5 Healthy Christmas Buffet Tricks (Healthy Eating Part 4 )

This is the final part of the four part series on Healthy Holiday Eating for this holiday season

Apart from Thanksgiving, the traditional Christmas dinner is one of the biggest meals of the year. Maintaining your any sort of weight loss programme during Christmas can be difficult, if not near to impossible during the seasonal holidays. What can you do to your diet so that you do not affect the people you are feeding including your immediate family and everyone else?

These simple tips are easily able to be included in the meal without anyone really noticing. Everyone is happy – friends and family get to enjoy a lavish meal, and you get to stay in firm control of your weight loss during this holiday season. Best of all, your family and your friends experience a healthy Christmas.

1. Have raw peanuts and seeds instead of salted peanuts – almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, brazil nuts, cashews, sesame seeds… all are rich in protein, essential fats and minerals.

2. Swap sweets for dried fruits - Instead of having sugar based confectionary replace them with dried fruits – apples, apricots, raisins, banana, currant and figs… not only are dried fruits deliciously sweet but they last too.

3. Make mince pies with open-tops – this will help you to use less pastry, instantly cutting your fat and calorie content in half. Alternatively you can opt to use filo pastry which is thinner and lower in calories compared to traditional pastry. Another clever trick is to add finely chopped apples to the mincemeat. This will make it fluffier and will lower the mince pies overall calorie content.

4. Don’t do pigs in blankets – There are Yummy little sausages in pastry, in case you weren’t sure. Pastry = bad. instead grill/ bake the sausages in a wire rack to let the fat drain off

5. Get tomato-based dips – avoid any cheese dips and instead offer your guests salsa dips or a low-fat yoghurt mixed with chopped herbs.

You can also make the following swaps:

• Mini pastry tartlet (45 kcal) for a mini filo tartlet (30kcal)

• Breaded chicken bite (40 kcal) for a marinated chicken bite (29 kcal)

• Mini bhaji (64 kcal) for a mini satay stick (34 kcal)

• 30g of ready salted crisps (155 kcal) for 30g of tortilla chips (147 kcal)

• 30g of salted peanuts (184 kcal) for 30g of pretzels (114 kcal)

• 175ml of pre-mixed Buck’s fizz for 175ml for a wine spritzer (2:1 wine and soda water)

Take the time to examine what you would normally buy for a Christmas party and swap any high fat/high calorie foods for their healthier alternatives. It may feel like a gruelling process, but you will wish you had taken the time to do it when you are sweating it out trying to lose the weight that you gained during the holiday season.

Don’t be afraid to introduce healthier foods to the table.

Cooking treats and puddings yourself can instantly reduce your calorie content, as you are in control of the calories and the salt content. Plus it will enable you to remain in control of exactly what you are eating.

Without anyone even realising it you can offer them a healthier version of their favourite puddings, and keep your Christmas fun, exciting and most importantly delicious.

So give these tricks a try this Christmas and make your weight loss completely stress free. You will thank me later…

Click Here For Holiday Healthy Eating - Part 1

Click Here For Holiday Healthy Eating - Part 2

Click Here For Holiday Healthy Eating - Part 3