Healthy Holiday Eating: A Calm Plan for the Festive Dinners
On the day I recorded episode 225 there were 61 days left in the year, and the holidays themselves take up a handful of them. Christmas Eve, a work julebord (the Norwegian Christmas party), one big family dinner, Thanksgiving if you live in the US. Here is the plain answer for healthy holiday eating. Sit at the table with everyone else, eat slowly, fill a third of your plate with protein, a third with carbs and a third with colour, and skip both the tracking and the punishment on those days. The days around them are where your habits get built.
I go through all of it on the Talking Nutrition podcast, episode 225, recorded solo, and this post puts the practical parts first. A note before we start: this is education and does not replace your doctor. If you have a history of disordered eating, or a medical condition, talk to your doctor or practitioner before you change how you eat or track.
How Do You Handle Holiday Eating at the Dinner Itself?
Start with where you sit. I would never tell a client to bring a meal prep container to Christmas dinner. On the show I said: "If I would ever say that to a client, I want them to fire me."
Eating from a tupperware in the corner while the family shares one meal does nothing good for your relationship with food. A festive dinner belongs in a healthy lifestyle.
At a buffet I use the plate method. One third of the plate is protein, one third is carbs, one third is colour, meaning fruit, veg or both. Fats will already be everywhere at a Christmas table, so I do not plan for them.
Then slow down. Put the fork down between bites and chew properly. I told listeners: "I have a history of eating really fast and I still catch myself sometimes when my girlfriend calls me out."
A second tool I have used plenty of times, and talked through with a client the day before recording: pace yourself to the slowest eater at the table. Nobody has to notice. You look around, see who is slowest, follow their speed, talk a bit more and put the fork down. It worked well for me, though what works for me does not always work for you.
The full conversation is below if you would rather watch than read.
What About Alcohol, Chocolate and Gingerbread?
Alcohol is a grown-up personal decision. Moderation is the most boring advice there is, and it still holds. Alternate alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic ones, sugar-free festive sodas and water included. If social pressure around drinking is the harder part for you, my post on sobriety and behaviour change goes into it.
A client told me recently that they simply drink slower. A glass in the hand means nobody offers another, and they skip the comments. They ended up at one drink per evening, with less brain fog the next day and energy for a walk or the gym. They had told themselves they wanted those workouts in, and because they drank less, they got them done.
Office chocolate turns up everywhere in December. I spotted gingerbread biscuits in the shop already and left them there, because they are my weakness. Meals come first. Keep them filling, with protein and fibre in check, and a snack lands on a full stomach.
For the snack table itself, put out carrot, cucumber and pepper sticks with a lower-fat, higher-protein dairy dip and some spices. Add a bowl of clementines. The traditional snacks stay.
How Do You Not Gain Weight Over the Holidays?
My answer is calm. Eat your normal meals around the festive days, and leave the festive days themselves untracked. Tracking earns its place in your own kitchen, and you cannot only be successful when you are tracking.
Can you overdo it? Of course, and I have, more than once. Zoom out: the rest of that week has normal meals, the last few months went well and January already has a plan. As I said: "Your plan doesn't change whether your weight is up, down or the same after Christmas."
After last summer most of my clients were up around one to one and a half kilos. We changed nothing. They followed their normal meals and, in my words, "within two to three days that weight was back down to normal because we knew it was a fluctuation." My post on weight fluctuations explains why.
The one thing I tell clients to skip is compensation. No extra cardio to burn it off, no very low day the next morning.
Punishment is a negative approach that will never feed into positive lifestyle change.
A walk after the big meal helps, and so does a Christmas lift with friends. When you are fuelled and rested, it is a good week for personal records.
What Is Reflect, Plan, Execute?
This is the framework I teach for the event itself.
Reflect. Look back at the last few holiday seasons without judging yourself. Name as many strengths as weaknesses. If the season usually goes fine, you may need very little here.
Plan. Pick a couple of boxes to check, daily or weekly. Monthly goals are too big to track, so break them down. Hydration, steps, protein with every meal, a set amount of fruit and veg, two long walks a week, two to three lifting sessions or going to bed on time all work.
Days build into weeks, and that is how momentum gets created. My post on staying consistent with your diet has the weekly checklist.
Execute. Keep the plan in sight. Phone notes work, and so does a whiteboard, which is what I use, plus reminders to check in with yourself. I have not made a vision board myself, but a few friends have and I like the idea.
Before the event, run a mini check-in. Ask what you want out of the moment, and how you want to feel an hour later, the next day and the next week. Then replay last year's dinner with a detective hat on. I said it like this: "Try to find that first little domino that set off the whole chain of events." It might be skipped filling meals earlier that day, the environment, an emotion or stress. If-then planning fits here: if the dessert tray comes round a second time, then I take a walk.
Want a number to plan around?
The calculator gives you an estimated maintenance figure, the starting point for the diet break and fuelling sections below.
Use the free TDEE calculator →
What Is a Diet Break and Where Does It Fit?
I think of a year in seasons of nutrition, tailored to the person. Plenty of diets teach the start and skip the exit. Trips away, holidays, birthdays and dinners out all belong in the plan.
Here is one example. Picture a woman with a strict week followed by a big weekend, drinks included. Her food diary averages out near maintenance, with large ups and downs. I might put her in a moderate deficit while she works on routines, hunger, balanced meals and blood sugar. Then comes a diet break at maintenance from early December, a few weeks in length, and fat loss continues into January. The festive dinners land inside the break.
Yours will look different. If you do not know your maintenance, my post on what TDEE is explains the estimate.
What If You Have Dieted for Years? Fuel Up First
Some long-time dieters tell me they have tried everything. Fuelling the body properly is the piece left out, and I would start there. I say: "Let's actually fuel you up for once instead of thinking less calories, less calories, less calories."
In practice, that means the next weeks go to lifting weights with a structured programme and progressive overload. Cardio drops back to steps and perhaps one or two easy sessions of 20 to 30 minutes. The goal is muscle, and my post on body recomposition covers building it at maintenance. You start the new year with the pre-work done.
Find your estimated maintenance, look at where your food log sits now, then work your way there. If you sit far below, sometimes one step does it and sometimes a few steps suit you better. My post on under-eating and fat loss shows what that looks like. Metabolism adapts to long dieting and can adapt back, at a pace that varies. If you suspect something else is going on, your doctor is the person to ask.
Maintenance is a skill. A lot of people actually struggle with that, sometimes more than fat loss.
Why Does Waiting for January Backfire?
You may know the voice that says enjoy everything now and start properly in January. The trouble is the all-or-nothing frame. Treat the whole season as a free pass and a holiday becomes a holiday week, then a holiday month.
It's called holidays, not holi-weeks, holiday months.
More than 60 days remain to build habits, even if you track nothing. Fruit and veg, protein, hydration, steps, workouts, sleep and stress management are all available today, and a January that starts with them running asks less of you.
A January fat loss phase with my clients is doable. Most of them keep training hard and keep their energy. Pick one box from the Plan section and tick it tomorrow.
The episode runs 43 minutes and goes deeper on the seasons of nutrition than this post could.
Check your maintenance before you decide anything.
Whether you take a diet break or fuel up first, the first step is knowing roughly where maintenance sits. The calculator gives you that estimate to compare against your own food log.
Use the free TDEE calculator →
Written by Johan Vesters, functional health and nutrition coach (FNMS, HMCC L1, MMU L1, PN1, CFL1, NCI L1) and founder of Odyssey Coaching Systems.