5 Tips To Avoid Weight Gain Over Christmas

Christmas is a time to get together with your friends and family and enjoy the festive cheer. I am NOT going to be the party pooper and tell you to avoid treats, alcohol and be in bed by 10pm. It won’t be happening in my house and so I won’t expect it to happen in your house either.  However, it is a good plan to think about limiting the damage that all of this partying will have on your body.

Do you know that the average weight gain over the Christmas period is a whopping 5lbs to 10lbs? Many people happily get through 6000 calories just on Christmas Day alone. That is alot of calories and they will tend to stick around on your hips and your thighs for a long while after the holiday season.

Here are a few tips that you can implement which will limit the damage.

 Christmas tip 1 – Plan Ahead for Your Christmas Celebrations

 

I tend to advise my clients to stick to a 80%/ 20% rule over Christmas. That simply means that if you plan to be ‘good’ 80% of the time then you can feel less guilty for being ‘naughty’ for the remaining 20% of the time. When I say the word plan I really do mean plan the events into your diary. I assume that your diary is starting to look really busy with parties, get togethers and events. Count these events up and allow them  to be your ‘splurge ‘meals, then make sure the rest of the time you eat as cleanly as possible with nutritious balanced meals.
If we think that on average in one week we will be having 35 meals ( 7 days with 5 meals a day ) This means out of those 35 meals, 28 will be healthy and nutritious and then that means that 7 of them are allowed to be not so good. The festive seasons tend to be spread out for atleast two weeks so we can say that out of the 70 meals that we will be having, 56 will be good and 14 can be allowed to be naughty.
Allow yourself some treats and let loose.

 Christmas tip 2 – Snack attack

 

The problem is that we are surrounded with temptation to graze all of the time.  Huge boxes of chocolates are so cheap and tend to find their way into your trolley. The big tubs of Quality Street and Celebration are only about £4 or £5 and seem a great buy but picking at the little chocolates every time you pass becomes hard to resist. They really do whack up your calorie intake.
A better choice of snack would be a variety of nuts. Pistachios are a great one as having to peel them open each time really slows down the amount of nuts that you consume in one sitting.
Cooking your own popcorn is really easy and would be a very healthy alternative to splurging on more sugary snacks.

 Christmas tip 3 – Which drinks should you avoid and which ones are not as bad?

 

It’s Christmas and alcohol is in abundance.
Alcohol is high in empty calories. By empty I mean that they do not serve your body with any nutritional content. So with alcohol you may want to find how many calories your favourite tipple contains.
Beer,  stout, cider, cocktails, creamy drinks and alcopops unfortunately are the one’s to avoid. They tend to be really high in calories.
Red wine, white wine, clear spirits and champagne are lower in calories ( they are still empty calories but do have less calories than a glass of Bailey’s. I love Bailey’s though and I have just bought a bottle for Christmas – I never really have it at any other time of the year )
If you do have spirits be mindful of the mixers that you add to them. Tonics and soda waters tend to be lower in calories than juices, cokes etc.

It increases our tendency to reach out for salty, fatty snacks to accompany the alcohol. You get home after your night out and tend to have the ‘munchies’ and either order a takeaway meal or dive into the crisps and salty snacks.
I would recommend that you implement the 80 to 20% rule again when you are drinking. Have a bottle of water handy and sip at it throughout the night to limit the damage. You will feel so much better for it the next day too.

Drink plenty of water when you get home too, atleast a pint of water before bed. Add a pinch of Pink Himalayan salt to the water as it will help your adrenal glands as they will be trying to raise the sodium levels in your body whilst dropping the potassium levels. So be kind to your body and help it to recover whilst you fall asleep.

 Christmas tip 4 –  Exercise

 

The first thing we tend to drop over the busy Christmas time is our exercise routines. The gyms are so much quieter in December. Instead plan in some exercise sessions at home, there are so many apps and YouTube videos to help you keep active, motivated and in shape.
Try and fit in some walking sessions over the festive season as it is a great way of keeping active, clearing your head and enjoying the outdoors.

Christmas tip 5  – Forgive yourself and get back on track

 

So if you do accidentally go overboard, it isn’t the end of the world. Don’t feel like that you have failed or punish yourself. No need for all of that, just rule a line under it and get back on track.
The New Year is just around the corner and then you will have plenty of opportunity to tap into all of the fitness and health motivational tips which will be in abundance.

Have a wonderful Christmas and enjoy yourself, you deserve it!