10 Ways To Have A Healthier Christmas – Tip For Keeping Fit At Christmas
Christmas is a time of celebration with a family, with lots of meals like traditional Christmas dinner, Christmas pudding and also of many excesses.
In a single Christmas meal or dinner we generally eat between 2,000 and 4,000 calories, compared to 1,500 or 2,000 of a conventional day! And then comes January, the month of the famous resolutions of the New Year to lose weight and get to re-fasten the pants that we had before Christmas.
However, is it necessary to reach this extreme? No. As more excesses to do this holiday season, more it will cost us to return to the healthy routine afterwards. On the other hand, if during the celebrations, we watch a little, while still enjoying the delicious food.
We can maintain balance and avoid having to implement a strict regime in January. Here we share 10 simple tips to stay healthy this Christmas.
1. Start with healthy and nutritious breakfast
- Starting the day eating a good breakfast you ensure that your body receives a good dose of nutrients, but then eats less healthy foods.
- Nutritional deficiencies lead you to overeat. When you feel hungry, it is your body sending signals that need nutrients to repair tissues and recover.
- Examples of healthy breakfast: oatmeal with seeds and nuts, scrambled eggs with vegetables or a well-completed green smoothie (combining green and fruit with seeds, avocado, hemp protein, yogurt, bee pollen, spirulina or peanut butter or sesame seeds)
2. Avoid temptations at home!
- Do not have many sweets at home. Select only a few candies from the pinata or give it to you.
- If you have children, let them choose only 5-10 candies, encourage them to choose the healthiest options and does their consumption, make sure you do not eat more than 1 candy a day.
3. Do not skip meals to save calories!
- If you arrive hungry to the food, the most certain thing is that you cannot resist and arrases with everything.
- Eat a healthy snack or a small meal every three or four hours during the day. This helps maintain stable blood sugar levels and is much healthier than consuming a single large meal.
- Examples of healthy food: fruit, nuts or seeds, a yogurt or a green smoothie.
4. Practice conscious feeding
- We often eat very fast, and we do not even realize what we are eating. This means that the stomach does not have time to send the signals to the brain to communicate that it is already full.
- Eat slowly, being aware of what you have on your plate, thanking for the food and most importantly, chew well, this facilitates digestion.
5. Hydrate well
- We often confuse being hungry with being dehydrated.
- Try to take 1.5 or 2 liters of water a day, especially if you drank alcohol the day before.
- However, try not to drink a lot of liquids during meals, as it dilutes your gastric juices and makes digestion difficult. It is better to drink water between meals.
- Help yourself to digestive teas for after meals are ginger, fennel seeds, chamomile or mint.
- If you are invited to a family meal, you can bring a healthy dish to share with others, so you can be sure that at least you will have a healthy option!
7. Choose the dessert well
- Take the opportunity to savor desserts or sweets that are only available during the Christmas holidays.
- Have a preference for homemade desserts, made with more natural ingredients and without preservatives.
- Go for a homemade dessert to share! Use more natural and healthy ingredients: pure cocoa, coconut oil, mashed or coconut, sugar, raw honey, dates, nuts, coconut flour, mesquite or rice.
- If there are many sweet options choose only 1 or 2 and take a small portion, and do not repeat!
8. Always start eating the healthiest options
- In the food there will be many options, but try start always with the healthiest that will make us feel a bit and not eat so much of the not so healthy option.
- That your plate is dominated by vegetables and protein, and that you have been very few highly caloric or processed foods (bread, pasta, very greasy sauces, etc.)
9. Stay active
- With so many commitments and family meals, it is easy to stop exercising. It is important to continue with the exercise, even if it is only to go for a walk.
- If you are in a family meal, plan to go for a walk for 15-20 minutes or bring your favorite music and organize a dance session. You will have a fun time while moving the skeleton!
10. Beware of alcohol!
- Alcohol dehydrates the body and is highly caloric because of the large amount of sugar it contains.
- If you are going to drink alcohol, take it in moderation.
- Healthier alternatives, red wine, punch or fruit water (with optional picket), kombucha, herbal tea.
Remember, these are celebrations to live with the family and enjoy, so do not be too hard on yourself, enjoy the delicious meals, with moderation and out of guilt!
The important thing is not to fall into an unhealthy spiral of bingeing and little activity, but to return to the healthy diet the day after the celebration and maintain balance. Do not leave for January what you can do today!
It is that time of the year when the weather is chilly; you can hear muffled voices from the church at the corner of the street, sweet smelling cookies are baked, bells are jingling… Its CHRISTMAS folks!