Healthy Eating During the Christmas Holidays

Sticking to your healthy eating plan when your fridge is filled with vegetables and there’s no temptation in sight can be much easier than sitting two feet away from a buffet table loaded with gingerbread cookies and eggnog every night for a week. Once the holidays come around, you’ve got food filled parties and family gatherings to attend every night so it’s important to have a strategy to avoid over indulging until January rolls around.

Stay Full

Having a healthy breakfast that morning and filling up on fruit and veggies before you head to your next Christmas party will reduce your cravings for all the cakes and cookies you’ll be faced with. Once you do decide to grab a plateful from the buffet table, load it with the leaner meats, vegetables, and whole wheat crackers. If you still need a sweet fix after that, limit yourself to just one then position yourself further away from that table.

Drink Smart

Alcoholic drinks can be loaded with hidden calories so be aware that what you’re drinking could be sabotaging you. Choose a lower calorie beer or mix spirits with a sugar free type of mix. Alternating alcoholic beverages with a glass of water or low calorie juice can greatly reduce the amount of extra calories you’re consuming.

If having eggnog and hot chocolate is a tradition you just can’t give up, limit yourself to just one of those types of drinks. These beverages are loaded with fat and sugar, so drinking too much of them too many nights in a row can destroy the benefits of all the other healthy eating habits you’ve been practicing. Another option could be watering these beverages down with some skim milk to cut out a bit of the extra fat.

Bring Healthy Options

A lot of gatherings around the holidays tend to be potluck style parties. Especially if you know your friends aren’t the type to bring healthier options, be sure that what you bring is geared towards healthy eating. You may even find that quite a few other people will enjoy the healthier options you’ve provided them.

Sticking to any workout regimen you currently have can be great incentive to stick to your healthy eating routine as well. If you throw in the towel over the holidays you’ll probably be wracked with guilt throughout the entire month of January. Forgetting about healthy eating is a slippery slope, so telling yourself you’re still doing a good job will help motivate you to stay at least somewhat strict in front of that cookie platter.