Excessive holiday excess

My fellow Fitness Nerd Steve Edwards asked my thoughts today regarding this blog post on how he indulges during his rest phases. Over all, I thought it was a great post, but I did suggest he set a few perimeters. Steve lives hard, but he lives smart. His idea of overeating involves finishing the fries that come with his burger, not funding some Idaho farmer's kid's college education with every meal. His idea of a big night of drinking involves being able to recall the evening's events, even the part where he took his clothes off and jumped in the neighbor's pool.

No, wait, that was me.

Anyway, never mind that. My point is that Steve's idea of excess isn't the American standard. What's considered "excess" 'round here has become excessively excessive, which leads me to today's topic. In the 1950s, this study showing the benefits of exercising before overeating would have been useful. Today, it's like someone doing a study on the benefits of Band-aids on .357 wounds.

The study basically fed three test groups similar amounts of food. One group didn't exercise at all. Another ate before and during exercise, and the third worked out on an empty stomach and porked out after. From The New York Times:

The men who ate breakfast before exercising gained weight, too, although only about half as much as the control group. Like those sedentary big eaters, however, they had become more insulin-resistant and were storing a greater amount of fat in their muscles.

Only the group that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. They also burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently. “Our current data,” the study’s authors wrote, “indicate that exercise training in the fasted state is more effective than exercise in the carbohydrate-fed state to stimulate glucose tolerance despite a hypercaloric high-fat diet.”

So that's pretty interesting. It's also great information for people trying to lose weight. Exercising on an empty stomach better mobilizes fat as a fuel supply.

But as a solution for overeating, it's problematic. Over the last fifty years, our holiday binges have become so grotesque that I doubt a little workout can restore the balance. For example, consider the TV show Madmen, which is set in the aforementioned fifties. Sure, they're constantly drinking on that show, but the thing is, the glasses are small. When's the last time you drank a cocktail from a glass smaller than your fist? This holiday season, a host who serves eggnog in anything smaller than a baby's head is considered rude. Honestly, last time you had an eggnog, how big was it? I'm betting 12 ounces at least. Sound about right? Well, here's the lowdown on 12 ounces of nog:

456 calories
216 calories fat
12g saturated fat

That's if you stop at one -- which you'll probably drink before you even start eating. An indulgent Christmas meal, egg nog to yule log, American-style, is going to set you up for 3000-4000 calories. No preemptive morning jog is going to save you from that.

There's nothing wrong with relaxing a little on the holidays, but what was considered excessive 50 years ago is now considered moderate. And today's excess, by 50s standards, would be considered, well, I don't think it would be considered anymore than the internet or the notion that Leslie Nelson would become a comic actor.

So this holiday season, let's all party like it's 1959.