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What To Do If You’ve Overindulged on Chocolate: A 3-Point Plan!

What To Do If You’ve Overindulged on Chocolate

It’s Easter Sunday – or in other words, ‘eat yourself into a chocolate coma day’.

In the picture above, my youngest son is doing his best to take down a Kinder egg. It was a close match, but the egg won with about 30% of it left.

So, the question I have is…

Easter – did you go nuts on chocolate?

I hope so. You should do. All salad and no chocolate makes for a pretty crappy life.

Part of the reason we train and eat well most of the time is to allow for these indulgences. Unless you’re a clean-eating nutcase or a competitive bodybuilder (some might argue they’re the same thing), an obsession over eating perfectly all of the time is possibly as unhealthy as the occasional high-calorie treat day.

Overindulged on Chocolate

Anyway, my opinions on the mental health of diet obsessives aside, I’m going to share with you the ’emergency damage-recovery strategy’ you could follow if you’ve really gone chocolate crazy this weekend.

Mental Health Point First…

RELAX.

What’s done is done. Crying and moaning about it won’t help.

You’re not going to wake up 20lbs heavier on the back of one day of high-calorie eating. If you HAVE managed to do that, give me a call – I want to shake your hand and have my picture taken with you.

#Hero.

Will you have gained some weight? Probably.
Will you be able to lose that weight? Absolutely.

If you have gained 2-3lbs, be assured that a good amount of that is probably water weight and will come off quickly.

Next up, Nutrition.

Let’s assume you’ve gone over your daily calorie goal by 1500 (which is still some hardcore eating). The wise thing to do is to pay back those calories over 2-3 days. Unless you’re used to fasting, just not eating for a day on the back of a day of high calorie intake will be a nightmare.

Take a sensible strategy – if you track your calories, take however many you over-ate by and divide it by three. Reduce your normal calorie intake by that number for three days and by the fourth day, you’re all-square.

If you’ve overindulged on chocolate one day, trying to starve yourself the following day won’t really be helpful. You’ll probably feel low on energy and sluggish.

If you don’t track your calories, for the next two-three days make obvious lower carb, lower calorie choices. Given chocolate is essentially carbs and fat, I’d try to go high protein, low carbs and low fat for a couple of days which should re-dress the balance.

Overindulged on Chocolate, shredded chicken recipe, how i got back to eating healthily
Here’s an idea of what to eat if you don’t track your calories….

Breakfast – Bacon and onion omelette.
Lunch – high protein soup such as chicken and vegetable.
Evening Meal – Steak and Salad.

Drink plenty of water too.

Finally, Training.

One positive from having overindulged on chocolate is that you’re certainly not low on fuel for a workout. It may not be ideal workout fuel, but it’s fuel nonetheless.

Basically, it means you don’t have an excuse for not training hard. You ate the chocolate, now it’s the payback time!

Obviously the main goal here is to burn a lot of calories, so a Yoga/Pilates/Stretching/Power Lifting workout isn’t going to be ideal – they’re either too passive (in the case of Yoga and Pilates) or there’s too much rest involved (in the case of Power Lifting).

In this case, I’d go for some kind of HIIT/conditioning workout. Incorporate weights if you can and try to cap the workout at around 45 minutes – the aim should be to work hard and work fast, keeping the heart rate elevated throughout.

I’ve written literally dozens of HIIT workouts on my blog. Here are a few…

Weights-Based HIIT Workout
Prowler Conditioning Workout
HIIT Rowing Machine Workout

Whilst I’m at it, I can always throw in a BLATANT PLUG for my eBook, the Ultimate HIIT Workout Book. In all seriousness though, it contains 52 workouts that will burn A LOT of calories and will have you back in your pre-Easter condition in no time….

If You’ve Overindulged on Chocolate… It’s OK!

If nothing else, I hope you feel OK if you overindulged on chocolate now. You can always lose any weight you’ve gained. If it’s a one-off, fine. If it’s a daily habit, maybe you need to look at a few of your choices!

Have a great week, enjoy the bank holiday and relax about the chocolate – it’s what life’s about.

Published by

HoylesFitness

Owner of www.hoylesfitness.com. Personal Trainer, Father and fitness copy writer. Working hard making the world fitter and healthier!

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