Luckily, there are plenty of tips that you can use to ensure that you don’t suffer with putting on the pounds at Christmas time. We’ve looked at why you shouldn’t turn up hungry and how sitting by the nibbles is a very bad idea. We know that it’s not wise to lose track of how many nibbles you have popped in your mouth and also why you should never deny yourself a festive treat – see it’s not all bad news! It’s time to to focus for the final five tips on how to make it through Christmas without getting fat.

6. Swap it! 

We talk about some of the healthier swaps that you can make in Healthy Christmas Snacks for a Very Merry Christmas. We won’t repeat ourselves. We also discuss some of the easiest things that you can swap in Easy Christmas Food Swaps for a Healthier Christmas. Sometimes the smallest of swaps can make the world of difference. Even doing something as tiny as changing your dips could save you over 100 calories so it is well worth investigating! Just in case you needed a little bit of gentle persuasion, let us hit you with the facts:

a – Swap the sausage meat stuffing for a orange, cranberry and roast chestnut stuffing and you double the flavour and cut out over 100 calories per 100g. 

b – Swap the butter on your vegetables for a spritz of light oil olive and some herbs and you will cut out 40-50 calories per serving.

c – Swap the brandy butter with your Christmas pudding for low-fat custard and you’re losing about 50-70 calories. 

7. Slow down on the booze… 

It’s easy to get carried away when you’ve had a drink. It’s easy to lose tracks of exactly what you’ve eating or been drinking. Alcohol is filled with empty calories and it blurs your judgement which brings a double whammy. You’re going to be ingesting empty calories with the booze and once it hits you, you’re likely to overeat on the nibbles, overfill your plate at the buffet, and eat more than the required amount of chocolate cake to satisfy one person. By all means let yourself have a good time and enjoy a few tipples but just be aware that when you get carried away, so does your focus.

8. Swap the booze!

If you don’t want to cut out the booze in your festive season (who could blame you) try exchanging your usual tipples with something a bit easier on your body and lighter in calories. Switching wine to vodka and light soda, for example, can cut out a whole bunch of calories and if you are usually a beer-drinker, swapping to a spirit can make the world of difference. You will also notice that these drinks with mixers are going to hit you less noticeably than wine or beer. Try some of these easy swaps:

a – Swap a Long Island iced tea (400 calories) or similar cocktail for a glass of white wine (100 calories)

b – Swap a martini (200 calories) for a light bottle of beer which only as 105 calories

9. Eat more fruit!

It has been shown that water-based fruits such as cantaloupe, blueberries, apples, oranges, strawberries, peaches and watermelon help to make you feel full, and help you to feel fuller for longer. Grab an apple as you jump in the car to go to that fancy restaurant for dinner and you won’t eat too many calories with your meal. There are vegetables which can have the same effect too including – cucumber celery, broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, carrots, squash and tomatoes. Leafy greens are a good idea as well – these are in abundance at this time of year and they certainly taste delicious. On top of that, they are filled with nutrients which can make getting through the colder winter months much easier. It’ll even give your immune system a boost!

10. Look at what you’re drinking! 

You will be surprised at how many cocktails you are putting in your body from drinks that AREN’T alcohol based. Soda, for example, is well known to be particularly bad for you if you are trying to watch your weight. Your average serving can contain around 100 calories as well almost ten teaspoons of sugar. What’s the point in that? You wouldn’t eat a spoonful of sugar so why would you drink that much sugar? You wouldn’t add that to your morning cup of tea, would you?

Fancy coffees are also a danger drink to keep your eye out for this Christmas. We know that you are going to want to enjoy that Irish coffee but these “posh” coffees are already calorie-laden without you having to add booze to the mix. Sugar and cream also add even more calories so you should probably think twice about it before you enjoy it…

Ideally, you will want to drink as much water as you can during this rather toxic festive season. Water helps to flush the bad stuff out of your body and, when you are drinking, can prevent some pretty nasty hangovers. You don’t have to go as far as drinking a glass of water in between every alcoholic drink but having a couple of glasses or bottles of water throughout the evening is only going to benefit you in the morning… we’ve all had one of those dehydrated hangovers! We know how it feels!

So there you have it – the second part of our Top 10 Tips to Make it Through Winter without Getting Fat! If you’ve not seen Part A, take a peek! Also, if you have any great tips of your own, feel free to throw them our way. Every little helps!

**Photos sourced from Pinterest.com

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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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So, we are going to dive right on in and bring to you the very best tips to avoid piling on the pounds at Christmas:

Understand the Three Causes

According to researchers, there are three main reasons why people tend to put on weight at Christmas. The first reason is because they get lazy. When was the last time you went to the gym? Your world has been taking over by demanding children and hard to get your hands on Christmas gifts. You need new sneakers but you can’t possibly treat yourself right now because you have even more gifts to buy. You also need to make sure that you have all the right foods in, that the place is getting cleaned because you have the family coming over to yours next year and in short, you have very little time to dedicate to yourself as it is, let alone going to the gym or going for a fun outside. Plus it’s getting cold now, right?

The second reason why you are likely to put weight on at Christmas is because it’s getting cold and you have a tendency to comfort eat. Why would you eat a cold, healthy salad on a crisp winter evening when you can have a nice calorie-laden dinner followed by a rich cake and lots of sugar-filled custard. We are all guilty of doing it! Comfort eating out of cold and stress is the worst!

Finally, we come to our third reason – over-indulging. You want that extra slice of cake and custard and it’s fine because “It’s Christmas!”. It’s okay to let yourself go a little overboard at this festive time of year but remember that this things are still only okay in moderation. That’s the first thing you need to learn!

Smart Choices

When it comes to learning how not to get fat over Christmas, you need to understand that you have choices to make and the right choices will be good for you whereas the wrong choices will be bad. This is common sense when you think about it but common sense and reasoning seem to out the window once the Christmas lights are switched on!

The average person will put on between five and ten pounds over the four weeks surrounding Christmas which is pretty staggering when you think about it. This amounts to above 500 extra calories per day. That’s not hard to do – the odd luxury chocolate out of the box; these are probably worth around 100-200 calories. The skin on the turkey on Christmas day – that’s about 50-100 calories. Missing out on the butter on the vegetables can cut you down by around 50-100 calories. You could probably say no to that glass of fizzy soda too – that’ll be around another 50-100 calories depending on which one it is. Read the labels of the foods that you are over-indulging on and take a good, hard look at how many extra calories you are ingesting! Sometimes you SHOULD give up that third glass of wine to have the chocolate cake instead. Do you really need a third glass anyway?

Boozy Boozy!

Speaking of wine, booze is your enemy at this tie of year. Alcoholic drinks are filled with empty calories that will cause to put on weight, bloat out, get gassy and get drunk. Do you really want to be the drunken cousin/sister/friend/aunt at this year’s Christmas gathering? We didn’t think so…

Not only are boozy drinks filled with empty calories, they are also likely to lower your inhibitions and this can cause you to eat more than you usually would, as well as snacking when you probably shouldn’t. You’ll be surprised at how little weight you will put on weight you give up boozing just for one Christmas. One of the members of our team did it and she only put on two pounds over the four week festive period. The rest of our team averaged a weight gain of seven pounds when they carried on drinking throughout Christmas. We’re just saying…

For more information on weight loss, why not check out some of our other weight loss posts? Weight loss tips are weight loss tips all year round and you never know, you might just find whatever it is you’re looking for to avoid getting fat this Christmas!

*Funnies found on Pinterest.com

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