How to manage a diet at Christmas time

December is a synonym of parties, lunches and company dinners, family gatherings and Christmas, of course. There is no lack of temptations in this joyful season, which consequently also brings worries about excesses and the probability of gaining a few kilos.

If you identify yourself with this situation, stay until the end because I’m going to give you some tips to know how to manage your diet during these days and not have the worry of arriving in January with 3 or 4kg more.

What happens at Christmas time?

In addition to multiple company lunches and dinners, the gym, friends and family lunches and dinners, supermarket and coffee shelves are full of sweets typical of this time of year, putting our ability to resist to the test all the time throughout the month!

What you have to remember is, the problem is not the week between christmas and new year, but your eating habits all year round! It’s not because you eat some sweets at Christmas dinner that it will harm your body composition. The problem is that during this season we are stimulated from the end of November until January to consume extra calories, putting aside our eating and training routine and establishing the mentality of “January 1st, I start my diet!”.And every year it’s the same thing, the same cycle of thoughts and frustration that will never bring you a lasting result.

Strategies for sticking to your diet:

1. Don’t start buying sweets and chocolates at the very beginning of the month: The fact that you have them at home makes it much harder to resist. After all, who can eat just one chocolate?

2. Don’t skip meals and don’t go hungry to socials: the mentality of “I won’t eat a snack so I can eat at the company dinner” is totally wrong! You’ll arrive at dinner with a much bigger appetite and the ability to resist all the temptations at the table will be much smaller! So choose to have balanced meals during the day, so that at dinner you can easily moderate the extras.

3. Prioritize foods rich in protein: choose foods such as eggs, yoghurt, cottage cheese during snacks in order to maintain satiety throughout the day.

4. Don’t eat everything just because it is a special day: look at all the available options first and plan your choices! If you are more into sweets and really want to eat a Christmas dream, then on that day avoid starters (or vice versa).

5. Make the best option within your tastes: Avoid starters with too much fat such as cheese, patés and croquettes/rissoles, avoid fried or saucy main courses, preferring roasted or boiled ones and accompany them with plenty of salad, and choose your favourite dessert, but in moderate quantity, rather than eating a lighter one and not being satisfied.

6. Share your choices: if you organise dinner at your place, or go to friends’ houses, offer to bring a road or dessert with ingredients and quantities that you know and fit in with your everyday life.

7. Watch your net calories: not only from juices and alcoholic drinks, but also from olive oil! Did you know that 1 tablespoon of olive oil (10g) has 90 kcal? That a glass of wine (150 mL) has around 150 kcal?

8. Keep your physical activity levels: besides going to the gym or doing your regular sport, encourage your family and friends to go for a walk after meals.

Always remember that Christmas is only 2 days and not the whole month and you can eat anything but not everything!

If you do a good planning of these days and events you will be able to enjoy much more without getting into the despair of running after the damages.

Enjoy this season in a balanced way.