Christmas Calories
It had to happen – I gained some weight on Christmas day!
My weight has been up and down a bit lately anyway. Before my big race of the year in New Zealand I was down to about 62kg and feeling trim, but whilst on holiday after the race I went a bit mad for two weeks and came back weighing around 72kg. I’d managed to get that back to a healthy 65 kg over the past two months thanks not only to getting back into my training again but also by being fairly good with my diet, counting calories and limiting myself to around an average of 2,500 calories a day.
I decided not to count the calories over Christmas though and to just go with the flow, enjoy myself and eat what I fancied. The trouble is Christmas for us is all about the letter ‘F’ – Festive, Family Fun and most importantly Food! Not just good food, but lots of it, from decadent breakfasts to huge turkey dinners, mince pies, sweets, chocolates and anything that we think looks nice as well. I started off being fairly good on Christmas day with just a single croissant and a couple of cups of coffee for breakfast, but once lunchtime came around the feasting started and then I just couldn’t stop.
I weighed myself first thing on Christmas Eve and I was 66.1kg. I’ve just woken up on Boxing Day and weigh 70.1 kg, that’s an extra 4 kgs in one day! It’s difficult to find out just how many calories the average UK person consumes on Christmas Day as every website has a different figure but it is somewhere in the range of 6,000 – 8,000 calories. Now I know I said I wasn’t going to count calories on Christmas Day, and I didn’t, it’s now Boxing Day so from memory here’s a quick breakdown of what I did eat!
Breakfast:
1 croissant – 196 kcal
2 mugs milky coffee – 60 Kcal
Snack
Honey Roasted peanuts and cashews (c. 50g) – 300Kcal
Lunch
Dinner
Pate on toast – 230 Kcal
Huge Turkey dinner with all the trimmings – Turkey, Chicken, Duck, stuffing, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, 2x yorkshire puddings, mashed suede with butter, sprouts, sprouts with bacon and Worcestershire sauce, carrots, leeks, red cabbage with cranberries, cauliflower cheese, pigs in blankets, gravy and cranberry sauce. All cooked by Anna and all very delicious. It was quite a large lunch though, I did go back for seconds and it probably came in at around 1300 Kcal in total
2 glasses of Kir Royale Cocktail – Blackcurrant juice, White Wine and Cassis. – 440 Kcal
2 mince pies and clotted cream – 640Kcal
And so it had started. From there on in there weren’t really any set meals, just a constant stream of food, mainly sweets and chocolate but also a brief savoury moment at around dinner time. From memory it was something like this:
Stollen Bites x 6 – 450Kcal
¼ Pack Chocolate Brazils – 430Kcal
20 Matchmakers – 410Kcal
4 Belgian Chocolates – 245Kcal
2 Giant Chocolate buttons – 80Kcal
2 milky coffees – 60Kcal
Dinner
8x Biscuits for cheese – 170Kcal
Cheese – 30g each of Brie, Wensleydale with Cranberries and Shropshire Blue – 325 Kcal
Pringles – 150Kcal
Cumberland Sausage – 120Kcal
Pate – 110Kcal
Olives – 30Kcal
Pickled Onions – 15Kcal
Fruit Chutney – 50Kcal
Cherry Tomatoes – 12Kcal
Mince pie and cream – 320Kcal
Other snacks
1 mug baileys in coffee – 150Kcal
1.5 cans Pear cider – 350Kcal
Honey Roasted Peanuts and Cashews – 300Kcal
Lindor Chocolate – 80Kcal
After Dinner Ice Cream – 60Kcal
Phew, that little lot comes in at just over 7,000 Kcal, smack bang in the middle of the average persons Christmas Day consumption – When I started writing this post I thought I’d be way over that so it wasn’t as bad as I thought.
It’s Boxing day today though and we’ve yet to make a dent on the Christmas food supplies. There are leftovers galore. Loads of cold meats and cheeses, cakes and biscuits that have yet to be touched, boxes of chocolates yet to be opened, crisps, biscuits, dips, fruit and nuts, Christmas pudding, sticky figgy pudding, loads of marzipan, christmas cake and mince pies, sweets, pineapple lumps, marshmallows, epic hot chocolate, beers, wines and spirits – the list goes on, the cupbards are bursting, the fridge is full, there’s a huge chocolate house on the kitchen top and best before dates are approaching fast – the FEAST continues!
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The food in your house sounds amazing. Here’s what I had yesterday, not sure of the calories:
Breakfast
Oaty clusters with raisins and nuts
Peanuts, crisps and pistachios to snack on
Cham
Lunch
Melon starter
Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, carrots, runner beans, Brussels, roast potatoes and parsnips
Satsuma with custard for pudding
White wine
The food in your house sounds amazing. Here’s what I had yesterday, not sure of the calories:
Breakfast
Oaty clusters with raisins and nuts
Peanuts, crisps and pistachios to snack on
Champagne
Lunch
Melon starter
Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, carrots, runner beans, Brussels, roast potatoes and parsnips
Satsuma with custard for pudding
White wine
Later
Trifle with cream
Gin and tonics
Nuts and crisps to snack on
Didn’t go as crazy as normal, but still felt stuffed most of the day! Looking forward to turkey sandwiches and trifle for Boxing Day.
Come Emily you can do better than that – barely enough to keep me going there!
Although I’m now a little envious of the trifle you have planned for today, I wonder what I can rustle up to compete with that… I’ve already started the day with 2 croissants, two cups of coffee and a couple of stollen bites.
Time for an hour on the turbo trainer now though so that I feel a little less guilty.
Al.
Bear in mind that I’m only 5″1! In the end I had Christmas pudding with cream for breakfast yesterday, followed by a lamb roast with Eve’s pudding and Christmas cake for afters.
Unfortunately I’m back home now, so will have to make my own roasts if I want one! The stollen bites sound nice.