Nutrition
How to Survive the Christmas Feast
Enjoy Christmas feasts without guilt. Five simple strategies help you savor the holidays while staying on track with your health goals.
Nutrition
Enjoy Christmas feasts without guilt. Five simple strategies help you savor the holidays while staying on track with your health goals.
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Ah yes, another year drawing to a close. Once more we're facing one of the year's most important questions:
How do I survive the Christmas feast?
Okay, okay – of course we're asking this with a wink. ;-) But we want to share a few tips on how you can truly enjoy the Christmas holidays.
First and foremost: From a purely physiological perspective, three or four days out of an entire year are not decisive.
Just as you won't get slimmer in three days or muscular from three training sessions.
Four days are about 1% of the entire year – if you've preferred minimally processed foods 80–90% of the time, you don't need to worry about one more gingerbread cookie at Christmas. Think about it!
Of course, you can also choose the "total escalation" variant at Christmas…
The Christmas meal itself can be optimized with a couple of small tips and tricks by paying attention to quality, as always.
Example: Just a few years ago, research showed that potatoes are significantly more satiating than pasta and rice (1). If you want to go all-in with carbohydrates, you could prefer boiled potatoes or even potato dumplings rather than pasta.
Another example: Chocolate Santa Clauses and Christmas men these days don't just come in the very sugary full-milk version, but also with a higher cocoa content. Usually tastes just as good or better – and above all, it's healthier.
In many non-vegan households, there will be roast or some other type of meat. From a nutritional perspective, roast isn't bad at all because it's relatively lean and provides a substantial amount of protein.
Remember: A large part of the protein you consume goes toward maintaining your lean muscle mass. Furthermore, protein has the most pronounced effect on thermogenesis – meaning up to one-third of protein calories are simply burned off.
Protein is also very satiating. So if you prioritize vegetables and protein first, then add the pasta (better: potatoes ;-) to your plate later, there's a good chance you won't overdo it.
It sounds almost like common sense, but many people don't realize that they have a daily calorie budget available.
If you likely want to eat generously in the evening – and thus aren't interested in the tips mentioned above – then of course you can eat less during the day.
Fasting, intermittent fasting, and temporary calorie restriction are tools that, from a health perspective, we in Western societies use far too rarely. Why not use them consciously over the indulgent Christmas and New Year days?
Depending on your personality type, you might also orient yourself toward the Japanese concept of hara hachi bu – stop at 80%.
Advantage: You can simply eat. From pasta salad to mascarpone, no problem. Just: You should choose smaller portions and keep your plate somewhat less full.
That would actually be a great motto for the new year – moderation is beneficial in many areas of life.
No matter how you look at it: You can, should, and will enjoy the Christmas days, even from a food perspective. So you shouldn't stress yourself or feel guilty.
Between strict asceticism and total excess, there are definitely useful tips that we hope we've given you here. :-)
We'll reach out to you again shortly before Christmas – next Sunday.
