Fast Easy Holiday Weight Maintenance Tips

The holidays offer a chance to really gain some weight, don't they.  Here's a few fast easy holiday weight maintenance tips to help you out.

Check out the yummy looking pure fat that has risen to the top of this measuring cup of gravy pictured.  (Pass the gravy...I mean really pass it - on to another person!)

You cannot even imagine how much those extra helpings of gravy and dessert at the holiday table will add to your waistline.  According to a new research report recently appearing online in The FASEB Journal, a diet that is high in fat and in sugar actually switches on genes that ultimately cause our bodies to store too much fat

It's a double-whammy!  It's hard enough to convert  high-fat and high-sugar foods to energy.  It's almost impossible when the job is made much harder because these foods also turn our bodies into "supersized fat-storing" machines.  As a refresher course, you can watch the movie "Super-Size Me."

Scientists recently have shown that foods high in fat and sugar stimulate a known opioid receptor, called the kappa opioid receptor, which plays a huge role in fat metabolism. When this receptor is stimulated (look out!), it causes our bodies to hold on to far more fat than our bodies would do otherwise.

One of the researchers in this latest study (Traci Ann Czyzyk-Morgan) reported, "the data presented here support the hypothesis that overactivation of kappa opioid receptors contribute to the development of obesity specifically during prolonged consumption of high-fat, calorically dense diets."  As usual, this was a study conducted on mice.

Can't mice catch a break?

One group of poor little mice had their kappa opioid receptors genetically deactivated (ouch - that must have hurt) and the other group was normal...for mice, that is.  Both groups were given a high fat, high sucrose, energy dense diet.  Shockingly (LOL), the control group of mice gained significant weight and fat mass on this diet. The mice with the deactivated receptor remained lean, mean, nose-twitching machines.

A standard disclaimer would remind us that the effects of eating more fat and suger may have to be studed more in humans.  Maybe the mice study is irrelevant.

In a grossly understated conclusion, the researchers proclaimed, "this research provides more proof that high-fat and high-sugar diets should be avoided."  Did we really need to fund another study to come to this conclusion?

"In times when food was scarce and starvation an ever-present threat, an adaptation that allows our bodies to store as much energy as possible during plentiful times was probably a lifesaver," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "By taking that opioid receptor off the table (so to speak -my edit), researchers may have found a way to keep us from eating ourselves to death."

The study was reported in the December 1, 2009 edition of ScienceDaily.

So, let's recap some fast easy holiday weight maintenance tips:

• Pass on the gravy
• Pass on the cookies
• Pass of the cakes and pies
• Pass on seconds and thirds
• Pass on late leftovers (pre-sleep fuel, I know)
• Don't overcompensate with 5 pounds of salad

Hey, let's just do our best.  How are you going to get through the holidays?  What are your best tips?  Is this a good reminder?