Christmas Season! Few tips to enjoy a healthy Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!

It’s Christmas, and we all want to celebrate and forget about diet and healthy eating!But “this week” can simply be a disaster if you don’t watch your food and drinks. What to eat, what not to eat, what to eat in moderation, what to decrease and what not to worry about?

1. Watch your drinks: Be careful about the alcohol consumption. 4 or more glasses of alcohol in one night is counted as too much. One glass of red wine is excellent for your heart, it increases HDL and decreases LDL due to its high content of “Resveratrol”, But one glass has 120 calories.. So healthy doesn’t mean that you can overdrink it.
2. glasses of red wine, 3 times a week are considered okay. Buy less food for the celebration, and don’t let this occasion turns into an excuse for a whole month of bingeing. Don’t ever go to a supermarket if you feel hungry, that’s very important.
3. What are you really eating? Keep reading the labels, cause you can save more than 30 calories if you know how to read the labels. And the most important thing is not to get confused between zero sugar, zero fat, and zero calories. “Zero fat” or “no sugar” don’t mean “Zero calories”, so go easy 🙂
4. Fill up your stomach before meals with 2 glasses of water, tomato juice, or even lemonade with sweeteners. You’ll be less hungry when you reach the table. But DO NOT drink fruit juices due to their high content of sugar and calories with no fiber at all.
5. Nuts are rich in selenium which improves mood and reduces anxiety. Eat only one handful a day! (45 calories, all from fat but the good fat) – Kastana is very famous during this season, but a lot of people don’t know what is it and how to count it: It is counted as carbohydrates with very little fat.  – kastana have 80 calories. – Dry fruits (dates, figs, prunes) are healthy as well, rich in iron but high in sugar.   – dried fruits have 60 calories so go easy on that too.
6. Cinnamon balances blood sugar and reduces the cravings for sweet food. A smart idea is to stir a little into your tea or coffee.
7. When seeing all the food varieties on the table, you want to try everything and so you tend to eat more. That’s normal and can happen to all of us. That’s why, it’s very important to drink 2 glasses of water before sitting on the table, and see what can be the healthiest options to start with, that’s how you can be directly satisfied. Enjoy everything, say no to nothing – but do it in moderation. Start with vegetables, pick 2 healthy appetizers, then go to the main dish.. Avoid bread with appetizers; you can substitute bread by lettuce.
8. When it comes to sweets, the consumption doesn’t have to be on a daily basis. You can have one kind of sweets twice a week, and surely have one on Christmas day! If you cannot resist it, hide away cakes,”buches de noel” and other temptations, so you don’t see them everywhere in the house. Out of sight, out of mouth!
9. 9- If you’re used to exercise, have a vigorous session the day before and after the feast, and you’ll burn extra calories more efficiently

Stick to those tips for a couple of days, then back to normal right after that.
MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR