Welcome back to the Bite me Nutrition podcast.
Bit of a quick one for you today, but something I think is probably going to be relevant for lots of people.
So I still thought it might be worth recording a podcast on it.
Plus, then you get an early mark, right?
So enjoy that. And actually, you know what you could do with that early mark?
You could spend that time sharing this podcast with a friend, leaving a review, hitting the five star.
You don't even need to type anything, just give it five stars or less than that.
Suppose if that's how you feel, or putting it up in your social media stories, tagging me so I get to feel good and get some validation.
Anyway, today we're going to be talking about what should you do if you've just overeaten, which I know sounds minor, but for a lot of people can be very painful and suck, and we don't feel very good afterwards, right?
So there are a few things that you can do to help after you have gone through that.
I would suggest that this is something that happens to all of us at some point.
If it's happening to you lots, and it's very frequent, I would strongly recommend that you get some help from someone. Just have a chat.
Whether that be someone like me or Kat or Jenna, or whether it's another dietitian, that's totally cool as well.
But I think if it's a common, consistent problem that's impacting the quality of your life, it is something that you should seriously talk to someone about.
However, it is also a natural and normal thing to overeat at times.
I think this can definitely be demonized or pathologized as something that the goal is to never accidentally overeat.
To which I say, you've clearly never had a burger before, right?
Or you've clearly never had my chocolate caramel slice.
You eat these delicious foods.
You are a human being with taste buds.
You are sometimes going to overdo it, and that's perfectly fine.
If it's occasional, please don't beat yourself up about it.
And if it's very frequent, please also don't beat yourself up about it, but find someone that you can add to your team to help.
But for those of you who are occasionally overeating, there's just a few things that you can do afterwards to just feel a little bit better.
So by all means, ignore the rest of this episode.
That's fine.
You're going to feel good eventually anyway.
But if you're someone that's wanting to try and speed that process along, I'm not talking about other things.
I'm just talking about a few things that you can do to just feel a bit better in the midsection, in the gut.
Right.
The first thing is probably the most helpful thing, and that's try to get some gentle movement in. And the keyword there, being gentle, you probably don't feel like it, but even if you do, don't go for a run afterwards or don't do some burpees.
You'll just vomit, and that won't make you feel better at all.
So instead, make sure you're doing some gentle movement.
I would suggest that a walk is probably the easiest, and it doesn't need to be a long walk.
5-10 minutes can help with blood flow, can help gravity do its thing to help continue to move the food through your gut, can make sure that you've got space for your gut to do all the muscular movements that it needs to do to mash the food up and digest the food and food and move it along.
So a gentle walk for five to 10 minutes after that meal can be a really good way to help kick start that process of feeling a little bit better.
Kind of second to that is to make sure that we're not wearing tight clothing around that area as well.
You want to release any kind of pressure.
That's fixing the joke of it's very american, but the Thanksgiving thing of wearing sweatpants or undoing your belt, that's actually a very good idea.
Make sure if you're undoing your belt or taking your pants off, that you're being socially responsible.
But if you are, then, yes, making sure we're not wearing tight clothes.
So that could be a belt, that could be trousers, or of course, it can be things like a tight skirt or tights, all of those sorts of things.
Try not to have anything tight around your midsection, because that can also help calm things down.
And so that would be the next big thing that I would do.
The other thing that I would do is keep sipping water. Not like lots, not super regularly, but staying hydrated, but not gulping water.
You might feel like gulping water, especially if the thing that you've just eaten a lot of is quite salty.
That can encourage you to drink more.
But I would be careful guzzling an extra half a liter of water, because that's probably just going to make things worse.
So keep sipping, take it slow, and you'll start to feel better.
The last thing is so, yes, sorry, in the moment or in that short term, gentle movement, probably a walk or a swim, potentially could help as well.
No tight stuff around your midsection, whether that be clothes, belts, tights, those sorts of things.
And sip, don't guzzle fluids.
So you're staying hydrated, but you're not overdoing it.
Then for the rest of the day or the rest of the period of time after that, it's really important that you keep your normal eating routine.
You might feel a tendency or an urge to go, well, I had a really big lunch, so I probably shouldn't eat dinner or I should skip that next meal, I shouldn't have that snack. And that can be a very slippery slope and is really not a good idea. I strongly encourage you to keep your normal eating routine.
If you had a very big lunch, please still eat dinner.
Now it is okay, absolutely to eat a bit less at that dinner if you just physically don't feel like more food, okay.
You might need to check in to make sure that you're not just mentally restricting yourself because you feel like that's what you're supposed to do.
But there could absolutely be just a physical component of you're still digesting a big lunch or a big previous meal and you don't feel like quite as much at dinner.
So again, it is important to keep that routine.
So to have dinner at that time.
But maybe it's going to be something that's a little bit lighter.
Maybe you'll focus a little bit more just on protein and veg rather than another big heavy sort of meal, and then you can continue on with your normal eating routine.
So that's what I need you to do.
If you've eaten a lot, probably should have posted this before Christmas, but hey, there you go.
So the short term stuff, move forbid take off anything that's tight, be careful with who's watching, and take some sips of water.
And then for the rest of that day, and possibly the weekend or the week, depending on how long that this feeling lasts.
Make sure you are keeping your normal eating routine.
Do not skip meals.
Do not pass go, do not collect.
I almost said $100 cheap.
Do not collect $200 and I'll see you on the next episode.