Eat moderately to avoid weight gain on Chuseok holiday
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By Lee Sung-hun
This past summer has seen the longest streak of hot days, and it feels as though the heat will stay around for a while longer.
Chuseok holiday season’s arrival is a welcoming sign as it will hopefully signal the arrival of autumn and cooler weather. The old Korean adage says that autumn is the season for the sky to be high, and horses to fatten.
It is not just the horses but we humans as well that plump up during this season.
In Oriental medicine, spring and summer are the seasons during which our body’s qi projects outward and grows while autumn is when the expanded qi is gathered and harvested. Hence, it is our natural tendency to gain a bit of weight during autumn. It is known that our appetite for food does increase during autumn.
This seasonal rise of appetites is affected by sunlight exposure and hormones. As the days shorten and nights lengthen, serotonin (a hormone that directly affects our appetite) levels become lower in our bodies, and emotional states can go down while appetites go up.
Also as the ambient temperature drops, we use more energy in order to maintain body temperature, and our response is to consume more food in order to replenish the spent energy, resulting in increased appetites.
On top of such natural tendencies that contribute to our seasonal weight gain, Chuseok, one of Korea’s two biggest holiday season, is right around the corner.
As fall is traditionally a harvest season during which crops are bountiful, holiday meals are accordingly sumptuous. With the increased appetites, having easy access to such great festive foods makes it difficult to moderate our diets.
Although resisting temptation is easier said than done, eating wisely can definitely help you spend the holidays with joy without feeling self-conscious about it afterwards.
Eat food the right way
The first step to eating wisely is to plan out your caloric intake.
In general, the recommended daily caloric intake for average adults is about 2,000 kcal for women and 2,500 kcal for men. While that is the norm, keeping up with this caloric restriction is not easy with fatty Chuseok holiday foods.
Taking typical Chuseok holiday dishes for example, a single meal portion for jeon or bindaetteok (traditional pancakes) is about 200-240 kcal, galbijjim (steamed short rib stew) about 530 kcal and my personal favorite, manduguk (dumpling soup), about 480 kcal. On top of regular meals, Chuseok songpyeon (rice cake) is about 100 kcal for four pieces.
It is quite easy then to consume a whole day’s caloric intake in a single meal.
Fortunately, the classic holiday vegetable dishes, most noticeably seasoned vegetable dishes, are about 30 kcal to 50 kcal per portion.
It then makes sense to reach for the vegetables first to quench the initial hunger. Eating such foods with lower calories and plenty of fibers first will make you feel fuller earlier so that you can consume less of the high-calorie foods.
Eating wisely in fact begins with cooking with fewer calories.
Jeon dishes can incorporate more mushrooms and vegetables rather than meat. For meat dishes, cuts with less fat content can be used. Instead of deep or pan frying, grilling and boiling are preferable.
Another difficult but important step to eating wisely is to moderate the overall meal amount. As there are more varieties than usual on a holiday meal table, it becomes way too easy to eat too much in one single meal. Keeping the normal amount for non-holiday meals in your head as a comparison chart can help you track the amount of food eaten while tasting all your favorite dishes. Individual plates to portion your foods also helps you gauge how much you have taken from the entire table.
Using a small individual plate has been known to make you feel fuller psychologically. Eating slowly while chewing food 20 to 30 times can also help you make feel fuller earlier so that you don’t overeat.
Drinking alcohol in moderation is also recommended. In our bodies, breaking down alcohol takes priority over breaking down other nutrients, meaning that the food you eat with alcohol is stored as fat to be used later as energy. Eating fatty holiday foods while drinking alcohol can ensure holiday weight gain.
As it sometimes is impossible to moderate the amount of food that you eat, the next best thing you can do is exercise a bit.
Although it can be difficult to maintain an even level of physical workout during a family holiday season, you can participate in some traditional activities or even simply take a walk outside with your family to add a bit of physical exertion.
Once in a while, I meet some people who plan to entirely skip some meals as they are afraid of weight gain. It is unadvisable as the stress of not eating can result in binge eating when you do eat, and it can be even less healthy.
Chuseok is a joyous time for us Koreans. Being a little bit more mindful and willing yourself a little bit more can make your holiday healthier and more enjoyable.
The writer practices Oriental medicine at the UN
Oriental Medical Clinic in Hannam-dong, Seoul.