How do you avoid getting fat over this Christmas Period? ‘Tis the season to be jolly, after all.
With delicious roast meals aplenty, eggnog, beer, wine, cheese, pies, and an assortment of sweets at your disposal — all lovingly made by your relative — how do you avoid getting fat?
Heck, even attempting to moderate consumption can rack up the calories — let alone when your family peer-pressures you into an extra few glasses of eggnog, that extra slither of pie, or that third helping of ham.
For many, going to the gym to offset your spiking caloric intake is out of the question.
How to Lose Fat Over Christmas?
So what do you do to avoid getting fat?
And what do you do to avoid getting fat without being a complete square, you party pooper?
Well, there are a few strategies you can adopt to ensure you don’t gain too much fat this Christmas period.
Intermittent Fasting
This first one is a little more controversial, but it shouldn’t be too hard to follow.
After indulging in a big, boozy dinner, many of you simply won’t have an appetite until the following lunchtime where it’ll be time to reheat the leftovers.
While Intermittent Fasting boasts a host of benefits, ranging from improved insulin sensitivity, lower blood sugar, autophagy, lower inflammation, etc, we will exploit the immediate utility of intermittent fasting.
And we recommend you follow a 16:8 Intermittent Fasting plan on days around a big meal or family get-together.
In layman’s terms, just skip breakfast.
Have a black coffee or two with plenty of water to flush out any lingering toxins, and hopefully, your hunger should be locked up until lunch.
By avoiding breakfast, you’re precluding yourself from an extra 500-1000 or so calories that you don’t really need.
Most of you won’t be partaking in any vigorous exercise the morning before or after a huge meal… which leads us to our second point.
Walk
Even if it’s for 10-15 minutes around the block, post meal insulin secretions can drop during mild cardio following a hearty meal.
The morning after a massive meal, you can help facilitate digestion and burn some unwanted calories by doing a little fasted cardio.
And by fasted cardio, we mean just a brisk walk for 30 mins after a black coffee — not a sub 40 minute 10K!
Keeping active around this time of year can be difficult if you’re nursing a second-trimester belly from overeating.
But there isn’t much excuse to significantly piling on the pounds.
Granted, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is still quite a while away.
Drinking Spirits Instead of Beer or Eggnog
A lot of you out there will drink eggnog as part of your holiday tradition; however, as I can’t physically stop you from drinking, I would advise either one of two things:
1) drink whiskey straight up
2) mix your spirits with diet soda
A shot (1.5 fl.oz) of bourbon is roughly 100-110 calories, while a half-pint of eggnog clocks in at around 250 calories.
A small serving of vodka with diet soda is slightly less than 100 calories.
This will keep your total calories down if you’re going to drink alcohol.
You can keep your heavy drinking uncle company as he sinks a crate of bud light, but you can join him with a neat Bulleit or Jack and Diet instead.
Likewise, ladies, you can keep your cool wine aunt company with a vodka, lime, and soda instead of a couple of bottles of chardonnay.
White Meat instead of Dark
Some traditions may differ in other parts of the world.
Typically speaking, in the UK, turkey and/or ham is served as part of a Christmas Meal.
If you can, try to stick to white meat if it is on the menu.
Yes, dark poultry meats are brimming with healthy nutrients and are, overall, tastier, but they’re also fattier, racking up a higher caloric total.
Dark meat contains around 1/3 more calories, due to its higher fat content, than white meat.
And lean ham contains roughly 20% more calories than turkey breast.
The aim of the game is to stay the same during this timeframe.
Realistically, you’re not going to get much leaner over this period.
So it’s in your best interest to momentarily sacrifice some foods to not have to spend a couple of months dieting to get back on track for summer.
Some households might serve ham — but if it’s possible, avoid ham and opt for turkey or chicken breast instead.
If this is out of the question, you might have to make an according sacrifice: eat less dessert or avoid the cheese platter at the end.
No word of a lie, but I managed to gain 20lb over one Christmas period by eating an exorbitant amount of cheese and drinking several bottles of cabernet sauvignon in my early 20s.
You think you’re invincible, but calories make fools of us all.
Drink Diet Soda/Sparkling Water Before Meal Time
In some households, overeating is very difficult to avoid.
A warmhearted grandma spent 12 hours prepping a hearty, wholesome meal, but you don’t want to let her down too much.
Try drinking either diet soda or sparkling water to stave off any hunger pangs or desire to overeat at meal time.
This is a calorie-free way to kill hunger pangs before meal times, to prevent you from overeating.
Load Up on Veggies
You can hypothetically have seconds or even thirds if you carefully moderate your meat and carbs intake while going ham on the veggies.
As we all know, veggies are high in dietary fiber, and fiber can drastically increase your satiety — making you feel fuller for longer, too.
Also, veggies are far less calorie-dense than some cuts of meat and carb sources present at the table — potato salad, sweet potatoes, beans, rice, etc. — as long as they’re NOT buttered.
So load up on veggies to avoid loading up on other food sources that might push you into a caloric surplus.
Anything Else?
Aside from all this, here are 10 tips from an old Herculean Strength post to help you with killing hunger pangs.
Entering a caloric deficit for whatever reason can be difficult to sustain, especially if calories are lowered too quickly or sharply.
But, whatever your reason for dieting may be, very few people can get away with lowering their calories and not feel hungry in the process — jeopardizing one’s caloric deficit by assuaging that hunger with calorie-laden foods.
- Drink Water
- Drink Coffee
- Drink my Magic Fat-Burning Potion
- Drink sparkling water/diet sodas
- Eat sugar-free Jello
- Eat Shirataki noodles
- Pile on the salad
- Eat more protein
- Make your food spicy
- Eat more fiber
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