Labor Day weekend offers plenty of opportunities for overeating with your friends and family. In fact, all that food is part of the holiday tradition.
Inclined towards sports? Whether you were watching TV or at the stadium , there's a ton of foods that are traditional — and unhealthy — favorites. Sports fans may have spent the time chowing down on hot dogs or nachos, pretzels, drinking beer or soda.
Maybe you enjoyed the last official day of summer at the water's edge. What tastes better at the end a day at the beach than an ice cream cone or a frosty milkshake?
Were you at a barbecue or a picnic? Burgers are an old barbecue standard. Dishes like potato salad, sandwiches, macaroni salad, chips of all kinds often fill the menu. And they'll fill you up as well.
A movie marathon sounds like a great way to celebrate the long weekend. But be careful if it comes complete with buttered popcorn, pizza, sodas, candy or chips with dip.
Getting indigestion just thinking about it all?
Wondering what to do after a Labor Day Weekend binge? You are not alone.
Here are some sane and easy tips that may help you to recover after a long weekend:
1) Stop the madness.
Sometimes after you start a food bonanza, it can be hard to stop. And morale can drop pretty low, if you see yourself as a foodie failure. But that's just counterproductive, and not the truth.
There's no reason today can't be a brand new day in a healthy direction. The first step is getting your head wrapped around the decision to start again.
2) Avoid the things you're craving.
The more you eat sugary foods, for instance, the more you will crave them. It can be hard to make a U-turn but it's well worth it. The less you feed them, the quieter and less frequent cravings may become.
3) Replace soda with water.
If that sounds so plain and boring you want to cry, toss in a wedge of lemon or slice of lime, maybe a few berries.
4) Replace the unhealthy foods with healthy ones.
Instead of junk food, eat veggies in a salad or a stir fry, or cooked as a side dish. Eat protein like eggs, nuts, dairy products, fish and meat, instead of empty-calorie high-carb foods. Ice cream and other unhealthy desserts can be replaced by fruit in season.
5) Don't go overboard.
You may feel like you need to starve yourself to atone for holiday excesses, but slow down a minute. Don't go to the other extreme. it's not necessary and it's not healthy. Don't skip meals.
6) Don't torture yourself on the scales.
That goes for your measuring tape as well. Your numbers may well be higher right after a big weekend, but that's partly because of water retention rather than actual weight gain. So give it awhile before you start looking too closely.
7) Don't kill yourself with too much exercise.
Maintaining your usual routine is fine. Too much of a good thing ... well, you know. Don't risk hurting yourself. It will only throw you off your regular routine, and after all, what you're trying to do is get back to normal.
All in all, moving as smoothly and as quickly as possible back into your regular health routines is the best way to recover after a weekend's overindulgence. Don't let the occasional blip throw you, your long game is what matters.
Reviewed September 6, 2016
by Michele Blacksberg RN