A large and lazy breakfast, roast dinner, 2-3 Easter Eggs, a “few” drinks and a hung-over takeaway

over the bank holiday weekend can leave us feeling a bit down and sorry for ourselves going back to work on Tuesday. Some of us may have behaved really well in terms of diet over Lent and used Easter Sunday to break out by eating copious amounts of chocolate on top of a big family dinner. It feels great while it’s going in, as do the bits of left over chocolate that are lying around the house at breakfast time Monday morning.

Lying around the house Monday night or back at work Tuesday and we start to feel bad about all we have eaten. All the good work since joining the gym in January, returning to pre-season training or clean eating throughout Lent is ruined. Well it doesn’t have to be!

I’m all for finding the positives in every situation and try to find ways of putting the extra food to good use. As I’ve said in previous blogs, food is made up of calories. These calories are a measurement of energy. All that extra food, even if it does turn to fat, can be used as extra energy.

Whatever you are training for at the minute, use the extra energy to give you a boost in performance. Go for an extra rep or two or put some extra weight on the bar in the gym. Try to set a faster time in your 5k or 10k training. Run a couple of extra miles in your marathon training. Go for a longer cycle while out on the bike, especially with the longer evenings and, hopefully, finer weather. Push yourself a tiny bit harder at GAA, soccer or rugby training whether it be during fitness sessions or with some extra running off the ball during game situations. An extra session by yourself to improve fitness can also be added in as the excess food will aid recovery.

Whatever extra activity you do, try to look at it in terms of improving your performance instead of burning extra calories. This will lead to a healthier relationship with food while allowing you to balance both exercise and diet with your lifestyle.

For people who really want to make up for the excess food through diet then I have a simpler and more long-term suggestion. Some will drop calories dramatically in the few days after Easter. Depriving themselves of many enjoyable foods and even some valuable nutrients. This will lead to long-term negative effects on the body as well as a reduction in energy levels. A common rebound effect of this is to over eat again the following weekend and do further damage.

My solution to this is to simply estimate how many extra calories you have eaten over the weekend. The emphasis being on extra calories!

A normal roast dinner ranges from 700-1,100 calories. A standard Easter Egg is about 550 calories. If you have 2 then it’s 1,100 calories. If you went out and had a few drinks then they need to be added in as well. 6 standard gin and tonics add up to about 900 calories while 6 pints of Heineken add up to 1,500 calories. Roughly add up all that you ate and take away your normal amount of daily calories.

To give an example we will talk about Erin who eats 2,000 calories on a normal day while her weight remains steady. On Easter Sunday she took in 3,200 calories between chocolate, a roast dinner, turkey sandwiches and 5 bottles of beer. That’s an excess of 1,200 calories. The temptation for Erin is to drastically cut her calories over the next couple of days. My suggestion is to spread it out over 5-7 days. If we divide 1,200 by 6 we are left with 200 calories. A drop of 200 calories a day is very achievable without Erin being deprived of any valuable nutrients. Halving the amount of rice/pasta with dinner, a yoghurt instead of a scone at break time, a salad instead of a sandwich at lunchtime or an apple after dinner instead of more traditional desserts can all lead to that 200 calorie drop. 5/6 days of this and Erin will be right back on track with her weight, energy levels and food.

To make the drop in calories even easier it can be combined with exercise. Try an extra hard training session in the gym, on the pitch or on the road and you may only have to drop calories slightly for 3 to 4 days.

Be careful not to drop calories too much while adding extra training as the body will find it too difficult to recover as will adding in too many extra sessions.

I hope you enjoyed the extra food and chocolate over the weekend and please don’t feel guilty about eating any of it.

For more advice on nutrition, diet and exercise email fhsperformance@gmail.com. Like us on Facebook at FHSPerformance and follow us on Instagram @fhsperformance.

 

John