Well it’s not long now until Christmas, and of course and the main question I’m getting from a number of my clients is how do I get through Christmas and keep to my diet or not put on any weight?! Well from my perspective Christmas dinner itself isn’t an unhealthy dinner to have, it all tends to go to pot with an overload of carbohydrates, followed by the endless desserts we tend to consume for days afterward!
Getting through Christmas without making yourself ill, ruining your digestion, getting reflux, and putting on 2 stone in weight isn’t an art form, it’s all in the planning and setting the intention of what you want to focus on. So if you focus on health and keep that as your main focus then eating endlessly doesn’t let you achieve that, I suggest keep your main goal in the front of your mind.
I know it can be difficult, Christmas has become about excess, my mother used to take us to Marks and Spencers on the morning of Christmas Eve to get the last bits she ‘needed’! Along with others, we would be cueing for those last minute biscuits, brandy butter, and of course the double cream. We would then go to the market for our last minute vegetables, back at home the rest of what was the copious amounts of food was stacked in the kitchen and the wardrobe. She would buy boxes and boxes of biscuits, crackers, chocolates, and sweets, for the one day, we would be eating until February the food and confectionary she had bought. My father used to go mad with her, tellin her it wasn’t needed, it wasn’t, mind you he did like a nice fancy Christmas biscuit! She made her own Christmas cake, and pudding, massive in size, made bigger by my childhood eyes, and made months before, drenched in brandy, the Sherry Trifle was true to its name, and you couldn’t light a match near it.
She wasn’t unlike most of us, she bought to excess, she had been brought up in great poverty so she did her best to make up for it. But getting out alive at Christmas wasn’t her objective, or her intention, and each year she would talk about the weight she had put on which was not surprising really. She planned for a Christmas where we went for nothing and neither did any guests that arrived because the drink was free flowing and it was meant to be excessive.
So that is the key, it’s all about what you plan for, because if it’s about living and enjoying the excess this Christmas then do that, and get back on the wagon in in the New Year. Do my 21 day detox programme in the New Year with me. But if you want to get through this time with only a couple of pounds put on then it’s about how you plan to do that.
You don’t have to go without, it’s about managing the amount of food, and making the right choices that suit you.
So one of the main killers for a good diet is a great buffet, just go once and fill up your plate, and then dance the night away, we don’t live in an environment where we don’t have enough food, there will be more tomorrow!
Keeping Christmas dinner to manageable portions is obviously one way of enjoying it and not falling asleep after it. Carbohydrates are the potatoes, carrots, root vegetables, and stuffing, so this is the area to portion control, pack on the plate the broccoli, cabbage, and other green vegetables and you are going to not feel so bloated.
We have large dinner plates now, much larger than they used to be, using smaller sized dinner plates can be very helpful for reducing portion sizes and still looking like you are filling your plate up.
We know it’s not really the dinner that’s the issue but the snacks and desserts, each day all day for 7 days, sometimes eating it for breakfast, and why not that trifle’s been left out so you’ve got to eat it, at 9am in the morning! The Advent Calendar and Selection box that is calling your name that afternoon, and on my god we’ve still got some profiteroles left for a midnight snack. It’s nice to have dessert, fruit is the obviously healthy choice, and let’s face it probably not one you want to choose with the competition from the other desserts. But it’s about not buying so many desserts, and chocolates, decide which day you want to eat them on, and then leave it at that. The same with chocolates and biscuits, are you really going to eat them as well as the others? Ask yourself how much can you really eat in two days?
To help you deal with indigestion here are a couple of suggestions!
Peppermint tea after a meal can really help. Try Pukka, or Tea Pigs.
DoTerra Peppermint oil 1 drop in water should help to calm things down.
Digestzen capsules by doTerra are quite good after a meal for doing the same thing.
Cytoplan CytoZyme, is a digestive enzyme that you can take with a large meal to help digest it. Don’t take if you have a hernia or stomach ulcer.
