With the abundance of cookies, rich foods and flowing alcohol, the holidays tend to be a time of indulgence for us all. But before you stuff yourself silly, it might be worth noting these five ways your body physically responds to the uptick of calories.
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Your Stomach Gets Huge
To accommodate all the food you’re throwing down the hatch, your stomach, which is about the size of your fist when empty, stretches to massive proportions—up to the size of a gallon of milk if you’re really pushing things. You may feel like you have a food baby growing inside of you, and as your stomach presses against your other organs, you might feel achy or get a mean case of heartburn.
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Your Pancreas Goes Crazy
With thousands of calories’ worth of fat and sugar sitting in your stomach, your pancreas starts pumping out tons of insulin, a hormone that helps regulate the amount of glucose, or sugar, in your blood stream. You body uses some of that insulin for energy, but most of it winds up in your fat cells.
Your Self-Control Wavers
Apart from destroying your inhibitions, alcohol tampers with your body’s levels of the hunger-regulating hormones leptin and ghrelin.
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The Food Coma Sets In
With so much sugar hitting your system at once, your body has to pretty much shut everything down in order to digest all of the food. That’s why people are conked-out on the couch after their holiday feast.
You Get the Munchies
About two hours after binging, you will find yourself with very low blood-sugar levels again. Your body doesn’t like having low blood sugar, so you start craving just “one more piece” of pie. And then it all starts again.
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