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Yes, we all love the party season. My personal joy is the mince pie.  Christmas party time is a nightmare for anyone who struggles with weight loss, and particularly when you have spent all year cycling to lose weight and then along comes all that gorgeous rich food.

Well there’s some good news and some very good news: you don’t have to end up with a waistline to match Santa’s just because it’s Christmas.

I’ve come up with a few different ways that you can look at your food without getting into a massive stress

Christmas food can be healthy – the turkey dinner

If you were to count the calories in a turkey Christmas dinner, it’s about 1000 calories.  Now that isn’t bad considering a diet of 2500 calories for a non-exercising person is the norm.  If you are active like a cyclist this will be a great start, and it leaves you your normal breakfast and the chances are after stuffing your face with stuffing, you won’t need much in the evening meal.  That said, where can you shave off without missing much?

Don’t worry about skipping the gravy, or the cranberries.  Equally go mad on any of the veg.  Bacon and pork sausage are probably worth a miss as between them you can glean back a couple of hundred calories, and if you can halve your portion of stuffing to a 50g ball, then you get back another 100 calories.  Roast of anything just adds fat, but if you must, keep the portion sizes on the smaller size.

But in the end, if you are watching your portions and sizes, then the mixture of protein, carbs and mixed veg is going to take you near to the recommended levels on the British heart foundation diet without any problems.

You can have 100 calories of whatever you want extra on the BHF diet

I think this is very important.  Since you can have 100 calories for free, then you can have your cake, and eat it.

Just not too much of it!

Red wine is good for you

Again, watch how much you consume, but there is mountains of evidence that even for top sports men and women, red wine is ok.  Perhaps some of those saved calories can stretch you to a couple of measures?

Using the BHF diet you can count in portion sizes, so there’s nothing embarrassing

Don’t stress!  One of the advantages of the BHF diet is that you can judge your meals by eye, and not by scales.  So when people ask you how much you want so long as you have the portion sizes in mind it’s pretty easy to say yes or no.  I judge portion sizes according to handfuls, apart from milk, protein and fats.  Fat is by the teaspoon (1 portion for lite, 2 portions counted for saturated fats, like butter).  Milk is per glass or cheese is by the matchbox size.  Bread is by the slice, potatoes by the tablespoon.  And proteins are by the size of a packet of cards.  Easy.

Do something active – something is better than nothing

Go out for runs, walks with the dog, or use the excuse of your new presents  to try them out.

Avoid extra sauces and the like if offered

This is the simple way of adding calories to your food that you just don’t need.  So don’t.

Avoid mince pies:

they have a massive number of calories

well…some of them

 photo credit: mdid