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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday. And today, hey, it is Monday. Did you have a bit of an indulgent weekend? You know, could have been just Easter, might have been any old weekend. But if you're listening to this and you're feeling a little bit off track and even a little bit guilty about how much chocolate you ate or how many hot cross buns went down, you're definitely not alone.

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Today's solo episode is all about what actually happens when you overeat, especially after a holiday binge. And more importantly, how to bounce back without the usual shame spiral or panic mode. Because let's be real, you really haven't ruined everything. So let's dive into these numbers then. First and foremost, let's say that you went big. Chocolate eggs, a roast lunch, a few wines,

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dessert, and let's say you consumed 2,000 extra calories on Easter Sunday. Now that sounds dramatic, right? But if you zoom out over the course of a week, it's actually not that much. Let's say your maintenance calories are around about 2,000, just to sort of give you a nice round number. So that's 14,000 calories that you have allocated for the week.

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And you do always want to, I think it's really helpful to look at your calorie budget over the course of seven days, rather than sort of looking at it on a day by day basis, because your body isn't a cash register and it doesn't have to recalibrate at the end of every day and reset itself. With Easter Sunday in the mix, this then brings up your total to 16,000 calories. If you divide that by seven, seven days of the week,

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That gives you an average daily total of 2200 and about 86 calories. So that's your surplus, not even 300 calories a day. And yes, that might slow down fat loss for a week, but that's still not enough to gain a full kilo of body fat, which I know we really catastrophize it when we overeat like that, particularly if you do see the scales go up one to two kilos, but truly,

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This is like a little blip in the big scheme of things. So what is showing on the scales? That extra weight is mostly glycogen, which is muscle carbohydrate. It's water because for every one gram of carbohydrate you store, you will also store an additional three to four grams of water. And it is food volume. It is not body fat. So your body hasn't betrayed you. It literally is just doing its job.

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The worst thing you can do now is panic and go into damage control. Not that I'm suggesting that maybe a few key tactics could help you psychologically, but from a physiological standpoint, you really don't need to do anything. When we overeat like that, particularly with carbohydrate foods like hot crisp buns and things like that, your body does end up increasing its energy expenditure to account for that increased oxidation of nutrients.

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Certainly when they look at research on like just one day of overeating, we don't see an appreciable change in body fat levels or weight over the course of time. Like yes, certainly that next day you do, but your body works really hard to digest and to oxidize those additional calories. And your body does expend a lot more energy to account for that. So you do get this sort of increase in non-exercise activity thermogenesis as well. The most damaging part I will say,

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on what occurs on say Easter Sunday is actually the psychological component. What I do see with clients, with friends, and even with myself at times is that the day after overeating, you can feel heavy. And this is an emotional feeling. And we have thoughts that ruminate in our brains like, I blew it. What's the point? I've ruined everything. I may as well start again next week or not even start again.

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you know, I'm not worth it. And that is where the damage happens. It's not from what happened with the food. It's always about what happens next and the all or nothing mindset. We place so much moral weight on food and what we eat. Like we failed some sort of test if we overindulged on any given day. But food is not a moral issue. It is literally just a choice and all choices are neutral until we attach a story to them.

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So when you believe the story of I blew it, you're more likely to skip meals, punish yourself with an extra workout, or eat chaotically the next day, not out of hunger, but out of guilt. And this fuels a binge restrict cycle. You overeat, you feel guilty, you then restrict, you feel deprived, and you overeat again. So this isn't a food problem. It's a mindset loop. The more we moralize food, as in,

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it's clean versus it's cheap food, the more we internalize our own behavior as being good or bad, and that's where the shame can creep in. Here's something to consider. What if there was no guilt? What if there was no emotion attached to the food that we ate, and you did not tie your morality or your self-worth as a person into the choices that you made?

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Do you think you would naturally return to your usual eating habits the next day? I'm gonna say probably yes. So let's just cut the guilt and make sure your next choice is one that aligns with how you wanna feel. Cause that ultimately is the thing which is going to drive your success. You didn't fall off the wagon, you just took a detour. And the sooner you stop yelling at yourself from the back seat, the quicker you can get back behind the wheel. So as I mentioned,

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You didn't gain a kilo of fat as you know. We know that, and I just want to go through this again, carbs will make your body store more glycogen, which is our muscle carbohydrate stores, and water. And that'll make you feel a little bit heavy because you're carrying more water. Our thermogenesis increases, and this is the energy that we expend from eating food. the oxidizing of the food will expend more energy.

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And non-exercise activity thermogenesis can definitely increase as well. And this is subconscious movement that you might not even be aware of and just generally moving about in the day. You might have a very awesome workout that next day or the next couple of days, making use of that extra stored glycogen and carbohydrate. And fat storage isn't a hundred percent efficient either, especially in people who are active and metabolically healthy bodies. So you may feel heavy.

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bloated and tired, but this is just temporary. So this is where you do have to be quite disciplined about not going down into that spiral of self-pity and shame. And I really want you to use some of those reframes that I just mentioned to help move forward beyond that binge or that indulgent day. So the next day and the next several days, eat a normal protein-rich meal.

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Don't skip your meal or fast, just eat like normal. Of course, if you're not overly hungry because you did overeat and that is something which is absolutely normal, then focus on getting that protein in because it will help stabilize your blood sugar and your appetite and it'll show your body that we're back to normal. This is just what we normally do. Outside of any activity that you do, just move yourself, not as punishment, but just

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to help support your digestion, your blood sugar and your mindset. This is about self care. It isn't about compensation for all of those calories that may or may not have been eaten the day before. So if you're someone that usually trains, go and have an awesome workout, but everyone, including you, you athlete, should walk 15 to 30 minutes and make the most of hopefully what is a lovely autumn or spring day. Hydrate and use electrolytes.

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So a lot of foods that we eat that are indulgent do have added salt, are pretty sugary, and that can lead to just changes in dehydration and thirst, and a fluid imbalance. So have a big glass of water and add something like mineral or elite or daily. These are supplemental electrolytes, or element is the other example. And pull that additional fluid into your intracellular compartments.

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And this will help reduce bloating, fogginess, and energy dips. And also all of these things which I've mentioned will help re-stabilize your blood sugar and get you back on an even keel. So have three protein forward meals, go for walks after your meal. Something that can really help as part of this sort of re-anchoring of your routine is tracking your food for a couple of days just so you feel like you're back in control.

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And that just sort of brings into it sort of a confident, resilient sort of mindset. Do try to prioritize sleep. Might seem unrelated, but if some of your indulgement was alcohol as well, then that will disrupt your ability to sleep properly. And you can be carrying over a hangover of not just sugar and alcohol, but that lack of sleep. So really prioritize sleep and make sure you're hitting your workouts. Don't forget that structure rebuilds momentum.

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And then also have a think about what triggered your indulgent weekend in the first place. Now, hey, it might've just been you were swept up in the celebrations of Easter, which is awesome. You just had a couple of additional social occasions and it was no big deal. It was what it was. However, if there was anything else like maybe been dieting chronically nonstop for four weeks without a metabolic reset meal, without hitting a couple of maintenance days,

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without having a diet break and you were feeling fatigued and underdone? Or it was the emotion of the holiday that regardless of whether it's Christmas, whether it's Easter, whether it's another sort of special celebration, it has emotional underpinnings to it that for you really is linked to over consuming food? Or was it just mindlessness? Were you not really aware of what you're doing until it was too late and then you just went, ah, screw it. And you just continued. Awareness.

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leads to insight and being aware of these things means that you can add in any strategies if required to help offset this happening again the next time you were presented with an opportunity to overindulge. And this is all learning. Anything that we do all allows us to learn a little bit more about ourselves, about how we respond in certain situations. And also I think that that emotional tie is really key. And I've been thinking a lot about neutrality of late.

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because we just get so hyper-focused on certain things, which this is unrelated, but things like hormones and what our wearables tell us about ourselves and our behaviors and things like that. And we allow ourselves to get emotionally hijacked. And in that moment, we just aren't really capable of using our logical and rational brain to make good decisions. The less you're able to give in to those emotional states and the more that you can step back and view them much more objectively,

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the more in control you're gonna feel. And speak kindly to yourself during this. So shame prolongs the spiral. So take some self responsibility. Don't let yourself off the hook, but be kind to yourself as well. Like this is all just being human and it honestly is no big deal. It is one day out of seven in a week, out of 31 in a month, out of 365 in a year. So it is one day. And progress is always about patterns.

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and it's not about perfection. So if you're consistent with what you do 90 % of the time, this little blip is really just that. So you're not starting over, you're just continuing to grow and learn and develop around the foods that you know how you wanna feel in your health decisions and those that don't. One day doesn't define the journey. And share this with anyone else that you feel has been emotionally hijacked by their food decisions.

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this last holiday weekend because maybe they just need to have these types of conversations too to get the ball rolling so they can move forward because these are the types of things that happen that I see keep people stuck in old patterns of behavior. So the more that you can sort of come out of it, the more progress you're going to make long term. Anyway, hopefully this was helpful. Also, I hope you did enjoy your Easter weekend, whether it was the one that's just gone.

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Let me know, I'm over on Instagram threads and X @mikkiwilliden, I'm on Facebook at mikkiwillidenNutrition, or head to my website, mikkiwilliden.com and book a call with me and we can discuss how to put these strategies into practice to help you move forward. All right team, you have the best week. See you later.