential issue for our health: we don’t move as much as we did during the warm and well-lit summer months.
These last two months offer a few other festivities that create a sense of joy, companionship, and overall achievement as we close out the year 2024. Holiday parties, Thanksgiving week, and school end-of-year breaks bring about a plethora of holiday food, including gingerbread molasses cookies, Santa hat-shaped sugar cookies, and Lindt chocolates. Additionally, ‘tis the season for baking and bringing treats to the workplace. Why? It’s dark and cold, so no one wants to go outside. Sitting in front of a warm oven in the kitchen is an enticing alternative to raking leaves on damp and cold winter mornings. Holiday treats such as cookies, cakes, and candies hit the break rooms and countertops. Usually, these treats are a rich combination of butter, and insulin-spiking carbohydrates, in the form of sugar and flour, that we don’t enjoy as frequently throughout the summer months. Combining decreased physical activity and a surplus of holiday-themed treat food not normally consumed creates a perfect scenario for the body’s ability to store fat, move less, and become bloated. Therefore, remaining consistent with exercise and managing a healthy diet throughout the holiday season is critically important to our well-being.
Excess calories are converted into fat cells under our skin when the body consumes more food than can be processed for energy expenditure. Additionally, the increase in carbohydrate-rich food has an increased potential to increase free-floating levels of insulin hormone throughout our blood. Insulin is a potent anabolic hormone with productive properties for the body when the need to shuttle sugar into muscle cells for energy is present. However, when the body is at rest, the body doesn’t necessarily need insulin for energy.
After throwing back some eggnog and hot chocolate paired with fruit cake, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, the body is primed to harness the carbohydrates and convert them to fat cells for storage. Combining the copious overconsumption of carbohydrates, alcohol, and just too much food matter with a lack of movement, the body is a perfect instrument to store fat and increase circulating insulin levels.
A tactic we recommend to our personal training clients to manage the threat of the holiday season’s tantalizing treats and decreased physical activity is managing what time of the day food is consumed, particularly carbohydrates. The body utilizes carbohydrates for energy throughout physical activity when the body is at a higher level of exertion. It should go without saying that exercise stimulates the heart, and carbohydrates are chemically broken down and used as fuel for physical movement. However, when carbohydrates are consumed later in the day and our activity levels slow down, they don’t have anywhere to be utilized. As a result, unused carbohydrates convert to fat mass. In an effort to decrease the potential for carbohydrates to be converted into fat, perhaps limiting the amount of carbohydrates consumed in the later portion of the evening can be reduced. By adjusting the tactics in which we consume starchy, bready, and sugar-based drinks and food to the earlier part of the day and abstaining at the later half, we can influence the likelihood for our body to utilize carbohydrates more efficiently and decrease the possibility of converting them to fat.
Thanksgiving and holiday cheer bring about companionship, a celebration of the end of a successful year, and overall cheer among our friends, family, and peers. Giving thanks for positive aspects of our lives can be bolstered by enjoying a few alcoholic drinks and tasty sweets while laughing, smiling, and hanging out with the people we care about during this exuberant time of year. But don’t let the egg nog flow too fast or make a habit of polishing off the last of the turkey left the next few days after Thanksgiving. The ability to overeat during these festive times is at an all-time high during the holidays. Therefore, the act of overeating mitigation should be prioritized.
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.