Enjoy Christmas without the bloat
With both the party season and beach holidays ahead, we’ve got your back when it comes to enjoying all the fun while looking after your waistline. Here’s a simple, science-backed way to enjoy your healthiest, trimmest festive season yet!
A simple, science-backed way to have your healthiest, trimmest festive season ever
Eating over the party season can be tricky for those of us wanting to be mindful of our health and our waistline. In recent years, one approach has emerged as a way to enjoy the fun and still protect our health. This strategy doesn’t rely on forbidding treats, and it’s free of time-sucks like counting kilojoules or weighing food. Best of all, it’s backed by science, which has shown that it can actually rev your metabolism.
This flexible way of eating can also make it easier to navigate festive feasts and all the barbecues and parties of summer without feeling your clothes are getting tighter.
“With traditional diets, it’s easy to break the diet ‘rules’ and give up when willpower wanes,” explains dietitian Brooke Delfino. “This approach does not involve cutting kilojoules or depriving yourself of foods you love, so it’s more flexible and easier to maintain in the long term.”
Let's get started
So what’s the secret? You might already have heard about the 16:8 diet, or Intermittent Fasting. The great thing about this part-day fasting is that it’s so easy to follow. There is only one rule – that you fit all your food into an eight-hour window of the day. This means that you might have your first meal at midday and your last meal at 8pm.
The only guiding mantra is that during the other 16 hours – which includes the eight hours you’re sleeping – you don’t eat.
“The 16:8 style also works well if you like to sit and enjoy a meal with your family at night, you do shift work, or you’re not a breakfast person and are happy to have your first meal of the day a little later,” Brooke Delfino says.
Best of all, you can also schedule your eight-hour eating window to time with that cocktail party or festive dinner and enjoy a margarita or dessert without widening your waistline.
“During your ‘eating’ block of the day, you enjoy nourishing food without cutting any food groups,” explains dietitian Jaime Rose Chambers, who authored the guide, 16:8 Intermittent Fasting
(Pan Macmillan). “When you’re in fasting mode, it’s only for a short time and it’s mostly when you’re asleep, so before you know it, the fasting part of the day is over.”
This break from eating allows your body to have a rest from constantly processing food and energy. “It creates the opportunity for your cells to access and burn your fat stores in order to lose weight or help maintain a healthy weight,” Jaime Rose says.
Shifting to this eating pattern may require making incremental changes to allow your body to adjust. “Though you can jump right in, some people make the change gradually, by pushing back their breakfast time a little each day,” she adds. “They then have an earlier dinner, which allows more time to burn kilojoules before bed.”