The Christmas holidays are filled with fun, family and great food. Before you know it, you have been indulging for weeks with little physical exercise and by January many of us are horrified to realise that our clothes are suddenly more “snug” than comfortable. But this year, give yourself a Christmas present. Promise yourself that you will do your best to avoid the weight gain, the guilt and the hard work in January. You can have a wonderful Christmas without it resulting in extra weight. Yes, it is possible.

So how do you manage it? Follow these 10 steps forward to avoid that weight gain over Christmas:

1. Make better bad choices
Limit portions (you know that you don’t really NEED three pieces of cake to be satisfied). Pick the lower calorie or lower fat/high-carb stuff at the dessert table. People training hard can handle an influx of carbs acutely better than fat so pick that stuff. Maybe have a little bit of two or three different desserts, just get a taste and move on. You get the idea.

2. Take a lowered calorie dessert or dish to the party
Whether a work party or holiday dinner, it’s not uncommon for people to bring their own thing to add to the food table. So make something that you’ve de-fatted or lowered in calories, there are zillions of recipes out there.

3. Train with a bit higher volume prior to the event
One of the best ways to increase the ‘sink’ for incoming calories is to deplete muscle glycogen. When you do that by using a higher volume (more sets, higher reps) of training, not only do you increase fat oxidation, you give incoming carbs somewhere to go for storage instead of being used for energy.
You can simply bump up your volume a bit in the days before a specific event where you know there will be junk. Even a heavy training session on the day of the party can be beneficial here. Train in a nice hypertrophy zone (get about 40 reps per muscle group) and you’ll increase protein synthesis so that incoming calories will support growth. Training also tends to acutely blunt hunger so if you train right before the party, you’ll be less likely to overeat.

4. Start with lots of lean protein and vegetables before hitting the dessert table
This one is for the body obsessed and dieters alike. Lean protein has the highest short-term satiating power (this means it keeps you full) and the high-bulk of vegetables helps to fill your stomach which also sends a fullness signal. I’ve yet to be at a holiday party that didn’t have a vegetable plate (limit the high-fat dip) or plate of cold cuts. Load up on that to get some fullness going before you hit the desserts.

5. Have a high-protein snack with some vegetables or fruit about 30′ beforehand
If you’re in a situation where Number 4 won’t work or won’t be available, have a small snack before the party or dinner. Some lean protein, veggies and fruit about 30 minutes will give you a feeling of fullness and help to limit overconsumption of ‘junk’ at the party.

6. Consider intermittent fasting on the day of the event
Intermittent Fasting (IF’ing) is a recent dietary approach that involves not eating for 14-18 hours per day and then either having an ‘eat period’ of roughly 4-6 hour or even a single meal. There’s some interesting research on it. Know that you’ve got a 7pm dinner party where there will be lots of yummy food? Try IF’ing (or only have small meals of lean protein and veggies) most of the day.

7. Consider a short mini-diet in the days before the event
Let’s say you have an event or two coming up on the weekend and you know that there will be lots of food and you may have control issues. Consider doing a short diet in the days before. Call it pro-active damage control.

9. Stay off the scale
The high-carb intake of your typical holiday event along with extra salt both can jack up scale weight quite a bit. The simple fact is that, unless you go nuts, you can’t eat enough in a single meal to put on appreciable fat. It’s only water and it’ll come right back off in a few days. But stay off the scale – it will only make you feel bad.

10. Don’t be your own worst enemy
Some people think that if they’ve eaten a little bit of junk food, clearly they’ve blown it and might as well retire to the corner with the entire tray of fudge and eat themselves sick. Don’t do that. Realise that there is only so much damage you can do in the short-term and get back on track as soon as you can