Post-[WHATEVER] Pennance Diet/Exercise?

The day after.

You wake up. Maybe feel a little awkward?

Sometimes it happens—once a year, actually—it’s the day after Thanksgiving.

I’m guessing that any of you who’ve read this can attest to this: you’ve heard *something* today geared at making you feel bad about the random glutony holiday feasting that went on yesterday. Maybe you’ve even said something to yourself or out loud about your weight today. Probably, right? Planning on a mini-starvation diet and/or a couple weeks of exercising excessively to make up for yesterday?

Don’t. Why? Math. Here’s why:

Your body will put on weight when you eat more calories than you need. Someone who is about my size will burn around 1300 calories a day just for being alive. Add in (even) a.* little* bit of activity and we’re looking at 1600 calories burned on the day.

Now, even if you ate A TON—and, if your family is anyth, ing like my family, that wasn’t negotiable, really—you still couldn’t have gained more than a pound as a result of yesterday. It takes an excess of 3500 calories to produce a pound of body fat. Easy translation: To gain one pound, you must have eaten around 5,000 calories yesterday. According to some websites, most people eat about 3500-4500 calories Thanksgiving Day. Which, while it is totally excessive, isn’t enough to cause more than a pound of weight gain, if that.

If you resume your normal eating and exercise habits today, your metabolism will be slightly heightened because our bodies handle acute changes in our set points by trying to compensate via heat expenditure, for an example, when we’ve gained some weight. Basically, that 1-2 lbs will come off in 1-2 weeks just for doing what you were doing pre-thanksgiving. Go to the gym one extra time a week for 2 week and you’re more than compensated. The key is to make sure that you don’t let the over-indulging snowball into a month-long sloth-fest.

And don’t forget to do your normal exercising: it’s really helpful for containing the stress-levels set in motion by hyper relatives who want to know why you’re still single/why you didn’t want to be a doctor/why you’re not a platinum blonde anymore (?!!?!?!) at family functions. It’ll also keep you feeling sexy, which keeps your mind off thinking about why you’re still single/why your mom insists you wear a ridiculous holiday outfit every year/etc.

So basically, what I’m saying is as long as every day between now and 2011 aren’t thanksgiving-feast-on-repeat, you can make it through the holidays minimally scathed. Save the mental bandwidth for figuring out more fun things, like how to strategically place some mistletoe over you and that hot guy/girl across the room your friend’s holiday party.