A few Facts – The average person will:
- Consume 7,000 calories (yes that’s right!) on Christmas day.
- Gain 5lbs during the Christmas period. That’s an over-eat of about 20,000 calories!
Now, gaining 5lbs (2.3 kg) is quite an impressive thing to accomplish over December! However, this doesn’t always have to be the case. Obviously you don’t want to restrict the foods you eat and have a boring Christmas, but if you follow the guidelines below, with a few small changes you can eat the food you enjoy AND prevent yourself gaining those unwanted pounds over Christmas!
Don’t skip meals!
Its Christmas day and you have a huge meal to look forward to, so you skip breakfast to limit your calorie intake. Or you may have a small lunch and then save yourself by not eating anything else until the Christmas party in the evening!
Eating small meals every 2-3 hours is the best way to keep your metabolism high, which means you will burn a higher amount of calories throughout the day, compared to someone who eats less regularly.
Eating regularly also prevents a rapid fall in blood glucose levels, which can trigger hunger (Roberts, 2000). Therefore by eating small portions every 2-3 hours you will consume less throughout the day without being tempted to snack in between. You must start the day with a decent breakfast! Eggs, bacon, natural yoghurt, muesli (no added sugar) and porridge (made with whole milk) are all brilliant breakfast choices that will keep you full! If you do have a Christmas party in the evening, eating regular healthy meals during the day will mean that you consume fewer calories on unhealthy treats and snacks later on.
Avoid Sugar
If you have read any of my other blogs you will know by now that excess carbohydrate is much more likely to cause weight gain than consuming excess fat.
There are some food switches you can make to limit the amount of calories and sugar you consume. For Example:
Swap Ice Cream for Cream – Cream is a lower calorie and lower sugar option compared with ice cream. A serving of cream (Waitrose) contains 56 kcal & 1.7g of sugar, where as a serving (2 scoops) of Ice cream (Carte D’or) contains 100kcal and 12g sugar.
Swap regular Potato’s for Sweet Potato’s – Sweet potato’s are higher in fibre and a lower GI source of carbohydrate than regular spuds!
Limit the amount of pastry you eat – This may be hard given that canapés, mince pies etc… all contain pastry, however if there are alternatives on offer chose them. For example chose Christmas pudding over mince pies! A mince pie is 259kcal, containing 39g of sugar where as a serving of Christmas pudding is only 160kcal, containing 27g of sugar.
Get Baking!
Home baked foods are usually lower in calories and sugar compared with supermarket alternatives! Therefore by cooking food yourself, you can control exactly what goes into it!
When cooking aim to use real butter, olive oil, or lard to cook with over vegetable oils or other spreads!
Christmas Dinner
You can’t really argue much against a Christmas lunch/dinner! Lean protein with lots and lots of veggies! The only problem is that it’s usually the food following lunch that the problem!
Make sure you eat lots of Christmas dinner, as the high protein and fibre content of the food will mean that you are less likely to become hungry later. If you do get hungry later on, make sure you have some left over turkey and veg before you start eating all the sweets and mince pies on offer!
Alcohol
This is probably the biggest problem when it comes to trying to keep the weight off over Christmas! Below is a table of the calories in a selection of alcoholic drinks:
| Pint of Beer (bitter) | 182 kcal |
| Pint or Larger | 247 kcal |
| Glass of Red Wine (175ml) | 119 kcal |
| Glass of White Wine (120ml) | 89 kcal |
| Glass of Champagne (120ml) | 92 kcal |
| Sherry (50ml) | 68 kcal |
So, before you turn down your second helping of desert and say yes to your third glass of wine, remember that it contains calories too!
Exercise
The one thing people look forward to over Christmas is their time off… so why not make use of it! Exercising harder and more often over Christmas will at least help you burn some of those extra calories you over indulged in.
Weights Training – Muscular hypertrophy can only occur if you are in caloric surplus, so why not take advantage and start lifting. Weights training will prevent all the surplus calories being stored as fat, as some will be put to good use in increasing lean muscle!
Interval Training – Forget going for long runs! Repeated short bursts of intense maximum effort exercise, followed by a period of rest is the best way to burn a large amount of calories in a short period of time. Further more, your metabolism will remain elevated for a few hours after you’ve finished working out, so you will still be burning more calories without any extra effort!
As weights training is technically interval training why not combine them both? A simple circuit can be made in a few minutes. Choose 6 exercises (3 upper and 3 lower body) and perform alternately in a circuit, completing 10-15 repetitions of each exercise without rest between them. Once you have completed the circuit you can then rest for 2-3 minutes. Perform the circuit 3-6 times through.
And before you say it… yes girls, you can do this too!
For example:
Split Squats x 10 each leg
Pull Ups x 10-15
Dumbell Clean & Press
Abdominal Crunches x 20
Good Mornings x 10
Press Ups with weighted vest x 10-15
Rest: 2-3 minutes, Repeated 3-6 times through
Control
Probably the most important factor… If you cant control yourself and indulge in what ever you fancy the inevitable will happen… You WILL gain weight. However you can still enjoy your Christmas and control what you eat… at the end of the day will you miss that extra mince pie after having had two already?
Mike-Macfarlane.com 