Calories on Christmas Day

No counting at all for me on Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, etc. I have a "Generic 2500" entry in My Foods and that's what I use for these days; then I exceed that by at least 1,500 calories and pretend it was 2,500 LOL These holidays are rare enough that I figure my overall diet can just absorb them, and I can't honestly say I care whether I'm +3 pounds more than I expected to be based on a linear extrapolation of my weight from the MFP Goals tool; I lost 62 lbs in 2019 and am very happy with that, maybe it coulda been 65 but really, it just doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. I do like being able to eat with abandon once in a while. But not more than once a month at most, because then it starts to eats into the weight loss in a non-trivial way.

But at the beginning of a diet, the first few months, I can see the logic of being very diligent and counting everything. I think it depends on where you are in the cycle. For someone who's been dieting for 3 weeks or something, perhaps having wild days of abandon is not a good idea. I think you kinda train yourself over time to get back on the horse the next morning - get on scale, get on exercise machine, hunker down with My Diary, etc - and until those habits are in place it might be best not to go too wild and to make at least a wan attempt to track and log a feasting holiday.

sweetbe44 wrote: »

I won’t count but I’ll be mindful of what I’m eating and not go overboard.

This is probably me too, between marshalling the family, cooking, cleaning up, dealing with guests etc I probably won’t get the chance to log in the moment as I always do. I can also imagine the eye-rolling that would occur if I weighed my food with everyone watching too! 🙄

However, I’m vegetarian so I’ll just be eating the veg at dinner anyway so I’m not too worried!

I’ll likely log as well as I can, out of guilt, when I’m getting myself ready for bed! Some carrots, peas and sprouts and 5 glasses of red! 😂

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I plan to eat (and drink) All Of The Things on Christmas, just like I did at a holiday potluck yesterday. This is year 4, almost year 5 of maintenance, I'm still at BMI 22-point-something (and successfully slowly dropping weight at an ultra-slow pace over the past few months, as intended). A day or few of indulgence is irrelevant, for me, in the context of more controlled calorie balance the rest of the year.

Different people need different strategies. Part of the process is figuring out what strategies work best for you.

Happy holidays, in whatever form and manner you may celebrate them!

Well said here, in the long term a day or two of indulgence has no huge impact on a controlled program. In this game, "what you do spontaneously, will not affect what you do on a consistent basis". Happy Holidays

I’m not counting calories and I’m eating and drinking whatever I want. That said, it’s just myhusband and me and I have planned a moderate-calorie Christmas dinner, with rock cornish game hens as the entree (think chicken). I am going to bake a dark-chocolate orange cake and have English scones with imported clotted cream and jam on Christmas morning, which is an annual tradition. Honestly, it’s been nice to have had some treats this week and looking forward to other treats on Christmas after losing 20 pounds and being very calorie-conscious this year. I'm going back to carefully weighing, measuring and logging everything on Jan. 2.

sgt1372 wrote: »

IMO, if you are serious about controlling your wt, you should treat everyday the same (holiday or not) and do whatever you do each day as in any other day to achieve your wt (loss/maintenance or gain) goals.

I'm going to agree somewhat disagree and agree with the above. You can treat a holiday as special and eat a BIT more and still control your weight the other 360 or so days a year. However, in my experience people around me who eat exceeding high amounts of food on "special" days don't do a good job regarding controlling intake on the "regular days".