Tips for safely deviating from your healthy diet

This 'magical' time of year for many also means the opportunity to turn a blind eye when it comes to sticking to a healthy diet. How much can you enjoy rich, salty or sweet holiday foods without risking weight gain, heart problems, blood pressure or high blood sugar?

“Some people are more sensitive than others to salt, saturated fats, or added sugars,” says dietitian Kathy McManus, director of the department of nutrition at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Sometimes we see that diet affects blood pressure or blood cholesterol levels within a few weeks.” Who ate it?

So, deviating from a healthy diet becomes rather dangerous. But for people who are generally healthy, McManus says there is a way to bend the rules safely this holiday season and beyond.

Guidelines for a healthy diet

Ideally, you should always follow a healthy eating plan, similar to the Mediterranean diet. In addition, you should limit the following:

Added sugars. Eating too much sugar can cause frequent spikes in blood sugar levels and increase your risk of diabetes. Limit their intake to no more than 24 grams per day for women and 36 grams for men.

salt. In some people, eating too much salt can cause high blood pressure. Healthy individuals should limit their intake to 2,300 mg per day.

Saturated fat. Eating too much of this type of fat, found in red meat and full-fat dairy products, can increase bad LDL cholesterol and your risk of heart disease. McManus recommends limiting saturated fat to 7% of daily calories. To calculate grams of saturated fat, divide 7% of your daily calories by nine (one gram of fat contains 9 calories). For example, if you consume 1,500 calories per day: 0.07 times 1,500 equals 105, divided by 9 equals about 12 grams of saturated fat.

What about calories?

Your daily calorie needs depend on many factors, including your age, physical activity level, body characteristics, general health, and your weight goals (for example, weight loss).

If you are healthy and exercise for 30 minutes a day, you can estimate how many calories you need each day to maintain your current weight by multiplying your weight (in kilograms) by 30. For example, if you weigh 65 kilograms, multiply 65 by 30. Answer (i.e. 1950) is the total calories you need each day to maintain your weight at 65 pounds. Eating more calories can lead to weight gain, while eating less may lead to weight loss.

Go beyond the rules

While good nutrition is the key to health, breaking the rules occasionally is unlikely to get you into trouble. One tip you can try is the 90-10 rule. “Eat healthy 90 percent and 'escape' 10 percent,” says McManus. “Eating three meals a day for a week means 21 meals, and it is best not to skip more than two of them.” But what if every day during the holidays you followed the “90-10” rule, allocating 10% of your daily calories to unhealthy holiday foods? This is likely to lead to bad habits. “If you occasionally exceed the daily guidelines for calories, salt, added sugars, and saturated fat a little bit, you probably won't have a problem,” McManus says. “But if you deliberately make every meal a little unhealthy, it's likely to cause problems.”

Traps

Knowing that you can slip a little, you may be tempted to go beyond the limits of the 90-10 rule. For example:
Maybe you're exaggerating it. We know for sure that regularly eating an unhealthy diet can, over time, increase your long-term risk of heart disease. It may also be true that eating a large, unhealthy meal can have immediate risks. Let's say we're enjoying a juicy steak with mashed potatoes and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. This delicious meal contains 47 grams of saturated fat, 32 grams of mostly added sugars, 1,330 calories, 70 grams of carbohydrates, and 2,555 mg of sodium.

According to some small studies, eating a large meal increases the risk of heart attacks. “Theoretically, a large, unhealthy meal leads to various biochemical changes in the body, such as increased triglyceride levels, which may contribute to an increased risk of heart attacks in the hours following the meal,” says Dr. Deepak L. Bhatt. Cardiologist and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Heart Letter.

You gain weight and you can't lose it. You can skip your eating rules throughout the holiday season, convincing yourself that you'll make up for it in January and February. Unfortunately, studies of exactly what happens post-holiday show that many people weigh more in March than they did before the holidays: January and February haven't fully compensated for holiday mishaps.

Maybe you get used to giving up and then you can't break the habit. Perhaps again, once you gain weight, your metabolism adapts to the heavier weight, and so you feel hungry more easily.

“If you don't put in a lot of effort to maintain your weight loss, you may go back to your original weight,” McManus explains. “Biology is not on our side and old habits are simply not forgotten. We can easily slip back into previous habits, increasing calories and exercising less. Thus the kilos return to their previous levels.”

What can you do?

Try to eat a healthy diet most days and allow yourself the occasional indulgence.

“During the holiday season, you may want to enjoy certain dishes, meals, or celebrations,” McManus says. “Plan ahead for these conditions. But also plan what you'll eat, when you decide you're not going to overeat.”

The same logic continued until January, and in the following months as well. Don't negotiate with yourself. Try to maintain a consistent pattern of healthy eating, allowing only occasional indulgences.

In the end, you'll feel good about being able to enjoy the foods you love, and you may be more successful at maintaining your weight goals.