The ‘problem’ with Christmas, as we all know, is saying ‘no’ to just one more pig in a blanket or goose-fat roasted potato.
But it’s not just the festive season. The winter months are when we put on the most weight (typically 1-2lb) as we huddle indoors eating comfort foods.
We then spend the next few months trying to shed the extra fat, and most of us are only partly successful (which is why our weight tends to creep up as we get older and have more Christmas dinners — at 6,000 calories a pop — under our belts).
Add that to the 5-6lb that surveys suggest many of us have already put on over the Covid pandemic and you can see the size of the challenge in the months ahead.
The ‘problem’ with Christmas, as we all know, is saying ‘no’ to just one more pig in a blanket or goose-fat roasted potato. But it’s not just the festive season. The winter months are when we put on the most weight (typically 1-2lb) as we huddle indoors eating comfort foods
Since prevention is better than cure, what can you do to reduce your chance of developing a December belly?
First, it is important to recognise there is a difference between ‘hunger’ and ‘appetite’ and it’s the latter that’s the issue.
Appetite is the sudden urge to eat, perhaps because you have just seen a bit of cake, while hunger is a gnawing feeling that’s much harder to ignore or control.
It is driven by hunger hormones, such as ghrelin, which are produced in your gut — these levels start to rise when you haven’t eaten.
We then spend the next few months trying to shed the extra fat, and most of us are only partly successful (which is why our weight tends to creep up as we get older and have more Christmas dinners — at 6,000 calories a pop — under our belts)
This week, researchers from Imperial College London reported on a novel way to ‘switch off’ hunger, using microscopic beads to block the blood vessels that supply the part of the stomach where ghrelin is produced.
Early research suggests this leads to weight loss of around 7kg (15lb).
This surgery is still being trialled, and while exciting, the reason most of us overeat is rarely to do with hunger.
Our urge to eat, our appetite, is largely driven by spotting tempting treats, as well as by stress and other emotional drivers.
But if you want to resist overdoing it in the weeks ahead, here are some science-based tips that I find useful — and which won’t take the joy out of Christmas!
EAT CHOCOLATE TWO HOURS BEFORE A MEAL
I’m never going to give up chocolate, and certainly not over Christmas, but substituting dark chocolate for milky chocolate dampens my appetite.
And I’m not the only one: in a study published in the journal Nutrition and Diabetes in 2008, volunteers who ate 100g of dark chocolate two hours before a meal consumed 140 fewer calories at the next meal than they did after eating milk chocolate.
They also reported a big drop in the urge to eat other sweet, fatty or savoury snacks (though it’s not clear why this happens).
PUT A LIGHT BOX BY YOUR COMPUTER
During the dark winter months we get far less light than during the rest of the year, which can lead to SAD (seasonal affective disorder), something I suffer from.
This is characterised by increased moodiness and cravings for carbs, foods that provide a short-term boost in mood and energy.
The best way to reduce these symptoms is to expose yourself to more early morning light (by going for a walk) or by sitting in front of a light box for 30 minutes every day.
A light box produces 10,000 lux of light, which is many times greater than standard indoor lighting (around 150 lux).
I prop mine up in front of my computer as I’m writing and it makes a big difference to my carb cravings.
ALWAYS CHOOSE THIS SIMPLE STARTER
It’s a simple trick, but research shows that drinking water (not diet drinks) really is an effective way to reduce appetite.
A recent study from Loughborough University found that drinking 500ml of water before a meal not only led to 100 calories fewer being consumed, but it also boosted feelings of ‘fullness and satisfaction’, possibly because the water fills the stomach, which sends signals to the brain to stop eating.
STOP EATING BEFORE YOU TURN ON THE TV
The temptation over Christmas will be to sit in front of the TV scoffing mince pies and other treats, but you could end up eating a huge amount of calories mindlessly as a result.
A study from Liverpool University in 2013 found that people who ate while distracted (watching TV, listening to the radio, reading a newspaper) ate 25 per cent more than normal and weren’t aware of doing so.
You might also find it useful to think about the (around 230) calories in that second mince pie before succumbing.
The temptation over Christmas will be to sit in front of the TV scoffing mince pies and other treats, but you could end up eating a huge amount of calories mindlessly as a result
A 2018 study in the British Medical Journal found that people given information about the calories in Christmas goodies, along with sensible health advice, actually lost weight over the festive period.
And don’t stay up late watching TV, as lack of sleep is a big driver of hunger. A few years ago, I did an experiment with volunteers where we cut our sleep by a couple of hours on consecutive nights.
On the following days we ate an average of 380 more calories, mainly sugary carbs. One volunteer admitted he’d eaten a whole packet of biscuits for breakfast!
Lack of sleep raises your levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, and boosts activity in areas of the brain involved in viewing food, particularly high-calorie food, as a positive reward.
The latest weapon against Covid? Chewing gum.
The virus replicates in our salivary glands and infects other people when it’s sprayed out in fine clouds every time we sneeze, talk or sing.
And now researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have created (cinnamon-flavoured!) gum impregnated with a plant-based material that’s extremely good at binding to and trapping Covid virus particles.
In lab settings the gum works really well, and they’re hoping to move on to clinical trials soon.
The idea is that doctors or dentists could offer it to their patients to protect themselves when doing check-ups.
Most people aren’t good at spotting liars, research shows. And contrary to popular mythology, looking up and to the left is not a sign of lying
How to spot who is lying to you
Most people aren’t good at spotting liars, research shows. And contrary to popular mythology, looking up and to the left is not a sign of lying.
But a technique called asymmetric information management (AIM), which is increasingly being used by the police, can in fact significantly increase your lie-detection skills.
It’s based on the fact that people who are telling the truth are happy to go into details, while liars tend to generalise.
It’s a technique I used when recruiting people for jobs on TV productions — one way to sift out the good candidates from the fakes was to ask: ‘What are some of the worst problems you’ve faced while making programmes and how did you solve them?’
The people who’d solved tricky problems remembered the details and were keen to share them.
But liars struggled with specifics: one guy who claimed to have worked on a programme had forgotten almost everything about it, including the name of the presenter. Who happened to be me.
A new study published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition showed that the AIM technique improved interviewers’ lie-detection accuracy rates from 48 per cent to 81 per cent.
Which is impressive, though comprehensively eclipsed by my wife, who can spot when I am being evasive with 100 per cent accuracy. I’ve no idea how she does it.