It’s almost Christmas and that inherently comes with binge eating. I shall be taking part in this bingeing but I am not a glutton – I am an explorer of food. You know the kind of eating where you don’t stop when you’re full, you stop eating when you hate yourself. I know many people will be doing this too and would like to know how to do that without having to lose the extra weight in January, you can’t be both broke and in bad shape; pick one struggle.

 

So right to it: The first thing is you want to up the speed of gastric emptying, that is the rate at which food leaves your gut. This can be done by increasing your uptake of caffeine and nicotine. Smokers, there had to be some good in the habit right? For non-smokers, a super strong dose of coffee before the days binge will help. Second step is to up your intake of fiber so you do not have suffer a running stomach after. So with this in mind, your first meal should be a small serving of legumes and three or more cups of coffee extra strong. Smokers, pick next week to quit.

 

The next way to avoid packing on the kilos is to reduce spikes in your blood glucose levels. I speak on this only as a student of exercise science, I am not by training a nutritionist and nutritionists may beg to differ. Studies however show that even a small amount fructose works to drastically reduce blood glucose. So right after your coffee try some natural juice, grape fruit juice is recommended in most literature. I  have a hard time finding it in supermarkets so orange or apple juice will have to do, most citric fruits will however do the trick.

 

Lastly: Engage in muscular contraction during the binge. The recommended is 60 to 90 seconds of moderate to high muscular contractions before eating and ideally one and a half hours afterwards. The reason for this is it causes a substance bio-chemists call GLUT-4 (Glucose Transporter 4) to be sent to the surface of muscle cells. This causes ‘gates’ for calories to flow into. The more muscular gates we have open before insulin triggers the same GLUT-4 on the surface of fat cells, the more we can put in muscle instead of fat.

 

So what kind of exercise qualifies for binge eating? Researchers have tried various exercises but so far 60 to 90 seconds of compound movements like air squats, lunges or wall pushups will do. Lastly you may have a better chance with the right bacteria in your gut, you can find an article on that here. So go on and eat to your heart’s content, and then some more, ‘tis the season to be jolly.