After a heavy week: why you feel puffy, and what helps

A wedding, a festival, a week of visitors, a stretch of meals that were bigger and richer than usual. Afterwards you feel heavy and a little puffy, your rings are tight, your face looks fuller in the mirror and your head feels slow. If the scale has jumped by two or three kilos in a few days, that is the part worth understanding first.

It is very unlikely to be what you fear. When you eat more carbohydrate than usual, your body stores some of it, and that store holds on to water with it, several times its own weight. Add more food moving through your system than normal and a few salty meals, and you are carrying extra water rather than much else. It arrived quickly and it tends to leave quickly too, over a few ordinary days.

So the way back is unglamorous and it works. Go straight back to your usual portions, starting with the very next meal rather than tomorrow or Monday. Keep carbohydrates in, at normal amounts, rather than cutting them out. Put protein on every plate, fill up on vegetables and some fruit, drink water steadily through the day, and go easy on very salty and packaged food for a few days. A gentle walk after meals helps, and it is enough.

What does not help is punishment. Skipping meals for long stretches, crash dieting, or trying to exercise the week off tends to leave you more tired and no lighter in any way that lasts. For women over 60 there is a particular reason to be careful: going long periods without eating costs you muscle, and muscle is the thing you most want to keep, because it is what gets you out of a chair and keeps you steady on your feet. It can also be genuinely unsafe if you take regular medication, and blood sugar medicines especially.

The thing most likely to make the real difference is the one people skip. If the heavy week also came with late nights, television until all hours and short sleep, that alone will show up as a puffy face and a foggy head. Turning the television off an hour before bed and getting a few proper nights of sleep often does more for how you look and feel than anything you change on your plate.

Be patient with the mirror for a few days and the rest usually sorts itself out. This is general food and lifestyle guidance, not medical advice. If the swelling is one-sided, came on suddenly, affects your breathing, or does not settle after a week of normal eating, that is worth seeing your doctor about rather than waiting.