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Dietician Sheela Seharawat

Christmas, a major festival commemorating the birth of Jesus, is celebrated across the globe. Among grand cheers and bubbly beats, Christmas Eve is celebrated on 24th December, a day before Christmas day. It is a conspicuous day with significant anticipation of Christmas Day.

The sounds of Christmas carols, smell of bakes, laughter of family gathering, illumination of decorated Christmas trees, hanging mistletoes and ringing of bells bring out the feeling of festivity this time of the year.

Every celebration is complemented with scrumptious meal with family. The hallmark of traditional Christmas dinner includes oven-roasted stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy or cranberry sauce and stir fried vegetables. The cherry on the top of the Christmas dinner is sealed with Christmas plum cake, pumpkin or apple pie, raisin pudding, fruitcake and gingerbread cookies. With so many tempting goodies laid down on the festive table, it’s only but natural to be swayed to gobble up those yummies. Once the celebration ends, the aftermath is full of regrets and a bloated body. So, how shall we incorporate healthy strategies with merriment? Your guilt free Christmas dinner is possible if you keep a check on the calorie intake without compromising on the taste.
Free yourself this Christmas from guilty food
Healthy eating doesn’t always mean tasteless food. You can spice up some mouth-watering delicacies without the guilt trip.

Turkey could be swapped with roasted beef or ham. Oven-roasted turkey contains 135 calories per ounce whereas roasted beef contains 76 calories per ounce and roasted ham contains 30 calories per ounce.
1 cup of homemade mashed potatoes, prepared with butter and whole milk, contains about 240 calories. This can be replaced with roasted sweet potatoes containing only 29 calories. If you roast them twice, it becomes crispy on the outside and super-creamy on the inside that melts in the mouth.
Instead of serving a bowl of stir-fried vegetable, opt for boiled ones. A colorful bowl of steam mixed vegetable is not just brimming with vitamins and minerals, it is reduced to just 45 calories whereas stir fried vegetables are at a whopping 200 calories per bowl.
Christmas doesn’t feel like Christmas if the meal doesn’t end with a Christmas cake. Healthify your sugarless Christmas cake with loads of dates, prunes, cranberries, raisins, currants and some dried apricots and blueberries. These fruits substitute the craving for sugar. Add omega-3 rich walnuts to impart a delicious crunch in every bite.

So, it’s not Merry Christmas if it’s not Bon Appetit.