Do you really gain weight on vacation? Do you really have to wait two hours after eating to be able to swim? Does eating ice cream make you fat? Does sweating amount to losing weight? Update with nutritionist dietician Hélène Lemaire.
Summer nutrition is not an exact science. All the more so when it carries with it its share of received ideas. One of the best known is the belief that you should wait at least two hours to bathe after eating. In question: the risk of thermal shock, which can lead, in the worst case, to a heart attack or stroke. “In reality, it’s no problem to bathe right after a meal.assures Hélène Lemaire, dietitian nutritionist. If you have ingested a normal amount of food, in good conditions, so by chewing well and stopping when you have eaten enough, you can bathe; especially if the water is not freezing.”
The expert is categorical: swimming will not stop digestion. “It requires energy work: the blood will flow to the digestive system to process the nutrientsshe explains. With a normal amount of food ingested, we are able to do physical exercise, such as 15 minutes of breaststroke or crawl.” Be careful, however, after a meal that is too copious and heavily watered; bathing in very cold water can cause discomfort.
No, ice cream does not make you fat
Another common misconception is that eating ice cream makes you fat. It’s always the same principle: if you have an ice cream, but, moreover, you eat less at the next meal, it will not make you fatsays Hélène Lemaire. It’s all a question of managing the quantity to eat during the day”. This goes for ice cream on the beach in the afternoon as well as for the one that serves as dessert during lunch. “Two scoops of ice cream or a small popsicle amounts to a portion of sweet dairy, so it’s far from dramatic”continues the nutritionist dietician.
The word vacation does not rhyme with weight gain
Same story about donuts or fuss on the beach. “Holidays are also made to savor things that we do not have the opportunity to eat in normal times”, insists Hélène Lemaire. With the high summer heat, she finds that some tend to think that sweating amounts to losing weight. “It’s wrongdecides the expert. This is equivalent to losing water, which we will recover anyway because our body will ask us to drink.”
The dietitian nutritionist evokes another received idea: that according to which one gains weight on vacation. “It’s not always true, I have patients who lose weightshe assures. There is no longer the stress of work and we have more time to take care of ourselves”. For her, even if we go to a restaurant, we eat less, because we are more in the pleasure of discovery.
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