How can I celebrate St Patrick’s Day without gaining weight?
There are a couple of times throughout your life when you celebrate every single holiday. The first is probably when you’re in college when you’re looking for any reason to throw a party. And the second is when you have young kids and every holiday is magical. My kids are almost out of the celebrate every holiday phase, but I still remember dying food green for St. Patrick’s Day for them! If you’re on a health and weight loss journey, St. Patrick’s Day can be a tricky holiday to celebrate because it’s mostly centered around eating and drinking. But if you follow these 2 simple tips you can enjoy St. Patrick’s Day without gaining weight.
Depending on what stage of life you’re in, St. Patrick’s Day can either be a big drinking or big eating holiday; both of which can make sticking to your health goals difficult. But I’m a huge believer in enjoying all that life has to offer and learning how to approach events and celebrations in a healthy way.
The trick to living a healthy life isn’t ignoring calories or restricting everything and never having food that is fun or makes you happy. Living a healthy life requires balance instead of extremes.
Why holidays throw off your weight loss journey
Before we dive into how to make choices that will help you maintain your weight during big drinking holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, let’s talk about why we feel like we fall off the wagon in the first place.
Most of us grew up with the idea that holidays were for overindulging. It was the one time we could throw the diet rules out the window and do whatever we wanted. We heard people saying “calories don’t count on a holiday” or we were told we could just have a cheat day.
But this mindset doesn’t serve you. Because calories always count. Potato chips don’t become calorie-free on a holiday. Alcohol doesn’t get you less buzzed just because it’s a St. Patrick’s Day tradition to drink! Food and drinks don’t know the difference between a regular Monday and a holiday. And neither does your body.
Instead of perpetuating this idea of you can do whatever you want around a holiday and pay for it later, we need to understand how food and alcohol work so that we can make choices that allow us to have fun and stick to our health goals.
How traditional St. Patrick’s Day foods throw off your results
St. Patrick’s Day is an especially tricky holiday because we celebrate it by eating corned beef and drinking a pint. And let’s be honest, corned beef is delicious, but it’s very high in sodium which can seriously affect your weight. And I’m sure you’ve seen how alcohol can make the scale jump up.
If you want to eat traditional St. Patrick’s Day foods that are going to be high in sodium and fat, that’s absolutely ok! But you’re going to want to prepare yourself for the effects of those foods.
In the days following St. Patrick’s Day, you’re probably going to see the scale go up - not because you gained fat, but because your body is holding onto extra water. Eating an influx of carbs and sodium causes the body to hold on to water. As long as you go back to your normal eating habits the next day you should see the scale go up and then back down within a week - maybe two at the most.
Having this knowledge is going to save you from the biggest holiday setback. After a holiday when people get on the scale and see the numbers go up, they assume that they’ve screwed everything up. So they give up. They decide to just eat and drink whatever they want and that’s when things go south.
If you understand that this is just a blip in your journey instead of a death sentence you can return to your normal habits and you’ll see the scale do what you want it to. Don’t let a few days of bloating ruin all your progress!
Alcohol impacts the body’s ability to burn fat
Alcohol is also going to impact what you see on the scale. The body views alcohol as a toxin - that’s why you get intoxicated when you drink. Your body is very smart and after you introduce alcohol to your system its main priority is to flush the toxins out as quickly as possible.
As you probably know, the liver is responsible for processing alcohol. The liver is also responsible for breaking down fat. When push comes to shove, the liver will prioritize detoxing alcohol over breaking down fat. This is why we can quickly gain weight when we drink.
If you don’t want to gain weight over a holiday due to drinking then you have a few options:
Don’t drink: Avoiding alcohol will help you keep processing fat and you’ll be better able to make informed decisions about the rest of your food too. If your weight loss is your top priority, this is going to be the best plan.
Make a plan to drink: Decide ahead of time how much and what you’ll drink. Then stick to your plan! Knowing your limits will help you make smart choices when alcohol is involved. You can have a drink without throwing things off too much. You just need to make the decision ahead of time and stick to it!
Prepare yourself for what your body will go through if you drink: Whether you have one drink or five, you should be aware that your weight might increase for a few days. Prepare yourself to see the scale go up for a few days and then it should come back down. It takes the liver 2-3 days to process fat, so it might be a week or two until you see weight loss happen again. If enjoying yourself on St. Patrick’s Day is your priority this year, that’s fine! Being aware of what happens will help you stick to your goals and move forward after you have your fun.
Don’t let your thoughts ruin your progress
Knowing how your body processes food is important so that you don’t fall into the “oh screw it” trap. I briefly mentioned this before, but the “oh screw it” trap happens when you let one off meal or one night of drinking make you think that you’ve thrown away all of your progress, so you might as well eat and drink whatever you want.
This one thought, “oh screw it,” can completely throw your progress off if you choose to listen to it.
Or you can choose a new thought.
“I know that I had some fun with my nutrition yesterday, and now I’m going to reprioritize it and hit my goals.” is a thought that you can choose to have that takes away the guilt that usually comes with celebratory meals.
Either way, your next action, and every action for that matter, starts with a thought. You have the power to choose which thoughts you listen to and act on and which ones to let go of. The absolute best piece of advice I can give you is to create awareness around your thoughts and only choose to act on the ones that serve you.
That is the secret to long-lasting weight loss that fits into your life. It’s the only way you will become a person who can go out on a holiday without letting it ruin everything.
If you are tired of trying diet after diet, after diet then you probably haven’t addressed the thoughts you have about weight loss. I can help you address the mental and physical aspects of weight loss inside the Macros Made Easy program. Schedule a free discovery call today to get started on the healthiest version of you!
