Weight gain over Christmas: Study
Good morning, good morning. The question I got for you this morning is can you go through the festive period without gaining fat? And the answer is yes you can and there's research to show this but the research does say in a nutshell is most people will gain weight over Christmas zero point four to one kilo gram of weight is gained on average during the holiday season. Now we might think that's not much Scott. But what I'll say is if you add that ten years it's five to 10 kilos.
Speaker 1:And obviously it's not exactly what happens because it depends what you do for the rest of the year. But what I'm trying to explain is the behavior we're reinforcing at the end and the start of every single year is not behavior we wanna have for the rest of the year. So we're always starting off the new year with such a a slog to try and build new habits. And yes, the motivation is there from Jan the first to Jan the tenth, but we all know motivation is just a feeling. Motivation is a feeling.
Speaker 1:It'll it'll go as fast as it comes. And that leads people into well, I thought I'd be motivated for months, but you know, we're kidding ourselves. And what people think is motivation leads to action, right? That's what people think. But the reality is how it works is action leads to motivation.
Speaker 1:So action leads to progress and progress leads to motivation. Motivation leads to more action. So we start with the action because that's under our control. That's the only thing that's under our control because motivation is not under our control because it comes and goes. But doing a two or three minute action towards something we're gonna do equals a bit of progress.
Speaker 1:Once we feel a bit of progress we feel more motivation and then once we get motivation we can roll that back into more action. So we have to start at any time of year you need to start with the mindset that this motivational boost you think you're gonna get in the new year, look it doesn't last. So let's not kiddo ourselves. So if you want to be a person that leads with healthy habits and healthy lifestyle throughout the year as all time, okay, we look at Christmas as opposed to something like doom and gloom all we're gonna gain weight. Let's look at it as a bit of a fun challenge like can we go through Christmas and not go mental and go the opposite way?
Speaker 1:Can we exercise our self control in a way that we enjoy every moment when in control? And we stay true to the person we want to be. Like it's quite a fun challenge do. You don't have to go off the rails, you don't have to eat all up the mince pies and drink loads of alcohol over what you think. And I think it depends on the person, individual, like if you want to just let loose and that helps you mentally, I'd say sometimes that's more important.
Speaker 1:I could be more important than, you know, some feel it the physical get know, the physical gains essentially you're gonna get if you stay out or stay away from this look overeating. But you have to think yourself, right, if I need a break and just wanna eat stuff and enjoy myself mentally, then you need to ask yourself, we need look at second order effects always. Always look at second order effect. Okay. But does that lead to me feeling even worse in a new year when I kick myself to how much I went overboard?
Speaker 1:And then that's gonna impact you mentally as well. So then you're like, right. Okay. Which is the one that's gonna be the worst? And let's let's not go that way.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking you look at the second order effects. What is the second order effects of having some self control over Christmas? Well having some self control over Christmas might mean you say no to that extra two drinks at the end. It might mean saying no to that extra chocolate gat of unbelievable, full of cream on my days. Or say no to those pigs in blankets for the third time in a day watching you know Harry Potter on TV.
Speaker 1:Yes in the moment you might be like, ah, you see your family eating them, I'm bit jealous. But when it comes, when Christmas is gone and it goes and nobody cares after it's gone you will feel more satisfied. So the second aura effects are it might suck really temporarily like a feeling like motivation in the time, in the day but afterwards we actually get more joy from the fact that we restrained and this is what Socrates says as well. Paradoxically people feel they're gonna get a huge amount of, oh, love it, like, from eating and the pleasure from eating, whatever they want in front of them, like, just boom, I want a cake, everything. What he says is you actually get more pleasure when you later down the line when you realize you said no to that and you feel so good about your power to say no and stay true to what you want to have happen, you actually feel better.
Speaker 1:You actually get more joy from it. Who knows? But it's up to you to decide now. Like, don't think we should overly read articles about this stuff comes to Christmas. We need to decide the person we wanna be.
Speaker 1:Do we wanna do we wanna let loose? Do we wanna go in the middle? Or do we wanna be really strict knowing that it's really not worth our our mental health for going really the other way because every year you've done that, you feel worse going into the new year and you don't wanna risk that. It means it's up to you to decide this. But let's have a look at the research on this so we can see what it says.
Speaker 1:So the average consumption of calories in Christmas day apparently is 6,000 calories. I'm not surprised by this. There's lot of calories in food and drink. It is easily done easily done. So given that Christmas is the time of year we gain the most weight and at more risk, they wanted to do a study on people during November and December with follow-up assessments in Jan and Feb, so four to eight weeks afterwards.
Speaker 1:They got participants two seventy two people, half of them were in the behavioral intervention group and then the other half were in the placebo group which is just give them a leaflet go and mate. Off. So the group, the intervention group, what do they do for this group? Well they said to them, hey, weigh yourself regularly during these times and record your weight so you know where you're at. Provide, They provided specific weight management strategies and they provided information on how much physical activity would be needed to burn off the calories consumed in typical holiday foods and drinks.
Speaker 1:Okay. And then the control group just like I said, I would leave flutter by healthy eating and they were not given any dietary advice, nothing. Nothing at all. So let's have a look at what happened. So most of the participants were women by the way, average age is 44, 70 eight percent of them were women.
Speaker 1:The results showed that the intervention group, the ones who were given some behavioural tips lost 0.3 pounds over the festive period and into March, Jan and Feb and then the other group gained 0.8 pounds The difference was a pound. But the thing is here that, you know, it's not a big difference. But over ten years, it could be like 10 pounds or like I think it might be kilos. I mean, it says pounds here, but kilos earlier. It's just the cumulative effect of Christmas.
Speaker 1:That's what I was trying to explain. And the other one was they basically maintained or dropped a bit of fat during that time which is good. So really self monitoring, weight management advice, and information about how much activity you would take to burn something off that you're gonna eat worked in a study. Now the last one, I don't agree with the last one. You said, well if you ate that chocolate biscotti you have to go for a jog for forty minutes.
Speaker 1:Say no mate my body burns calories just being alive. All you're saying is if I overeat over my maintenance with this then that it would take that to get it off. You're correct but I do burn a certain amount of calories a day so don't feel bad about having chocolate bars. Don't feel bad about having pigs in blankets. Don't feel bad about having the extra food.
Speaker 1:Just understand that there's a certain amount you can eat today to maintain your body fat levels like there's a certain amount. And anything over that you can gain fat right. And it takes a lot to gain a pound of fat it does. You have to eat 3,500 calories over your maintenance gain one pound of fat. So on Christmas Day you know due to those numbers theoretically people will gain if they eat 6,000 calories some people are gaining a pound of fat on Christmas Day.
Speaker 1:But then you ask yourself, is it worth? Is that day worth it? For some people, yeah. Hell of a day. Why not?
Speaker 1:You know it takes like a week to burn off a pound of fat at a moderate deficit of 500 calories a day. It's not an exact science but that's what it takes. So what you're trying to say is, is it worth me doing a week? So my first week in Jan of dropping, my weight drop dropping fat will be to get rid of the Christmas Day intake. And some people go, yeah, I'm keen for that mate, I'm keen for that.
Speaker 1:Some people go, you know, it's not worth it. But what the study fails to address is that Christmas day isn't even the problem. It's not it's December until New Year's Day that's the issue. It's like the mindset in that month is the issue. We're like we don't just consume 600 calories in Christmas and that's it.
Speaker 1:We are heavily consuming more food during the weekends, Christmas parties in the week, chocolate, stuff like that. That's where the problems come in, where people gain weight. Now I want to raise this now because people are thinking about it, you're training hard. You're thinking oh should I go out and have drinks, should I let loose? Again like I mentioned earlier this is something you need to decide but you have, once you decide on the course of action there's no point in thinking of the other thing you could have done because you're just gonna drive yourself insane, aren't you?
Speaker 1:You're gonna drive yourself, like, mental basically. So I think there's three options. Like I said, option one is you December is another month, a day is a day, you rock and roll it, You're staying true to your plan. You wanna drop it, you wanna build healthy habits, nothing's gonna stop you. Maybe you have a bit of time off of Christmas day, certain days you might, you know, the Black Friday before Christmas, you people go out and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:You might wanna do that. Okay. Option one, you wanna stick true to the plan and know when go into January feeling a much better position because you've stuck to the plan. A lot of people do this. There's nothing against this and I I I I really dislike it when people in December have a go at people who wanna stick to a plan and build healthy habits.
Speaker 1:And they it's Christmas, what are doing you loser? No, no, no. If someone really wants to be a healthier version of themselves and understands that they are really essentially putting, they don't like what happens to them over Christmas and they hate January as a result, right? Why would we put people down for wanting to improve that? We shouldn't.
Speaker 1:It's up to you. It's up to you to do it. Okay? It's up to you. The second one is kind of in the middle.
Speaker 1:Go to maintenance for a few try and track as much as you can, but let loose and have these kind of strategies where you go. Am I really am I really being moderate right now? And if I'm not, am I being too extreme? Like ask yourself these questions, put a bit of time before decisions and just ask yourself like is this necessary? Scott, is it necessary that you're having your eighth chocolate bar?
Speaker 1:Scott, is it necessary that you're eating three pigs in blackers at the same time and you're doing that every five seconds? Scott, is it necessary you've three Sunday dinners? Scott, is it necessary you're in ninth pint and it's 1PM on Christmas day? Well, it's not. Of course not.
Speaker 1:You know, there are people going through extremes because of, there's a lot of peer pressure as well, isn't it? We've gotta be our own people, guys. We've gotta be our own people. Remember when I said my mimetic desire as well. I want someone else's desires.
Speaker 1:Take a step back this December for the first time maybe. Go who do I wanna be and second all the defects. If I do this over Christmas, how will I feel at the start of the new year? And, like, try and trace back your behaviors over the last five years. How have you gone into January?
Speaker 1:Have you felt good in January? Has a January where you're feeling really down resulted in you smashing and getting back on track? Like what's the history here? If the history is Christmas doesn't impact you much, happy days. If the history is you keep trying to lose weight in Jan and you fail because you've got a bad Christmas and you go into Jan feeling even worse about yourself, then we need a new strategy going into Christmas, don't we?
Speaker 1:Because what happened honestly, what happens on Boxing Day? Christmas Day is gone. You're sick of it. You're sick of it. Get rid of those rappers.
Speaker 1:Go away. Perhaps maybe that's just me, but people are like, oh, Christmas is gone. Now who cares? We all build it up so much. We're all going nuts going to the shop, spending way too much money than we need.
Speaker 1:Christmas comes and goes we go we just got done. We just absolutely done by capitalism at its finest making us just buy loads of shit for people that don't really care about it. That's what we do. Like why when why don't we all decide this year we're not gonna buy presents, we're gonna make them. And this might okay, this might mean we need to buy a few things to make a present, but why don't we make meaningful presents?
Speaker 1:Give something worth value beyond the pound sign. Stop going out, going out and spend a thousand pounds on this person. A thousand pound on this person, for what? Because it's Christmas, here you go, another jacket made, well done. Come on, Just wanna fall into these traps.
Speaker 1:I'm making presents this year. Do know what do you know what my present is do know what my present is for? Ryan Louise don't listen to this podcast, I'll tell you. Remember my present is for little Leo this Christmas and this is something I wish I would have had. So I'm gonna write him a letter, yeah, about the times right now, his parents, what I know about him, some stories, the world, what I think the world's gonna look like in sixteen years time, what I think he's gonna and what I think he's gonna do, all this type of stuff.
Speaker 1:And he's gonna open that on his sixteenth birthday. So it's gonna be locked away for sixteen years. And I'm gonna write a huge one. And, it's not gonna cost me anything. But think about if you were 16 years old and you had a letter that was sixteen years ago talking about your parents, talking about the world back.
Speaker 1:It'd be amazing, wouldn't it? That'd be unreal. I was thinking stuff like, ah, let's get creative, guys. Let's let's let can we all pull some ideas together? Some really cool ideas for Christmas presents that don't require spending loads of money.
Speaker 1:And I think we can start changing Christmas then to going back well, not going back to original meaning of Jesus, but going back to actually meaning something as opposed to just spending money. And at the same time, Christmas doesn't have to just mean spending calories in the same sense. Eating more doesn't mean you have a better Christmas, does relationship. Eating more over Christmas probably means you have a worse Christmas. I reckon being the most moderate over Christmas is the happiest people.
Speaker 1:That's my 2p. But guys, hope that study was useful. I'm gonna dig into more studies on the festive period, New Year's resolutions. I got a really good one on New Year's resolutions coming up. And basically a plan so we can do before we break up for Christmas.
Speaker 1:So instead of going into Christmas and then being reactive, being like, oh, shit, New Year's tomorrow. What I'm gonna do? I need something to do. What am I doing in the New Year? We're gonna preplan what attack for Jan because Octagon two point zero starts in the January 31.
Speaker 1:So we need to have a Jan month where we hold it together and then we go into Octagon Challenge two point o full of beans and we're gonna smash it. So we're gonna do kind of some exercises to plan for that time. But in other news, I'm not doing the morning live work because now I'm doing them in the evening. So for the morning crew, I saw you for the first I saw you for I've done you before, but I saw you for the last time yesterday. So good luck for the rest of the challenge.
Speaker 1:Evening crew, I am See you tonight in the live workouts, but this is the last week so it's good to see people posting their workout volumes which are going up even beating last week which is amazing because last week is hard. So keep it up. Four more days left. The strength seminar is on Saturday after yoga and then the mental health workshop on Sunday is the final item of this challenge and there's a quiz on Thursday. So I'll see you in the quiz on Thursday.
Speaker 1:Big prize is up for grabs. If you've never done a quiz with us they are fun. I might get a fancy dress cost remote. Other than that guys enjoy your day. Remember to live one day at a time as per and I'll see you tomorrow.
