How to Detox After Your Thanksgiving Feast

Thanksgiving is the one day of the year most Americans don't even pretend to diet — but the guilt might well creep in the morning after, as you're still feeling bloated from the feast of the previous day. How do you repair the damage, you wonder? We've got some tips!

Don't Worry About Weight Gain Yet

Most Americans choose traditional foods for their Thanksgiving feasts. Every child in school learns the story of how the settlers in Plymouth colony landed after it was too late to plant, and the Native Americans (at least this one time) shared turkeys, and corn, and pumpkins at a feast that saved the first colony in New England from starvation. Roasted turkey and corn in various versions appear on most American plates on Thanksgiving Day, and pumpkin pie is the traditional dessert.
 

The reasons for which Americans tend to overeat on Thanksgiving usually don't have anything to do with gluttony. Some Thanksgiving overeating is a matter of manners. Most people have traditional foods that certain members of their families, or certain friends who always come to Thanksgiving dinner, prepare in a prescribed way for the meal.

The cook may have searched the market for the best ingredients a week before Thanksgiving and started cooking three or four days before the meal, and there may be just one or even dozens of cooks of the food for every gathering. Diners don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by not eating the dish the cook worked so hard to prepare.

READ One Week Detox Diet Plan

Thanksgiving meals also remind diners of the people they have lost from their lives. A mother or grandmother, or in some families, a father or a grandfather, may have always made part of the meal. They may be gone, but their culinary legacy lives on. When diners eat the food, they remember the lost family member. There are very strong drives to eat certain foods on this one day of the year that tie into your very identity. And since both of the partners in a marriage or coupling have their own families, and may have been married or involved with others before, some Americans wind up attending two, three, four, or even five Thanksgiving meals during the four-day holiday.

This article is written on the assumption that if you are reading it now, you've finished the last of your Thanksgiving feasts. The first thing you need to do is to detox from your overeating so you'll feel better and can get back to healthy eating habits. Here's how.

• If you stuffed yourself at the Thanksgiving meal or meals and you are still overeating as you are reading this article (maybe thanks to leftovers), stop! Even carrots and mushrooms (without the butter, bacon, and cheese stuffing) or a nice green salad can stretch your digestive tract. Nerves in the lining of your small intestine send a signal to your pancreas to (1) release insulin to store sugars and (2) release glucagon to force your liver to raise your blood sugar levels just in case something interferes with the absorption of digested sugars into the bloodstream. If you eat low-cal or low-carb food until you feel stuffed, your pancreas keeps you on a sugar high, which makes you want to eat even more. Today, eat small amounts of food, even if it is high-carb or high-fat food. This is a time pie (just a single slice of pie, not the whole pie) can be healthier than salad. But why not just have a cup of soup (a cup, not a bowl)?
• If you are still feeling hungover from alcoholic libations, don't take a shot of "the hair of the dog that bit you." Stop drinking alcohol until you feel good again. And don't try to correct excessive consumption of alcohol with excessive consumption of caffeine. You'll just be wide awake as you feel hung over, and you won't feel any bette rat all. Small amounts of bitter foods (such as green salads) may activate your liver.

READ How to Detox Your Body from Alcohol and Drugs

• It's usually not a good idea to treat heartburn with Tums or Rolaids or over the counter antacids with aluminum, because these common over the counter drugs interfere with the absorption of minerals. Today you probably have consumed enough minerals. It's OK to take the medications that make you feel good.
• If you have a problem with flatulence, avoid carbonated beverages and champagne. Try drinking mint tea or eating peppermints. Altoids are ideal. This is also a good time to use Pepto Bismol, but it won't work unless you have stopped eating.

It if you are feeling stuffed or hung over after your Thanksgiving feast or feasts, it is more important to get back to feeling good again before you worry about losing weight. But there are things you can do that can prevent your needing to detox again after your next holiday meal.
 

Planning for Relatively Healthy Overeating at Your Next Holiday Meal

Every nutritional expert is going to tell you that should not overeat during the holidays. But since the reality is that you probably will overeat despite well-intentioned advice, it is helpful to know ways that minimize the effects of overeating on how you feel. You can start preventing the toxic feelings caused by overeating with your first bite of food or your first sip of drink.
 

1. Start your meal with something bitter

Most of the poisons that occur in nature are bitter. Our nervous systems are hard wired so that when a bitter taste is sensed on the tongue, the stomach produces more acid so that any potential poison might be digested before it can enter the bloodstream. This effect also can help you digest your meal more completely, especially if it is a high-fat meal.

That pre-meal cocktail or hors d' oeuvre doesn't have to be unbearably bitter. Early Americans began their holiday meals with a gin punch. If you don't drink alcohol, you could have tonic water or quinine water straight. Green salads are bitter, especially if they contain endive or radicchio. These foods trigger release of acid that helps the rest of your meal pass through your stomach quickly so bloating is less of a problem.

READ Ten Vegetarian Thanksgiving Dishes

2. Choose compact foods rather than bulky foods

If you are trying to lose weight, you might start a meal with a bowl of soup that will "fill you up rather than fill you out." That's fine for weight loss, but trying to choose holiday foods to support weight loss is usually counterproductive. Eating smaller bites of favorite foods rather than "filling up" on salad or soup will keep your small intestine from sending a signal to your pancreas to release massive amounts of insulin and glucagon (as described in the first part of this article). Ironically, your blood sugar levels will stay lower and you won't be as hungry.

Avoiding that stuffed feeling is especially important if you are diabetic. Diabetics don't have the ability to release the insulin that lowers bloodstream sugar levels when the walls of the small intestine are stretched, but they still have the ability to release the glucagon that raises them. Eating large amounts of "healthy" fruits and vegetables can raise blood sugar levels as much as eating dessert (or desserts). Diabetics should never eat until feeling stuffed at a holiday meal or at any other meal.

3. End your meal with something sweet

Dessert can be a healthy choice.

There is actually a pro-health reason that meals in the Western world traditionally end with sweets. A taste of sweetness on the tongue sends a signal to the brain to send a signal to the intestine to release a chemical called glucagon-like peptide 1, or GLP-1. This chemical tells your digestive tract that your meal is over.

READ Diabetic Recipes for Thanksgiving Dinner

GLP-1 reduces the release of stomach acid. It slows down the passage of food through your stomach so that you feel full. It also prevents the release of a massive amount of digested sugars into your bloodstream, perhaps faster than your pancreas can release insulin to keep up with them.

As far as your digestive tract is concerned, the sweet food can be a real, sugar-sweetened food or an artificially sweetened food. Either kind of dessert will shut down your digestive tract and so that your body tells your brain you are full. But it's best to wait a while after you eat before you have your dessert, so the rest of your meal will have a chance to pass through your stomach and into your lower digestive tract before you can feel bloated or stuffed. Diving right into dessert is what causes many holiday diners their indigestion.