Eat, Drink, And Stay Fit!

How to navigate party season without packing on the extra pounds.

- Martha McCully

First, it’s a cute little pig in the blanket (what’s the harm?). Then you find yourself justifying the mini-quiches because “they’re protein!” Suddenly it’s pie for breakfast and snacking on peppermint bark mid-morning. The problem with the five weeks of cocktail parties, cookie swaps, and office drinks known as the Holidays isn’t just the calories but the downward spiral we enter in late November. It’s only until the New Year that we start contemplating the unthinkable, like the Master Cleanse or Dry January.

It’s not lack of willpower. When you overindulge, “it’s as if you’ve been taken over by body snatchers,” says Mark Hyman, M.D., a functional medicine doctor and author of Eat Fat, Get Thin and Food Fix (out in February). “Certain foods trigger the pleasure centre of the brain by flooding it with dopamine, just like alcohol and cocaine do,” says Hyman, who adds that studies have shown that rats usually prefer sugar over cocaine. Here are some ways to avoid falling into the trap: