When the holiday season is behind us, and we’ve all eaten our final selection box chocolate, cheese-on-cracker, and pig-in-blanket, many of us will head into the new year optimistic that we can soon shed the extra pounds we’ve piled on during the festive season. 

You won’t need to jump on the bandwagon of a trending fad diet, or pay an extortionate amount for Ozempic, or other so-called weight loss drugs. All you’ll need to do is make some minor adjustments to your diet that, who knows, you might even enjoy. 

So without any further ado, here are some clever tweaks you can make to your diet that can actually deliver the results you’re hoping for.

 

A Low-Fat Diet

Call me Captain Obvious if you like, but embracing a low-fat diet is a practical, straightforward way to shed holiday weight while providing a balanced diet that includes all the nutrients your body needs.

This isn’t just the Atkins diet. Low fat doesn’t mean no fat; by all means, embrace healthier natural fats that can be found in natural sources like salmon or avocado. This diet aims to help adopters avoid processed foods that litter the frozen aisle in every supermarket, while urging you to explore organic foods that may not be part of your diet. 

As a general rule of thumb, stick to foods that have, at most, three grams of fat per hundred grams – though some exceptions can be made occasionally. My favourite low-fat meals include lemon chicken, served with rice and a side salad, turkey bolognese, five-bean chilli, and chickpea curry. 

For breakfast, I prefer overnight oats, which break the three-gram rule, but compensate with high fibre content and slow-release carbs that get me through every morning. But if you’re sticking to the three per cent fat I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of cereals that contain under one per cent fat. 

It’s also worth noting that a low-fat diet has other health benefits, such as reducing the risk of gallstones and cholecystitis, which are more common in people over forty and can lead to gallbladder removal. This stands in sharp contrast to weight loss drugs, which have actually been linked to higher rates of gallstones in adults of all ages. 

 

Improve Your Gut Health

Give your digestive system a much-needed boost after the holidays by focusing your diet on fibre-rich staples and other digestive superfoods that’ll turbocharge your microbiome and minimise the risk of constipation, bloating and IBS.

Fibre is an essential part of our diets, yet hardly any of us are getting our recommended amount. A measly 4% of adults in the UK are getting their thirty grams per day. If you’re looking to increase your fibre intake, try split peas or lentils, which provide an additional 8 grams and 15 grams, respectively. Aside from that, it isn’t rocket science; you don’t need to make major changes, like going on a vegan diet. All you need to do is include fruit or vegetables in every meal and, for bonus points, try to drink one smoothie per day. 

Probiotics might require more of an explanation. You see, your gut isn’t just a normal group of organs (if there was ever such a thing), it’s a bustling ecosystem full of trillions of helpful microbes that help you to break down your food. 

If you include probiotics in your diet, you’ll increase the amount of good microbes that help you to digest more nutrients and fight off nasty pathogens. You can find pathogens in kombucha, sauerkraut, kefir yogurts, and kimchi; with all of these being delicious, reasonably inexpensive, and readily available in supermarkets, it’s hard to find a reason not to include them in your diet. 

 

Embrace a Caloric Deficit

In layman’s terms, being in a caloric deficit just means that you’re burning more calories than you consume. This will force your body to use stored energy (often fat reserves) as fuel, leading to weight loss. 

Every day, your body requires a certain number of calories to carry out essential functions, like breathing, maintaining body temperature, and digestion. This is what’s called your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). You can use online TDEE calculators that combine information such as your height, weight, age, and lifestyle details (e.g., healthy habits) to calculate your metabolic rate and estimate your recommended daily maintenance calories. 

Once you know your TDEE, focus on a low-fat, high-fibre diet that puts you roughly 500 calories below your TDEE. This would mean that weekly, you should consume 3500 fewer calories, which will likely lead to significant improvements to your weight. 

However, it’s important to bear in mind that this measurement applies to average-weighted adults who put on some weight during the Christmas period. If you’re underweight, it would be unhealthy to eat at a caloric deficit, while for people who are overweight or even obese and have an extremely high TDEE, they can potentially increase the deficit to be up to 1000 calories below their TDEE, depending on their weight. 

If you want to improve your chances of seeing better results, it’s recommended that you combine this lower-calorie diet with increased levels of physical activity, which would mean that, overall, you won’t need to make as many radical changes to your lifestyle. 

 

Don’t Skip Breakfast

If you’re skipping the most important meal of the day, in the name of ‘fasting’, you’re probably doing yourself fewer favours than you think. Not only are you making the morning even harder than it normally is, but you’re also making yourself hungrier later in the day, meaning you’re more likely to snack – and most snacks aren’t known for their nutritional value.

If you treat yourself to a lower-fat, protein, carbs, and fibre-rich breakfast, you’re energising yourself, kickstarting digestion and fuelling your metabolism, which will help your digestive system function more smoothly for sustained weight loss. We’d recommend oats with fruit, natural yoghurt with berries, or scrambled eggs on wholegrain toast. 

 

In Conclusion

As I’ve grown up, I’ve started to care less and less about Christmas presents, but more and more about Christmas food. It might be Western culture’s biggest and best cultural excuse to stuff ourselves with whatever we want for a few weeks of joy and decadence. Mince pies, chocolate oranges, various cheeses and crackers, Advent calendar chocolates, and pigs in blankets are, for many (myself included), the highlights of the holidays. 

Unfortunately, these actions inevitably have consequences. For most of us brave enough to step onto the scales on January 1st, the number on display creates not just a sense of disappointment, but of dread, as we look miserably ahead at the bland menu of rice cakes and celery, and mournfully back at the treats we can no longer indulge in. 

But if you find yourself in this unlucky situation, then hopefully some of our suggestions can help you shift some of that holiday weight.