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.