21 November 2024

Can 2 takeaways really make you put on 2kg?

Ugh, we all know that feeling.

You had Fish & Chips on Friday after a busy week, fully intending to prepare a healthy meal on Saturday night.

Then your Saturday doesn’t go to plan, and you end up grabbing a Domino’s on the way home.

You step on the scales on Sunday morning to see that you’ve gone up.

So much for the last 2 weeks of salads and spin class!

It's really quite demoralising.

...and you feel yuck.

...and actually quite thirsty.

...and you haven’t slept well either.

Which all makes it quite hard to motivate yourself to start your Sunday with a mile walk across the fields.

In actual fact, a large part of that extra weight may be due to the saltiness of your takeaway meals.

After all, part of why they are so tasty is because they come with a generous serving of salt to increase the yumminess.

And that salt means that your body has to hold on to extra water whilst your kidneys filter it all through.

And we all know that water is heavy, right?

The salt also interferes with your energy storage system, making it harder to release energy when you need it.

And that means that not only do you not have the spring in your step to get you out and about, but you’re also likely to be craving energy-rich foods whilst your metabolism finds its balance again.

So whilst the 2 takeaways may seem to have caused the pounds to have piled on, most of the impact actually comes from the knock-on effect of how you act afterwards.

If you can convince yourself to eat normally, and get those hiking boots on for a good stomp across the fields, the chances are that when your body eventually releases the excess water the numbers on your scales will trickle down again.

But if you give in to that slumpy feeling and spend Sunday on the sofa with the biscuit tin, those 2 takeaways will have set in motion a bigger impact that will be much harder to shift.