Christmas celebrations: how to go without feeling guilty
The closer they are Christmas celebrations, there are more people who consult with kind naivety: "how to deal with Christmas food excesses without the conscience shouting so much that you have to muzzle it?" And is that our mind often associate "festive celebration" with "excesses in food."
When the dreaded ones arrive Christmas feasts We are worried about how the binge insurance that we plan to give in each of them will be sitting on and even if it seems an unattainable ideal, you can avoid them!
How to survive Christmas feasts
It reads a classic saying: "Who looks at the abyss ends up falling into it". For those who consider that, no matter how much they propose it, they will not have enough willpower to lean out, here are some recommendations to reduce, as much as possible, the impact of the fall on such a gastronomic precipice for a healthy Christmas :
1. Dishes with fewer calories. If you personally take care of the preparation of the meals, dare to elaborate something different and less loaded of calories of the "habitual" of these dates. If the hosts are different in each celebration, come together to an absolutely inviolable agreement on the number and composition of the dishes and try to influence with firm decision in these "negotiations".
Blackmail is allowed in dietetics! You can propose and propose, for example, the following (although, after reading this, you will not be able to convince yourself that a pleasant and healthy Christmas is possible):
a) That the snacks are not an endless cascade of caloric pumps: Why not include appetizing and healthy nuts, whole mini-pizzas with vegetables and fruits?
b) That the first dish has an eminently vegetal character: a delicious cream or vegetable soup, a salad prepared with grace and variety, some vegetables (in Italy, as Latin as we are, they are not ashamed to eat lentils on New Year's Eve), pasta - if possible whole - prepared in a thousand possible ways *
c) That the second dish, meat or fish, is not deprived of the vegetable presence either: garnish with baked vegetables, mushrooms, applesauce, dried fruits or the, so fashionable, hummus. And, please, the ration does not have to reach a gigantic size: you do not have to be a nutritionist to know that adult diners strictly comply with the disastrous "law of the clean plate". Therefore, moderation in the rations.
d) That the dessert does not have to be reduced to the typical Christmas sweets (mantecado, polvorón, turrón, marzipan, alfajor, roscón de Reyes). They can be accompanied / replaced by an attractive fruit jelly with a touch of ice cream, some exquisite fruit skewers dipped in liquid chocolate, a compote or a macedonia especially original for that occasion. Do you know that three normal pieces of butter (32 grams per piece) contain more than 500 calories, that is, a quarter of what we should normally eat a day? It scares a little, right?
e) Remember that the triumph of a meal usually lies more in the details with what is presented in the caloric content of it. Yes, the secret of success is in the details.
2. Have breakfast before going to a special lunch at noon. Do it like any other morning or a dinner without having eaten as usual; it is dietematically a monumental error to think that, as one is going to eat a lot at noon or at dinner, it is compensated by eliminating breakfast or snack. Nor is it necessary to be an expert in nutrition to know that this "law of compensation" -ir with hunger-has involved in many cases-let me humor-that, in addition to the dishes, one also ends up devouring one of the guests. Nor should apply that false compensatory law to the days when there are no festive meals, eating insufficiently.
3. Special attention to alcohol consumption, So uncontrolled on those occasions. Exceeding, not only involves a gigantic contribution of calories, but it causes noticeably pernicious effects in other aspects of health.
4. Get more exercise. If we have assumed that throughout the year it is necessary to overcome the harmful sedentary lifestyle, let us accompany Christmas time with the realization, even more frequent or intense, of physical exercise.
After all that has been said, the worry caused by Christmas in food matters is absurd. Nutritional health does not depend on what we do in those days, but in all the rest of the year.
Pedro J. Toranzos. Bachelor of Pharmacy, Diploma in Dietetics and Nutrition, Master in Dietetics. Prodieta
