It’s all too easy for a cheat day to slide into a cheat
weekend, and then for your nutrition plan to just fall apart altogether. Here
are five good reasons to stick to the plan—or recover from that donut binge
before it’s too late.
Most of us know the occasional cheat meal is no big deal.
It’s not like one night of overeating can undo months of dieting and working
out. But what about a week of overeating? Or what if eating till your stomach
hurts becomes a regular weekend habit? If your diet is clean all week, can
overdoing it actually mess with your body?
Kind of scary, right? Here’s everything you need to know
before going on that next burger bender—and how to indulge without throwing
your health goals or physique progress off track.
1. Overeating can soften your six-pack
If you’re healthy, overeating on Thanksgiving or over a
holiday weekend probably won’t fill out your washboard abs. But it really
depends on how much you eat. Whether you overeat for one day or one week, your
body will transform any extra calories into fat. “If
you consume an excess of 3,500 calories, you’ll gain a pound of fat. If you
consume 7,000 excess calories, you’ll gain two pounds of fat, and so on.”
2. Overeating nudges you closer to diabetes
The extra body fat that comes about as a result of
overeating does more than just make your pants feel tight. It can also lead to
insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes that occurs when cells are unable
to convert blood glucose into energy. And we’re not talking about months or
years down the line, either. You can become insulin-resistant in a matter of
days. In one Science Translational Medicine study, six healthy men ate 6,000
calories per day and stayed on bed rest for seven days. After just two days of
extreme binge eating, all of the study participants had developed insulin
resistance. Though the researchers hypothesized the men’s blood sugar issues
would resolve after they returned to their regular diets and fitness routines,
they argued that if the men were to continue to eat in excess, they would
develop full-blown diabetes.
3. Overeating can mess with that “full” feeling
If overeating becomes your new normal and you start to gain
weight, levels of your weight-regulating hormones may become altered. In one
Nutrition and Diabetes study, researchers overfed mice and found that their
intestines stopped producing uroguanylin, a hormone that helps send feelings of
fullness to the brain. When the animals started to consume a healthy number of
calories again, levels of uroguanylin increased. Experts hypothesize that the
same thing happens to humans, as well.
After a period of overeating, one’s perception of fullness
may be altered. After
the body becomes accustomed to eating more calories, taking in fewer calories
will confuse the body and make it think that it’s underfed, causing hunger to
persist.
To get back on track with feeling full after a normal
serving of food, Nuel Baker suggests adding more fruits, vegetables, and whole
grains back into your diet. “This will help offset the unhealthy food that has
been consumed while still helping you meet caloric needs.”
4. You’ll feel exhausted
If you tend to binge on chips and ice cream when you watch
TV after dinner, you don’t just need to worry about the extra calories.
“Overeating, especially around bedtime, can negatively impact sleep,” says
Kaufman. “When you overindulge, your body is working on overdrive to try and
break down the food. But if your body is working when you’re trying to sleep,
it’s not being signaled to shut down for the night.” This sets off a vicious
cycle: When you don’t get a good night’s sleep, the hormones that regulate
hunger become altered, which can increase hunger and trigger bouts of
overeating, according to University of Washington findings.
5. Overeating stresses your cardiovascular system
After a large, fatty meal, the body is flooded with insulin,
which makes it more difficult for the coronary arteries to relax, explains
Schapiro. Eating and digesting large amounts of food also cause the release of
the stress hormone norepinephrine, which increases heart rate and blood
pressure, adds Kaufman. These natural reactions can trigger the formation of a
clot that can block a blood vessel, triggering a heart attack or stroke. In
fact, heart attack risk jumps four times in the two hours following a large
meal—especially in people who already have heart disease, according to an
American Heart Association study of nearly 2,000 participants.
But that doesn’t mean you can chow down without worry if you
don’t have a history of heart disease, Kaufman cautions: “Although blood
pressure will probably go down eventually, there are risks associated with a
change in blood pressure brought on by heavy, fatty meals.” Schapiro echoes
Kaufman’s sentiment, adding that, “overeating may not cause a heart attack if
you’re healthy, but it but can trigger symptoms or start the process of a heart
attack.”
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