Posted on November 22, 2018 by Emily Forbes

Ok, you can shoot me for mentioning the “C” word in November. Heck, I’ll shoot myself. But I’m gonna talk about it anyway. My birthday falls exactly 6 weeks before Christmas Eve, so now that’s been, I am accepting of the festive build-up and the Christmas Countdown.

My friend and I have been discussing how so many people put on weight over Christmas. But Christmas starts in the shops at the end of October. It is this 2 months before that can accumulate a lot of damage to reaching your goals. All the chocolate treat boxes, mince pies and cheese boards are already available. There is a bowl on the coffee table constantly filled with chocolate peanuts and Quality Streets.  You have all the Christmas-do’s to attend: your works, your partners, your girlfriends, the lads and your old work colleagues. Not to mention all the extra alcohol. Which then ends up with many more hangovers and reduced training sessions because of this. “Oh well, it’s Christmas” becomes an excuse for everything.

But on the flip-side, there are others who are able to use Christmas as a goal target. This can work. But often people have one event that they want to attend, then go on a complete binge “because they’ve been so good” and “because it’s Christmas”. Then there is the repetitive cycle of the New Years resolution to lose weight again. You can read up on my top tips on sticking to New Year’s resolutions to get you ahead of the game this year.

So should you just give up trying? Absolutely not! There is still hope. It just requires a little bit of effort and planning. I wrote a previous blog on calorie deficits that explains what you need to know. Essentially, in order to lose weight, you must be in a deficit to achieve fat loss. FACT. But how you achieve this is up to you. Over the festive season, it could be a good option to take a flexible diet approach. This means taking away calories in some areas so that you can have them at other times to fit your schedule, whilst still being in a calorie deficit.

Flexible diet example:

  • Maintenance calories = 2000/day or 14,000/week.
  • 25% deficit calories = 1500/day or 10,500/week.

If you had a big event coming up at the weekend you could use your weekly calories to account for this and remain in your deficit. Your week in calories may look like this ~

  • Monday: 500
  • Tuesday: 1200
  • Wednesday: 1200
  • Thursday: 1200
  • Friday: 1200
  • Saturday: 3500
  • Sunday: 1700

You can also have a contingency plan in place for those impromptu occurrences “if I do this, then I will do this”. So if you slip-up and eat a couple of mince pies in the break room then you will know you have to take out a breakfast or lunch from somewhere else perhaps.

So the Christmas countdown does not need to be a diet disaster and an excuse for poor choices. You can still have a good time and stay on track. Looking after yourself and respecting your body could be the best Christmas gift you give to yourself, after all, it has got to last a lifetime.