1. Eat a small/low calorie breakfast: By doing this you give yourself a bit of a buffer by saving more of your calories for later in the day.If you’re familiar with intermittent fasting then even better!
2. Train! After spending the first few hours of Christmas with your loved ones it’s time to get in the gym. Train for 45-60 minutes with purpose and intensity. My suggestion is to either do a lower body or full body workout with high volume and 10-15 minutes of interval training at the end. This way you are burning as many calories as possible by training larger or more muscle groups plus your body will actually put the extra calories to good use.
3. Drink 2-3 glasses of water before your meal and stop eating when you are full, not when you can’t physically eat anymore. By drinking water before your meal you will feel slightly full before you eat which will decrease the chances of you overeating.
4. Cover half of your plate with protein. The first thing I will do when filling up my plate with all the delicious food that is made for Christmas Day is I will cover half of my plate with protein. This way you are at least hitting your daily protein intake for the day and minimising the space on your plate for too much extra carbs and fats.
5. Be forgetful. Yep, Christmas Day is when you need to have a gold fish memory and just enjoy the day. It’s once per year and if you’re lucky enough to spend it with family or friends you want to make it a memorable day. There’s more to life than being lean and strict with what you eat. Chances are that if you’ve followed my steps above you won’t even make a dent to your health and fitness goals and your body may actually benefit from the extra calories.
Make sure you put the extra calories to good use the next day and have a Merry Christmas!