Luckily, we are paying special attention to not putting weight on over the Christmas period, and we are trying a lot of the tricks ourself. Why not have a go at some of them and let us know how you got on… We’d love to hear what got you through Christmas without putting on a few extra pounds! For a few more hints and tips, you could check out some of the other articles that we have featured in the prevent weight gain at Christmas series:

• Easy Christmas Food Swaps for a Healthier Christmas
• Prevent Piling on the Pounds at Christmas 

For now, we are going to focus on the important tips that you will help get you through the social events this Christmas without eating and drinking too much. Are you sitting comfortably?

1. Never turn up hungry!

This is a bad idea for so many reasons. If you arrive hungry, you are going to snack throughout the day or night. If they have served dinner up for you and their other guests, you will probably overeat, more out of starvation but possibly out of politeness. If you have a healthy yet small meal before you go around there, you will be eating more healthy foods and less bad foods and this, in turn, can help you to prevent piling on the pounds at Christmas. For example, having a nice low-calorie Caesar salad before you head out to your friend’s for an evening of wine and nibbles, you will eat less of the high-calorie nibbles when you get there. You could have a sandwich before you go, a bowl of soup, whatever it is that you like, but just make sure that it is a low-calorie meal.

2. Never sit by the nibbles!

If you are at a party at a friend’s house and there is a bowl of nuts right next to you, you are probably going to eat them. If you go to a social event where there is food or nibbles, the more attention you pay to the food, the more you are likely to eat. Mingle and walk around the groups of people at the party – talk and have a good time. Isn’t that the point of a party anyway? By diverting your attention away from the food, you are less likely to eat and more likely to have a good time. You never know you might even make some friends!

3. Keep your pace!

If you are going to enjoy the munchies and nibbles, don’t tell yourself that you will only eat for the first hour or so that you are there, and then you will stop. This won’t work. You are more likely to over-eat in that first hour to compensate and chances are; you will continue to eat throughout the evening anyway, especially if you are drinking and you don’t have as much will power as you normally would. Think about it logically – when you tell yourself you can’t have something, you just want it all the time, don’t you? This brings me nicely to my next point…

4. Don’t stop yourself! 

Obviously we are not saying that you can cram as much food into your mouth as possible, we are just saying that you should never debt yourself something that you really want. If you want a piece of Christmas cake, have a piece of Christmas cake. Just don’t have two pieces of Christmas cake. There is nothing wrong with letting yourself have a treat and you might find that denying yourself this pleasure could be detrimental to your determination to not put on any weight at Christmas. If you tell yourself not to have a piece of cake, you are going to be thinking about it all the time and there is a good chance that you will give in and have four pieces of cake. Just let yourself have a naughty five minutes every now and again and you will find that, because you aren’t saying “NO!” to anything, you will find life is much easier.

5. Count your nibbles!

As much as we don’t want you to deny yourself anything, we would suggest that you keep an eye on how much you are putting in your mouth. It’s easy to stick five canapés in your mouth and only remember eating three, especially if you are drinking as well. If they are on cocktail sticks, stick the cocktail sticks in your pocket so you can keep a tally of what you’re heading. Just try to keep on top of things… as best you can!

Keep your eyes peeled for Part B of our healthy eating for Christmas tips, and make sure you check out some of the posts we’ve put up in our Christmas series! Why not have a look at some of the following:

• Prevent Piling on the Pounds over Christmas 
• Easy Christmas Food Swaps for a Healthier Christmas

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From start to finish, we’ll look at how you can make your Christmas dinner one that isn’t calorie-filled and we are about to show you how… Are you ready?

Turkey

We’ll start with the obvious – the turkey. You can’t have a Christmas day dinner without turkey, can you? The good news about turkey is that it is a pretty healthy meat anyway. There’s plenty of protein and if you remember to remove the skin, it’s pretty low in fat as well. There are lots of B vitamins packed in there, and this is great for the production of energy.

As long as you remove the skin, your Christmas dinner will be relatively healthy. Sadly the skin is often considered the best bit so it might take a bit of will power on your side to turn it down. Just by removing the skin, however, you have the option to save around 40 calories on every portion of turkey alone. If you normally have two helpings of this white meat with your Christmas dinner, that’s 80 calories saved straight away.

Swap the skin for just the white meat and that’s a potential saving of 80-100 calories straight away! It’s as easy as that.

Gravy

Gravy is well known to be high in salts and fat so if you want to make it into a healthy alternative, you should drain the fat and juices from the turkey, leave it to one side and wait for the fat to solidify on the top. Scrape this off (although it sounds pretty disgusting) and just use what is left. By doing this, you are removing the highest fat content and you can make the gravy much healthier to eat with your Christmas dinner. You should also try to avoid adding any more salt to the meal to ensure that you don’t consume too much on this festive day.

Roast Potatoes

Most of our team love our Mother’s roast potatoes, especially on Christmas day, and if you feel that you can’t live without them for this Christmas coming, have a couple but swap the rest for a jacket potato instead. 100g of potatoes that have been part boiled and roasted in olive oil will add an extra 150+ calories on your Christmas day dinner, and will also add around 5g of fat into the mix. The average baked potato has around 50-60 calories less, depending on whether you use butter or low-fat margarine. That’s one of the easiest swaps that you can make and most of us make more than one type of potato on Christmas day anyway, don’t we?

Vegetables

You can have a Christmas day dinner without a nice helping of vegetables and the good news is that these are actually very good for you… depending on how you cook and prepare them. We are all guilty of smother our vegetables with butter so try avoiding the butter altogether or swap for a low-fat spread instead. This swap alone could save you around 50-75 calories. If you don’t like the vegetables bland and without butter, why not try adding some spices or herbs to them as you are making them? You add flavour without calories when you do this and you will find that not only does your Christmas day dinner taste lovely, it’ll also be a bit healthier for you as well!

Why not add some Brussel’s sprouts to your meal? They may stink before and after you eat them (let’s not pretend they don’t make you smell…) but they are packed full of good stuff including B vitamins and vitamin C, and have anti-oxidant properties which can help you to protect yourself against things like cancers and other potentially fatal conditions.

Christmas Pudding

You can’t have a Christmas day dinner without the Christmas pudding and this is one of the most calorific parts of the dinner. Well, that’s if you put aside the snacks you are going to be munching down on throughout the day. The pudding itself will be pretty low in fat content whilst still being high in carb content. There are some good things in there though – lots of calcium and iron, potassium and B vitamins.

When it comes to the custard, there are a couple of swaps that you can make to ensure that your Christmas day dinner isn’t too calorie filled. Making it with low fat milk is a good start, or you could even get reduced fat/calorie custard ready-made in cans these days which basically does all the hard work for you. It will be healthier if you make it yourself, of course, but who really has time for that on top of everything else on Christmas day?

So there you have them – the easiest swaps that you can make to your Christmas day dinner to make it much healthier. By doing these simple tricks, you could lose up to 500 calories and even more in some cases!

We will continue to bring you the very best hints and tips on how to prevent yourself from getting fat at Christmas time. Why not keep your eyes peeled for more…?

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