Regain shape after the holidays

PREVENTION IS ALWAYS BETTER: DURING THE HOLIDAYS SOME EXCEPTION IS ALLOWED, BUT WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO GET BACK INTO SHAPE? DIET, ACTIVITY? PHYSICS AND….SOME ADVICE

Author Dr.Davide Maged MSc, Ph.D. in Biomedical Science and Public Health, Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Roma (Italy)

 

Food has always represented for people of all times not only a necessity to survive but also an opportunity for celebration and socialization, an expression of tradition, the culture of each people.

Every celebration, every recurrence, has its own perfumes and flavors, which cannot be forgotten. Celebrating, therefore, also means enjoying good food. But how can we reconcile this with our own well-being? The spread of overweight and obesity in industrialized countries makes some advice necessary.

The first and fundamental concept to remember is that it is not the exception that leads to weight gain. First of all, we need a basic food rule, which is only exceptionally interrupted by the time of the feast.

Today, however, we have often lost the healthy eating habits that should be normal.

The sedentary nature, the continuous advertising campaigns, the existence of places for collective catering and more and more numerous and inviting grocery stores, the many foreign gastronomic proposals, have made our diet more and more excessive compared to the real caloric requirements that do not often reflect the local food tradition based on the use of legumes and unrefined cereals.

This particular time of year is enlivened by a bunch of festivities: this entails a few more tricks. If there are no health problems in which diet is a real therapy, as in the case of diabetes, kidney disease, celiac disease or severe dyslipidemia, it is possible to live and enjoy every moment of food transgression freely.

However, it would be advisable for the festive meal to be a single one per day and for the following or previous meal to be composed of only two or three fruits

What about after the holidays? It is advisable to organize two or three days with a balanced diet but with a controlled calorie content: at the end of this short period it is advisable to restore a balanced and calorically adequate diet, avoiding new transgressions for a few weeks. It is always advisable to have a good breakfast with milk or yogurt, cereals or rusks, jam or honey, fresh fruit or juice. By mid-morning and mid-afternoon we will be eating fresh fruits. Lunch and dinner will consist of a first course of pasta or rice or a little more elaborate vegetable soup, a second course mainly of fish or white meat, sometimes red meat or eggs (no more than 2 eggs per week), cheese or dairy products (no more than 2-3 times a week), vegetables at will (pay attention to the seasoning), some bread.

It is also good not to neglect the physical activity that is essential to prevent and treat overweight and cardiovascular diseases and with this… enjoy your meal!