Do you want to ensure that you lose weight before Christmas? Do you want to be one extra dress size smaller before Christmas? Do you want to get ready for that New Year’s Eve party?
Should any of the above be the case, then you need to a pretox. You need a diet as well as an exercise plan which gets you fit and healthy.
- Diet Before Christmas
- Diet During Christmas
- Calories in Christmas Drinks
- Christmas Diet Entertaining
Diet before Christmas
The month prior to Christmas is all about partying. However, it is easy to get partied out. So make sure that you pretox. The pre-party weeklong weight loss and fitness plan relates to:
Drinking
It is highly recommended that you start the day with a glass of hot water and lemon. This stimulates your digestive system and helps your liver function effectively. You can spice it with cinnamon or ginger.
Should you wish to lose weight, it is vital to maintain your fluid intake at a consistently high level.
Water is the most effective of remaining hydrated throughout the day. Try to drink a minimum of 1.5 litres (3.5 pints) daily.
Snacking
Get clever with your snacking habits. Try not to go for those chocolate biscuits or bars of chocolate when you get the munchies at tea time. Should you be hungry then, try to eat a meal not a snack.
Recent research at the American State University of New York, Buffalo, discovered that those who consider their afternoon treat as a snack consumed 87% more food at dinner time than those who ate a full meal in the afternoon.
Should you include a certain amount of protein in your meal, you are going to remain satisfied for a longer period of time. Healthy choices could be: a tuna sandwich or two oatcakes with low fat humous.
Eating
It is vital to harness the energy in food for great health. Your overall wellbeing is partly dependent on a healthy diet, of seasonal, organic, seasonal, unprocessed, additive-free fresh foods.
When you eat vegetables, just lightly cook them, by stir-frying, dry-frying, steaming or over-roasting. During a normal day, we consume over 180 chemical additives due to our consumption of processed food and unwashed fruit and vegetables.
That means we are getting over 65,000 individual doses of chemical per year.
The whole point of detoxification is abstinence from all processed foods. You need to identify toxins, remove them and restore the healthy balance of the body.
It is time to stop eating that white bread, cereals, cakes and biscuits full of sugar. You need to replace them with fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains and sustainable fish.
Cleansing your inside and outside
If you wish to really cleanse your system and get that tummy flat for your little black dress, you could investigate colonic irrigation.
Getting rid of waste is cathartic and cleansing. It helps unite the body and the spirit in better health.
Exercise
So you have started eating seasonal, fresh fruit and vegetables. You have ceased ‘snacking’. You are drinking loads of water.
However, if you wish to see weight loss before Christmas, you need to exercise. A great way to start is walking. Get off at an earlier tube stop or bus stop and walk the remainder of the way. Don’t use the lift, walk up the escalators or take the stairs. Take a walk around the block during your lunch hour.
Get yourself a pedometer and attempt to walk 10,000 steps per day.
Should you be a regular at the gym, then you might want to go for something hardcore, like bikram yoga, a series of 26 hatha yoga postures, performed with breathing exercises in a heated room.
This series of movements has been designed to exercise each part of the body. Each pose gets the body ready for the next. This sequence maximises oxygenation as well as detoxification of the entire body.
It leaves you feeling healthy, cleansed and fabulous after each session. It also improves toning and fitness levels.
Even after a couple of weeks of abiding to the above diet and exercise pre-Christmas guidelines, you will feel like another person, healthy and radiant.
Diet during Christmas
Christmas dinners are actually full of nutrients due to the two standards: turkey and vegetables. Yet it is all the extras that can pile on the calories. You of course need to be considering a meal that does not break the calorie bank.
If you wish to lose weight during Christmas, turkey is a fantastic option for those on a diet during Christmas. It is full of protein, which assists in filling you up. In addition, it provides you with lots of nutrients including zinc, which maintains the good health of the immune system.
Turkey is as low fat and low calorie as you could possibly get for meat, particularly the breast. A 100g portion of skinless, roasted, turkey breast has 150 calories and 2g fat, whereas a similar portion of dark meat contains 170 calories and 6g fat.
There is no need to smother your turkey with butter, margarine and oil before you cook it. Just use a pastry brush to lightly cover the meat with oil, instead of spooning or pouring the oil over the meat. N.B. that just a tablespoon of oil has 100 calories and 11g fat.
Prior to getting stuck into your Christmas dinner, take off the turkey skin turkey. 15g of skin contains 70 calories and 6g fat and that’s just a mouthful.
Put lots of traditional, seasonal vegetables on your Christmas dinner plate, such as, carrots, red cabbage, swede, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. The varied colours denote multiple nutrients. More vitamins and minerals are retained if you steam your vegetables.
Try not to serve vegetables covered in butter. A teaspoonful equates to 35 calories and 4.0g fat.
Try to use less fat for roasting parsnips and roast potatoes. First parboil them, then lightly brush with oil instead of pouring straight from the bottle. Put them in the oven. You ought to have crispy, tasty roast potatoes this way which are not loaded with oil. Try to keep them in large pieces, as this lowers the amount of fat they absorb.
Should you be using any meat juices for making gravy, drain off the fat first.
You can make your own low calorie stuffing with chopped chestnuts. They contain just 2.7g fat per 100g. This makes for a healthier, low fat stuffing, compared to sausage meat, which has approximately a massive 32g fat per 100g.
To further keep fat content at a minimum in your Christmas diet, use a spray oil to fry onion should you be planning to use it in stuffing.
Should you be using a packet stuffing mix, then avoid adding that knob of butter. Once the Christmas dinner is smothered in gravy, no one is going to know that the butter is missing.
Use lean bacon and low fat chipolata sausages for sausage and bacon rolls which accompany the turkey.
Be wary of the extras that go along with the Christmas dinner, like white sauce, cranberry sauce, bread sauce and white sauce. They pile on those additional calories, 40 calories for an average serving of bread sauce, 25 calories for a teaspoon of cranberry sauce, 40 calories for the average serving of bread sauce and 20 calories for one tablespoon of white sauce made from semi-skimmed milk.
If you must have Christmas pudding, just have a small serving. Your normal 100g serving contains a huge 330 calories and 12g of fat.
When it comes to selecting your pudding partner, be careful. Believe it or not, custard has more calories than brandy butter or single cream, even if it has been made from skimmed milk.
Calories in Christmas Drinks
At Christmas time when there are lots of Christmas parties, nights out, lunches out and evenings with family and friends, it is so easy to drink lots of alcohol.
Lots of booze may help parties swing along. Yet, they do little to keep your waistline in check. If you wish to have a drink by all means do so. However, do not over do it and you can follow these drink guidelines.
This is a well known trick. Mix white wine with diet lemonade or soda and it lasts twice as long and equates to half the calories. Should you not be able to tolerate diluted wine, choose red wine or a dry white wine as they have fewer calories than sweet wines, half a bottle of dry white wine or red wine contains about 250 calories.
Be careful of alcopops, as they are full of calories and not much else. They do not taste particularly alcoholic so it is easy to drink a lot of them. Should you like that kind of fruity flavour, add a bit of cordial or fruit juice to soda water or wine. Even the sugar reduced alcopops out there are very high in alcohol.
You could have a glass of champagne, at 100 calories a glass.
When we pour spirits at home, their measures tend to be bigger than those served in pubs and bars. Hence, your serving is likely to have more than twice the calories. Should you be doing a great deal of entertaining at home, it may be worth investing in a spirits measure in order that you can accurately measure out drinks. It is a good idea to always pour spirits in the glass prior to adding mixers or ice, in order that you are able to see the quantity of alcohol there is in the glass.
Mix spirits with low calorie mixers like diet lemonade, diet cola, diet tonic or diet bitter lemon. Allow 50 calories per single shot 25 ml with a diet mixer.
Try to keep away from beer, cider and lager as they are full of calories. The greater the alcohol content, the more calories in that drink. Say a pint of beer has about 160 calories, whereas, just a bottle of strong lager could have up to 200 calories. Lots of trendy new ciders are served in a pint glass with ice. However, they have 200 calories plus per pint.
Be careful of trendy wine bars as a majority of them serve spirits in double measures (50ml) as norm so that you end up with double the calories. Quite a few pubs serve 35ml measures of spirits as opposed to 25ml measures. So yet again they contain more calories.
Be careful of massive wine glasses as such a big glass may contain about half a bottle of wine.
When you are having cocktails, choose with care. It is best to avoid anything which is made from coconut milk, cream or syrupy juices as they are full of calories. And by definition the more shots of alcohol a cocktail has, the greater its calorie value. It is best to request diet mixers wherever possible and drink slowly.
It is advisable to swap post-dinner creamy liqueurs for a single shot of brandy should you wish to. The majority of cream based liqueurs have about 80-100 calories per 25ml, in contrast to 50 calories for the same measure.
Happy hours are aimed at getting the punters to drink more and them drinking all night. The downside to this is that whilst the bar earns pounds, you will too as you are likely to drink many more drinks than you otherwise would.
You could offer to drive occasionally during the Christmas season. Hereby, you are not going to be to drink anything other than low calorie diet drinks.
Christmas Diet Entertaining
When you have to entertain, use it to your calorie advantage. Prepare low fat meals as well as low fat snacks. Stick with the healthy diet and eating rules that you adhere to the remainder of the year. Your family and friends will also be thankful to you for being mindful of their weight loss at Christmas time and at all other times.
So Opt for the Diet.co.uk Christmas Diet Entertaining Plan.
Stick to Low Calorie Nibbles
During the Christmas period, it is the nibbles between meals that can pile on the calories and pounds. Putting on just one pound of fat is equivalent to 70 chocolates. This may sound like a lot. However, just a few selection box chocolates a day and you have gained that extra pound to say the least.
Should you not wish to put on those pounds then stick to these simple guidelines:Do not start stocking up on a great many festive foods too early as you may be tempted to eat them.
Try and make your own low calorie and low fat dips by using low fat crème fraiche, fat free fromage frais or low fat natural yoghurt. You can spice them up with fresh herbs, black pepper, lemon juice and spices. You can serve them with breadsticks or vegetable crudités as opposed to tortilla chips or crisps.
It is a great temptation to have a nibble between meals when you are making meals for friends and family. You can easily end up eating as many calories in snacks as for the meal itself. So try chewing on some gum whilst preparing meals.
Buy low calorie and low fat snacks, like dips and crisps. No one is going to know when you are entertaining.
Try making your own mince pies with filo pastry, as opposed to puff, flaky or shortcrust. Filo pastry has fewer calories as well as less fat than other types of pastry.
|
Uncooked Pastry Per 100g |
Calories |
Fat g |
|
Shortcrust |
450 |
30 |
|
Flaky |
425 |
31 |
|
Puff |
401 |
26 |
|
Filo |
304 |
3 |
If you fancy making mince pies, go for mince tarts instead. Omit the pastry top and you will save 50 calories and 4g of fat.
In order to reduce the fat content of ready made mincemeat, mix in some stewed apple prior to filling in the pastry cases.
Keep a beady eye out for low fat versions of your favourite Christmas foods like mince pies and Christmas pudding. Alternatively, go for smaller versions like mini mince pies which normally contain 250 calories per pie. This way you will have had a taste of that dessert, yet not the hundreds of extra calories.
Do not be tempted to prepare high fat, calorie ridden meals like coronation turkey and bubble and squeak. Alternatively, try making low calorie, tasty meals like turkey curry, turkey with salad and a jacket potato and turkey soup.
Try to make healthy low fat, low calorie turkey sandwiches by using wholegrain bread with some fat free cranberry sauce as opposed to butter, opting for the delicious breast meat.
Fancy making some homemade sweet treats like Christmas cake, trifle or a Yule log? Well there are lots of low calorie online recipes. Should you make them at home, you can replace normal ingredients with low calorie versions. If you are making a low fat trifle, you can use sugar free jelly, a reduced sugar jam for the sponge cakes, canned fruit in juice as opposed to syrup. You can also make the custard with skimmed milk, decorating with low fat aerosol cream.
You can always opt for a low calorie Christmas snack of a tangerine or satsuma as opposed to a mince pie or a slice of Christmas cake. They are full of fruits and only 20 calories each.
If you have a weakness for salted nuts, try to mix some unsalted nuts and raisins together. Salted nuts in particular contain lots of calories.
An alternative is purchasing nuts with shells, like Brazil nuts, walnuts and hazelnuts. If you have to say a nutcracker each time you wish to eat a nut then you are less likely to overindulge.
Place bowls of dried, festive fruits out for people to pick at. Although dried fruit is practically fat free, it is pretty high in calories. A 100g portion of raisins has 280 calories. As an alternative, you could keep a box of fat free dates on your kitchen work top or coffee table. There are only 15 calories per date.
Should you wish to eat a slice of Christmas cake, take of the marzipan or icing and relish that cake. You will thereby save 70 calories as well as 1.5g of fat.
Swap savoury snacks, peanuts and crisps for breadsticks as they are low fat, low calorie snacks. Breadsticks contain about 20-25 calories, whereas, a few peanuts contain a minimum of 300 calories.
If breadsticks do not tickle your taste buds, you can keep bowls of olives, gherkins and pickled onions at the fore. They practically have no calories at all. Ensure you keep the olives in water as opposed to oil as that will keep fat content to a minimum. Of note is that the fat content is as high as savoury nibbles.
Select your sweets with care. Those big tins of chocolates contain a lot of calories. A 2kg tin of Roses has 10,000 calories, with approximately 500g of fat. That could put on 3lbs. So try and choose sweets which are low fat like fruit gums, fruit pastilles, boiled sweets or jelly beans.
|
Sweets per 100g |
Calories |
Fat g |
|
Assorted filled chocolates |
450 |
19 |
|
Toffees |
420 |
17 |
|
Peppermints |
390 |
0.7 |
|
Jelly beans |
360 |
0.2 |
|
Boiled sweets |
320 |
0 |
|
Marshmallows |
320 |
0 |
|
Turkish Delight |
290 |
0 |
|
Fruit pastilles |
250 |
0 |
|
Fruit gums |
170 |
0 |
Diet Buffet
Buffets are a great diet stopper. You can easily break your diet with buffets. It is tempting to try out several dishes.Try and have a light snack prior to going to the party. Do not try and starve yourself all day on the day of the party as you are likely to overeat otherwise and work your way through the food by sampling just about everything!
Do not stand near the buffet table. You will nibble, pick and munch away to the point you will not know how many calories you have eaten. Fill your plate up once, work your way through it and then call it a day.
When it comes to selecting nibbles, be careful. It is easy to select high calorie, high fat snacks. So keep away from pastries, like quiche, sausage rolls, vol au vents, flans and spring rolls, as they are loaded with calories. Also ensure that you steer clear of deep fried foods, like battered prawns and crispy wontons. If you can avoid the peanuts, crisps and garlic bread, you will avoid lots of calories. In addition, keep clear of anything that is accompanied with soured cream or mayo like potato salad, creamy dips and coleslaw. Go for lean turkey, chicken, ham, fresh prawns, smoked salmon and salads without mayo. Opt for French bread with no butter, bread sticks, crudités, salsa, tiny slices of pizza, houmous and tzatziki.
Try not to take up the constant attraction of various nibbles. Keep a glass in one hand and a serviette in the other and you should be fine.
When it comes to accompaniments with cheese, select carefully. Chunks of French bread with butter and several cream crackers can pile up the calories. Try instead to opt for crispbreads, biscuits and bread.
Should you be tempted by the cheeseboard, ensure that you make your selections carefully. Edam, camembert and Brie have fewer calories than Red Leicester, Cheddar and Stilton. If goat’s cheese is available, go for that as it is the lowest in calories.
Christmas and Diet Books
