Why You’re Saving Calories for Christmas Dinner But Still Overshooting

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​I say, ‘Is it really worth the calories?’ If it is, I eat it. If not, I refrain.
––Bridget Marquardt

Technically, this article applies to any social meal, but it’s Christmas season, so “ho ho ho” and all that.
 
Anyway, if you decided to track calories and macros during the winter holidays, the following would be the most logical strategy to stay on track with nutrition and enjoy some higher-calorie food on Christmas Day:
 

• Aim to hit your calorie target as an average across the week instead of every single day
• Lower your calories leading up to Christmas Day
• Add the calories you “borrowed” from other days onto Christmas Day

 
At least in theory.
 
Given its sensible premise, this used to be my go-to suggestion whenever a client had an upcoming big social meal and was also using calorie-tracking as a tool.

In truth, it still is my go-to in this situation, but I’ve coached people for long enough to realise that it isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” solution for everyone.

In practice, humans aren’t perfectly logical or mathematically perfect creatures.

So, if you’ve tried this strategy before but you keep going over your calories anyway, these are the most common reasons why, with the solutions my clients and I find most effective:

#1. You’re borrowing too many calories from other days.

For instance, you’re planning to eat 3000 calories on Christmas Day and decide to borrow 400 calories from three days in a row to make it happen.

But the lower calories hit you harder than expected.

You start accumulating hunger and resentment, thinking to yourself: “I’ve suffered this whole time, so I deserve to enjoy all this Christmas food…”

Finally, on the big day, you’re so hangry that you end up eating 4000 calories instead of the planned 3000.

Which makes complete sense.

I feel this way when I’m uncomfortably famished, too. That’s why I’m writing about it!

Here’s a more effective approach: Borrow fewer calories from more days in order to keep hunger in check.

For instance, instead of 400 calories over three days, try 200 over six.
 
You’ll still save 1200 calories, but with less daily effort.

#2. Saving calories ahead of time is tripping you up.

This is your problem if this vicious cycle looks familiar:
 

• Starving all day
• Blow your calories out of the water within the first 10 minutes of Christmas dinner
• End up too full, uncomfortable, and decidedly not hungry afterwards

 
This is how to break the cycle: Harness your body’s physiological response to a very filling meal and lower your calories in the days after, not before.

For most people, a holiday dinner is more bountiful than your run-of-the-mill weekday meal, so they’ll wake up the next day feeling considerably less hungry than usual.

Therefore, eating in a deficit afterwards to compensate for the previous high-calorie day is going to be a little easier than doing it the other way around.

#3. You’re eating too little on the same day.

If Christmas dinner starts at 4 pm and you’re trying to last until then with just a protein shake in your stomach, possibly after several lower-calorie days…

Good luck.

Instead, be a bit more generous with your calories leading up to the meal and, if needed, reduce them afterwards.

As a practical example, assuming Christmas dinner starts at 4 pm, you can have your typical breakfast or a slightly lower-calorie but still filling enough variation of it.

For instance, if your “typical breakfast” is oats, fruit, nut butter, and 0% fat Greek yogurt, you could make it lower in calories by swapping the oats for a little more fruit and/or Greek yogurt, which will help you feel satiated thanks to the combo of fibre and protein.

Contrary to what you might expect, I’d also recommend keeping ~15g of nuts, nut butter, or another dietary fat source of choice in this meal.

Yes, these foods are calorific and don’t feel particularly filling in the moment, but they do seem to have a long-term effect on satiation according to research, so they can keep you fuller for longer.

To be specific, unsaturated fats––which are typically found in plant-based sources––appear to be more effective in this regard than saturated fats. Moreover, plant-based fats are higher in fibre, which will also contribute to keeping you full.

(As a side note, I discussed this and more in a podcast interview on evidence-based appetite regulation strategies with Calvin Scheller here.)

If you’re not particularly interested in food as soon as you wake up, have breakfast later than usual, when you get truly hungry. As an added bonus, there’ll be less time to wait until Christmas dinner and thus less time to get excessively hungry.

When the meal takes place so early in the afternoon, you probably don’t need your typical lunch, but you can still have a protein shake with some fruit, vegetables, and/or rice cakes to tide you over.

Here’s a complete example day, including ingredients and calories:

Breakfast

150g berries = 75 kcals
300g 0% Greek yogurt = 162 kcals
15g smooth peanut butter = 90 kcals
Total = 327 kcals

Snack

Two rice cakes or 110g banana or 200g berries = 100 kcals
30g whey isolate protein powder = 110 kcals
Water for the protein shake
Total = 210 kcals

Christmas dinner = 1000 kcals

Total for the day = 1537 kcals

I assumed a low calorie budget of 1500 calories so that the example could apply to as many people as possible. You can obviously make higher-calorie choices depending on your individual budget.

#4. You’re winging it and hoping for the best.

Cue your jaw hitting the floor harder than you can hit a new squat PR when you log the meal in hindsight and discover that Christmas pudding has 500 more calories than you thought it did…

The less experience you have tracking calories and macros, the less knowledge you have of the caloric and macronutrient content of food.

So, unless you’re an expert calorie- and macro-tracker, you’re not going to be able to estimate your calories on the fly. Therefore, it’d be best to have at least a ballpark idea of the calories in the food you’ll be eating.

This is the most effective step-by-step process to make your guesstimation if you can ask for the details of the menu ahead of time:

1. Find out about which food and drinks will be served.

2. Choose what you want ahead of time.

3. Listen to my comprehensive podcast on how to track calories and macros to find out how to track a meal you’re not making yourself.

4. Out of the options described in said podcast, this is one of the best for this situation: Use AI to help you estimate calories and macros by giving it prompts, such as, “Estimate calories and macros in a typical homemade British Christmas pudding like this.”

The more detailed you can be, the better. For instance, providing reference pictures and recipes helps AI come up with a more accurate estimate.

5. Log your estimated Christmas meal into your calorie-tracking app before the event, so you can plan around it.

6. During the event, if you deviate from the original plan, take pictures of what you end up eating and drinking, use AI again to estimate calories and macros afterwards, log the changes, and plan the following days accordingly.

It goes without saying, but, to make this strategy work effectively, any deviations should be minor, such as choosing Brussels sprouts instead of parsnips, or panettone instead of Christmas pudding.

As a result, even if you do make slightly different choices compared to the original plan, you’re still going to get much closer to your goal than if you went into the meal blind and hoped for the best.

Pro tip: If you have data from previous years, use it!

Go back through your food diary, look at the choices you made at the time, and straight-up copy and paste them if you still like them.

Now, there are times when you won’t find out what kind of food will be available until the day you show up for the meal, so you can’t follow the above-mentioned process.

Don’t despair!
 
Just because you can’t be particularly accurate, doesn’t mean that making no plan is a better option. Even an educated guess is better than nothing, especially if paired with a healthy dose of caution.

You have two options here.

Option A. For traditional meals, like Christmas dinner at your parents’, you may have at least a vague idea of the food and drinks involved, so you can use AI to help.

For instance, you could ask: “What’s the caloric content of a typical Christmas dinner in the UK, including Brussels sprouts, parsnips, one standard-size Yorkshire pudding, four turkey meatballs, and gravy?”

AI will give you a range of calories, like 1000 to 1200 calories. To be on the safe side, pick the highest end of the range, then plug AI’s answer into your calorie-tracking app, and off you go.

Option B. If you have so little clue about what you’ll be eating that you wouldn’t even know which questions to ask AI, pre-log 1000 calories.

As suggested previously, you can then take pictures of everything you’re eating and drinking, and use AI in order to calculate calories and macros in hindsight to replace your original guesstimation.

#5. You’re trying to be “too good”.

In other words, you’re pre-tracking the “perfect” Christmas meal:
 

• Parsnips and Brussels sprouts without oil or butter
• Skinless turkey breast without gravy
• A baked potato with salt and pepper

 
But what you actually want is:
 

• Two Yorkshire puddings
• A jug of gravy on its own (hey, I don’t judge)
• One hearty bowl of Christmas pudding

 
If you pre-track the “perfect” Christmas meal but always end up having the second example, you’re setting yourself up for a double failure:
 

1. The calories and macros you pre-logged will be nowhere near what you actually eat.
2. Now you feel like shit because you “went off plan” and “ate bad food”.

 
In some cases, you may even end up following the plan, eat everything you’d pre-logged… then also eat everything you actually wanted to eat, thus consuming double the calories you would have if you’d just stuck to the latter from the get-go.

After all, it’s one day.

Some people will make health-promoting choices because that’s where they’re at in their own fitness journey.

Others will make more palatable choices because that’s where they’re at in their own fitness journey.

As long as the average of your behaviours over time is aligned with your fitness goals, this won’t matter.

So just eat what you want, and be honest about it from the beginning.

#6. Your relationship with food isn’t there yet.

If none of the previous reasons resonate with you, or if they do and you do apply the solutions, but still end up overshooting your calorie target… then you may need to work on your relationship with food around this time of year.

For example, you may be struggling with:
 

• Tempting Christmas food
• Specific family members modelling or enabling unhelpful habits
• Events or people triggering emotions you tend to use food to cope with

 
In this case, trying to manage your calories alone is not going to do the trick. You also need to do some deeper mindset work to address your thoughts and emotions.

In summary, if trying to save calories for a meal keeps blowing up in your face…
 

1. You’re eating too little on the preceding days.
2. You should try saving calories afterwards, not beforehand.
3. You’re eating too little on the same day.
4. You’re going into it unprepared.
5. You’re trying to be “too good”.
6. You may not have the right relationship with food to get the results you want (yet).

 
Thank you for reading. May you make the best gains.
 
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