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December 9, 2020

Healthy holiday food swaps to avoid the Christmas kilos

Filed under: Fitness — Tags: — admin @ 10:12 pm

It’s not uncommon for exercise to go out the window and festive temptations to get the best of us at this time of year amid a busy social calendar and time away from work.

So how do we stay accountable to our goals during the holiday season and not lose sight of the progress we’ve made all year?

F45‘s Sport Nutritionist Kim Bowman says it’s not simply a matter of restricting your favourite foods during the party season, but rather creating balance and awareness about eating patterns to optimise healthy choices — and ultimately avoid overeating and over-snacking.

Here, she shares some strategies to stay on track and avoid the dreaded holiday weight gain.

Swap refined sugar for natural alternatives

While the holidays should rightly include a bit of baking and enjoying our favourite desserts, falling into a complete sugar binge can really put our body on a blood sugar roller coaster.

Highly-processed refined sugars such as high fructose corn syrup along with both white and brown sugar are the ones to watch out for, commonly found in holiday desserts at the grocery store. Refined sugar offers no nutritional value and leads to unstable blood sugar and energy levels while triggering inflammation.

If you’ve got a sweet tooth, you can avoid tonnes of calories and sugar crashes by skipping the grocery store treats and making your own using a natural sugar alternative.

The best forms of sugar are found in whole foods such as bananas, dates, and apples. Fruit naturally contains sugar as a mix of sucrose, glucose, and fructose, as well as plenty of antioxidant-rich vitamins and minerals, and gut-supporting fibre that will leave you feeling fuller for longer and less likely to indulge.

Bananas and dates, for example, are both ideal natural sweeteners as they contain plenty of nutrients and fibre, which is key for slowing the release of blood sugar to avoid rapid peaks and drops that typically lead to ‘sugar crash’ and stronger cravings.

Unsweetened apple sauce is another great alternative that tastes delicious in holiday baking. Aside from fruit, there are a few unrefined sugar alternatives including maple syrup and raw honey that are most definitely healthier alternatives to refined sugar — but should be consumed in moderation as they lack the fibre found in whole foods such as fruit.

Banana bread with honey and butter
Swap out highly processed sugar for raw honey and fruits like banana. (Kim McCosker)

Swap deep-fried foods for roasted

The problem with deep-fried foods is that they’re prepared with highly processed oils known as trans fats, including canola and palm oil.

Trans fats have been known to have negative health effects over time when consumed in excess, including widespread inflammation in the body. Specifically, when these hydrogenated processed oils (trans fats) are heated to excessively high temperatures they become oxidised and unstable, which is problematic to our health when consumed in large amounts.

There are a variety of healthier cooking alternatives to deep-frying, including baking, grilling, and roasting. Additionally, instead of relying on highly processed fats to boost flavour, opt for healthy marinades that use a variety of natural herbs and spices to give your holiday meal a flavour kick.

RELATED: F45 Challenge winner shares what she learned, ‘How I lost 13kgs in 8 weeks’

Swap mindful eating

Holiday stress can lead to overindulging and a lack of awareness about how often and how much we’re eating throughout the day. It’s astonishingly easy to fall into a snack trap of mindless eating during the holidays.

So adopting a mindful eating approach, such as time-restricted eating (intermittent fasting), allows us to be more aware of portion sizes and how often we’re eating, which makes it easier to establish a healthy eating pattern and avoid cravings and the subsequent food binging as a result.

This approach also makes it easier to recognise emotional hunger cues (stress eating) to ensure that we’re able to select healthy options and moderate portions without letting our emotions take control of our eating habits.

Swap out low-quality snacks for protein-rich snacks

It’s an understatement to say holiday buffets and snack plates can make tricky to avoid a calorie blow-out. Of course, the key to healthy snacking is to establish balance.

Completely restricting meals or snacks is more likely to lead to uncontrolled binge eating later that day. The problem with skipping breakfast or having our first snack late in the day is that our blood sugar becomes drastically low to the point where we crave instantaneous energy, experienced as sugar cravings or carb cravings ie.. The secret to staying on track throughout the holidays is to avoid large peaks and drops in blood sugar. Having a protein-rich snack mid-morning will not only promote greater feelings of fullness throughout the day but will prevent large drops in blood sugar that would otherwise induce sugar cravings. A high-quality protein-rich snack might include a hard-boiled egg, raw nuts (unsalted), or Greek yogurt with berries, all of which will promote a healthy blood sugar balance.

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Swap sugary beverages for sparkling water or tea

Holiday bevvies like pumpkin spice lattes, eggnog and fruit cocktails remain one of the sneakiest ways we can overdo the calories. Not only do these drinks contain excessive amounts of refined sugar but they provide no real subsistence or nutritional value.

Adding insult to injury, consuming a sugary latte in the morning is more likely to result in a blood sugar crash mid-day and ignite cravings for sugary sweets later on in the evening, so your morning drink habit could result in a double-whammy hit of calories.

For this reason it’s best to avoid the sugar-packed lattes, particularly in the morning, and instead opt for water with lemon, sparkling water, herbal tea or coffee to prevent rapid changes in blood sugar and excess consumption of otherwise ’empty calories’.

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