Fitness Files: Let’s talk turkey about stuffing

The day after Thanksgiving, Paul and I dove into the leftovers at lunch.

That afternoon, he said, “I don’t want dinner.”

After two days of stuffing, we were stuffed.

That morning, we met our friend Marilyn for breakfast. She ordered coffee, saying, “Can’t eat this morning, stuffed myself last night.”

What occurs internally when we overfill our bellies?

The first impulse to eat comes from the eyes and nose signaling to our brains to make the stomach contract, while intestinal glands start leaking digestive chemicals.

Then, employing the fork, we chew, moving turkey and dressing down the esophagus and into a pool of hydrochloric acid, enzymes and hormones in the upper part of the stomach, which stores food until the lower part receives it. With food entering, the stomach muscle squeezes open and shut about three times a minute. It’s full with one or two cups of food.

Cups? What I ate would be measured in pounds, not cups.

Overfull, our stomachs stretch, balloon-like. We feel discomfort as the stomach expands beyond capacity. If we eat too much fatty food, which is harder to digest, we delay the process of emptying the stomach into the small intestine.

If the full belly pushes up against the diaphragm, just below our lungs, the valve between the esophagus and stomach relaxes, allowing back-flow: heartburn.

The American Dietetic Assn.’s answer to self-induced misery is:

Take a short walk after dinner.

Don’t lie down, but if you must, lie on your right side, where the gravity will work toward digestion.

Don’t drink carbonated drinks, which add to gas and bloat.

Do eat more vegetables than fatty foods, starting with salad. Roughage moves food along; fat delays emptying.

Do eat foods in courses instead of “descending into a feeding frenzy.”

Nice suggestions, but I overeat because the “feeding frenzy” is fun, and it’s a family tradition to crowd the table with too much of a good thing.

I accept that my stomach will be distended in hormonal horror, but Women’s Health knows how to hurt me.

The magazine’s October 2011 article titled “Your Body On …Overeating at a Holiday Feast” says, “Your stomach … is pushing against surrounding organs…. Chances are you’ve shoveled in twice as much as your body needs, which means the excess is converted into layaway triglycerides, which may turn into fat cells around your thighs, butt and belly.”

Ouch.

And as if that weren’t enough, Dr. Shasha Stiles, an obesity specialist from Tufts Medical Center in Boston, says, “Overeating sets your body chemistry on red alert … the kinds of hormone and metabolic processes that normally metabolize food will go into overdrive.” And you will end up storing the excess load as fat rather than nutrition.

OK, so the big holiday meals I cook and then eat upset my digestive processes, and the overload turns into fat exactly where I do not want it.

I’ll take the go-for-a walk suggestion.

I’m just trying to decide whether to go out before or after my homemade apple pie with vanilla ice cream.

Newport Beach resident CARRIE LUGER SLAYBACK is a retired teacher who ran the Los Angeles Marathon at age 70, winning first place in her age group. Her blog is [email protected].