This is YOUR BODY

And this is your body at the end of the summer holidays

- LORRAINE KEARNEY

It takes a steely determination and an incorruptible will to stick to healthy eating and drinking over the festive season.

Some people may be so blessed, but the majority of us fling ourselves body and soul into the buffet, washed down with the contents of the bar. We know it's not the best path to longevity, but really, faced with trifle and Rosé, what's a girl to do?

Nevermind, we're here to help you make better choices - if only through telling you what bad choices do to your body. Yes folks, welcome to the perils of overindulgence.

The first and most obvious is that overeating can make you overweight. When you eat more kilojoules than you expend, your body generally stores these additional kilojoules as fat. Various studies have found that on average, people gain about 0.7 kg over the season.

This extra weight is often lost after you head back to work, but chronic overconsumption can lead to obesity and all its risks, like metabolic syndrome, which includes high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar levels, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels. Taken together, these increase your risk of heart disease, stroke and type two diabetes.