Christmas Goodies

spaceylou

Given that the festive season is upon us, and we are all more likely to be eating out, or dropping into friends and so on I was wondering if anyone had any ideas/tips on limiting the damage to attempts at healthy eating. In particular the slice of cake/pudding/mince pie/chocolates aspect rather than actual 'proper' meals.

Obviously restraint is one thing, but being realistic i am not going to refuse everytime I'm offered a sweet or something so what are the wiser choices?

Are any sweets less offensive than others (say for example in the context of a tin of roses)

Which is less bad for ya: slice of rich fruit cake, or a mince pie?

Or is it all much of a muchness really?

EileenG

Generally, much of a muchness, try to avoid or limit the size.

The one answer that no-one can argue with is "It looks lovely, but I'm not hungry". Ask for an extra cup of tea or coffee and chances are no-one will notice you are not horsing into the chocolates.

How about chewing gum? If you already have something in your mouth, it's not as easy to snack.

When it comes to drink, watch out for the things like Baileys. 327 cals per 100ml, that's a glassful for me!

Personally, I think the worst things are the ones that encourage you to keep nibbling. You are likely to take one or two chocolates and stop, but if there are nuts or Pringles out, you'll have one, and another, and another.....

spaceylou

Haha - you've clearly never met my grandmother or some of the family friends if you think the 'it looks lovely, but I'm not hungry' line would work!!!

I know what you mean about the crisps but I saw a documentary ages ago where they burned crisps to demonstrate how much fat was in them - it was vile and since then I actually find it hard to eat crisps without thinking about it, which makes it difficult to eat the crisps - not a bad problem all in all!

Thanks for the other tips though

MissFlitworth

I had a look at this last christmas and Mince pies are surprisingly loaded with calories, a small Mr Kipling one has about 250. Think it's a combo of the fat in the mince mixture and the fat in the pastry and all the sugar. Individual chocolates (like Roses) have normally between 75 & 90 calories per sweet, so you could easily throw back a thousand calories worth of chocolates without even noticing! A 700g box of Roses has nearly 3500 calories in it

http://nutrition.cadbury.co.uk/epages/Store.storefront/?ObjectID=834099

Can be really hard to avoid treats over Christmas but keeping the amount you eat to a sensible level, having healthy meals whenever you're able to cook for yourself and taking heaps and heaps of exercise really helped me out last christmas

Pembily

I cant eat wheat and dairy and I find that is a great way to avoid eating all the crap over Christmas thus not over eating and putting on as much weight as if I did eat it. The sorry I am allergic always works Don't bother saying intolerant as it confuses people...

foodproof.me

I can't tell you what to eat but you can pre check what the calories are for what you might be offered during the season, and then... politely decline or dig in. ;-)
check it out on www.foodproof.me

Sapsorrow

My mums a legend as my family are nearly all health freaks and my sister and I don't touch sugar for special occassions she always makes something nice like a tray of brownies, stewed pears/plums, homemade ice-cream, apple crumble etc..
She always uses wholegrains and xylito, apple juice concentrate, dates or other dried fruit to sweeten them and plenty of fruit and nuts and seeds so nothing is ever that bad really.
Maybe you could take the incentive this year and look up some recipes online and make something to share around with your family and friends!
I can send you some recipes if you like.