How to enjoy the good table and of the habits of our tradition without losing sight of our attention line? Do it during Parties it is more difficult and the risk of being overwhelmed by weight and guilt is just around the corner. Are there any precautions and instructions to follow? We talk about it with the doctor Monica Germani, nutritionist and dietician who also helped the singer Noemi to find the form and that the musician herself defined “of great help for her ‘Metamorphosis'” (title of the last album ed).
“Cooking is also culture and you have to be together with the pleasure of traditions”, explains the doctor who then gives the green light to new Year’s Eve dinner, full of courses, but inviting common sense and suggesting gratify yourself without being filled, that is, to eat what you want, but without accepting that extra something when you feel full.
The good news, then, is that we can eat on the 31st night, but then what? How should we behave?
To my patients, I recommend doing precede and follow the day you eat the most for days that I define “detox“, ie purifying. These are recovery days in which the amount of salt and carbohydrates is reduced and it would be preferable to eat carefully, trying to distribute the calories in 6 or 7 daily meals.
Could you give an example?
For breakfast I suggest eating the pane which is an excellent ally, better than many others, to avoid the glycemic peak (i.e. the maximum amount of sugar in the blood that is recorded after meals ed), together with what you like best: butter and jam, dried fruit, ricotta and chocolate chips … and drink a glass of milk or a yoghurt. If during the holidays it is nice to eat one slice of panettone, this is welcome, as long as it is actually a slice and then the bread is reduced for lunch and dinner.
Breakfast is the meal principal, is what “sets us in motion”, so it is important that it is rich and that it activates the metabolism well, because skipping it or doing it badly then means going hungry and therefore incorrect management of subsequent meals.
The other meals should be one every 3 hours. Lunch and dinner would be good if they were based on a second (meat, fish or legumes) and a vegetable garnish where it is very important to control the amount of oil because the fibers absorb it and it is easy to overdo it … Then the snacks: the single-portion snacks, to be able to adjust to the best.
What if you can’t do an internal “detox” day?
They can be done two half days. It is important that the person is well and takes small and constant steps because forcing “everything together” can be demotivating.
So putting the crosses on the calendar, with respect to the New Year’s Eve dinner, how can you adjust?
On the 30th detox, on the 31st for detox lunch. On the evening of the 31st it is right to enjoy the dinner, as well as the lunch of the 1st January, while then on the evening of the 1st and all of January 2nd we return to detoxify.
The movement? What can be done?
To walk. If you’re not used to it, even just 10 minutes. It is important that the body feels well-being, not suffering. Maybe 10 minutes, 2 times a day, to be able to leave again, can be fine.
If I overdid it, can I skip a meal to balance?
No. It is very wrong. It should never be done. It is important to respect all meals, always remembering that the main ones are breakfast, lunch and dinner and that the strong point is breakfast.
One piece of advice I can give is that if for lunch or dinner, to feel light, you want a first of vegetables, it is always better to past of minestrone, which is good from a nutritional point of view but fortifies water retention.
You have developed a protocol that has as its objective the psycho-physical transformation of the overweight patient, on what is it based and how can it be useful to everyone?
A series of therapeutic actions are put in place that act on the mind and body. For my patients, it is a personalized experience, developed by a team of doctors who aim to rebalance the body weight, thanks to analyzes by specialists who identify the cause of each defect and accompany the patient along the path but reading it in a broader sense, it is important to always start from processes of self-awareness and acceptance.
Meaning what?
We must not aim for models, but acquire the awareness of its conformation, skeleton and past history that perhaps, through sports, pregnancies, weight loss, sedentary work … has left its mark on our body which should therefore not be hated, but understood as a result of a lived past. And then to accept these signs and your own nature and start working on what you can change. Small achievable goals that allow you to touch the results first hand, in order to be able to then be incentivized towards larger goals.
What if you really can’t avoid going overboard?
Maybe you can take a path to understand why you need to fill a void or vent your anger through food and try to balance certain needs in another way. Then, if you really want, for example, a packet of chips, you can always resort to single portions to satisfy that desire, but do it with an adequate amount.
The phrase to remember when you are at the table?
I believe the main concept is take care of yourself, in all senses. I think we need to remember this more than a calorie pattern.
Doing extreme things and massacring the body is wrong and counterproductive: you cannot think of training for hours to work off a lunch if you are not trained, but if you do little movement and the muscle contracts, here it is metabolized better.