December is coming and your body knows it. It is certainly the perfect month to gain weight because everything is an excuse to eat. Christmas Eve and New Year’s dinner, meetings with friends, gift exchange meetings, and end-of -year parties at work, etc., imagine the calories you could gain if you eat and drink too much in all these meetings!

Not a good idea, right? To avoid falling into guilty pleasures near summer 2020, the Nutritionist Carla Torres of the Center of Aesthetic Medicine of Clínica Ricardo Palma, gives us some advice.

• Being aware of your nutritional condition helps stand firm. If you have high cholesterol, glucose and triglycerides levels you have to avoid binge eating.
• Forget the phrase “all the year I ate healthy, this month I will eat everything.” Watch out! Calories are stored in the body and the extra kilos are noticed.
• Divide your diet into 5 parts, three main ones (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and between meals have a snack of nuts or fresh fruit.
• Divide your main dish into three parts, vegetables, protein and carbohydrates. Vegetables should cover half the plate, the rest is divided into two equal parts.
• Drink lots of water. On hot days many people confuse the feeling of thirst with hunger and end up eating too much. Drink 8 to 10 glasses of water a day.
• Eating whole grain panettone also adds calories, which is equivalent to 3 and a half breads, while a traditional one is equivalent to 4 breads. If you are going to eat panettone, do it during the day and share it with the rest of the family so that you do not eat more.
• Eat panettone with a cup of tea, green tea, chamomile or any infusion without sugar.
• If you are going to drink cup chocolate, make it from organic cocoa, with skim milk and add stevia.
• If you are thinking of going to your social meetings and just have drinks, find out that alcoholic drinks also add calories. A glass of beer has 50 calories, a glass of wine 80 calories and a glass of champagne 90 calories. Take precautions.
• In all meetings there will be food. If you have the option to choose go for the cheeses, snacks with fruits or fresh sausages, and get away from the sweets and fats.

Lic. Carla Torres
Nutritionist of the Center of Aesthetic Medicine at Clínica Ricardo Palma